By the time this homeowner called my office, the claim was already dead.
She had gone to her Examination Under Oath, which is a formal, sworn, recorded question and answer session that your insurance company can demand under your policy, by herself. No lawyer. No public adjuster. Nobody in the room on her side. She had thought about it and decided on a strategy she came up with on her own, and when she explained it to me later she used her own words for it: she was going to “play dumb.”
Her thinking was that if she did not commit to anything, they could not use anything against her. So when the carrier’s attorney asked how the damage happened, she said she did not know. Then, because silence is uncomfortable and people fill it, she kept going. She said the thing almost every Florida homeowner says at some point:
“Well, you know, it’s Florida. It rains a lot. We’re always getting hit with storms.”
She was being honest. She was also, in about eleven seconds, dictating the denial letter that showed up in her mailbox a few weeks later. And that is the letter I inherited.
What an EUO actually is
An EUO, which stands for Examination Under Oath, is not a friendly phone call. There is a court reporter. You are under oath, the same as if you were sitting in a courtroom. The carrier usually sends a lawyer, not an adjuster, and that lawyer is not there to understand your loss. That lawyer is there to build a record.
Here is the part that catches people off guard: showing up is generally not optional. Florida courts have treated compliance with the EUO provision as a condition precedent to coverage, and a policyholder who refuses to sit for one can lose the claim outright no matter how strong the damage evidence is. See Goldman v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., 660 So. 2d 300 (Fla. 4th DCA 1995). So you cannot dodge it. You can, however, walk in prepared instead of walking in with a plan you invented in the parking lot.
Why “I don’t know” is not the safe answer people think it is
“I don’t know” feels neutral. It is not.
When you tell the carrier you do not know how the damage happened, you have just told them that the person who owns the house, lives in the house, and is asking to be paid for the house cannot connect that damage to any particular event. That is a gift.
There is a difference between “I don’t know” and “I noticed the stain on the ceiling the Monday after the storm, and it was not there before.” Both are honest. Only one of them helps you.
The “it rains a lot in Florida” trap
This is the one that does the most damage, and almost nobody sees it coming.
Your homeowners policy is built around a specific idea. It covers direct physical loss from an event that is sudden, one time, and accidental. It does not cover deterioration, wear and tear, or long term water intrusion. Most Florida policies also carry an exclusion for constant or repeated seepage or leakage of water over a period of days or weeks, plus a separate exclusion for damage that existed before the policy period.
Now read her answer again. “We’re always getting hit with storms.”
What she meant was that Florida has weather. What the carrier heard was: the insured has told us, under oath, that this roof has been exposed to repeated rain events over a long period, so the damage may be cumulative, ongoing, and unrelated to the single date of loss she reported. That is not a covered claim anymore. That is a maintenance claim, and maintenance is not covered.
The denial letter practically wrote itself, and the worst part is that it quoted her. Not their engineer. Not their inspection. Her.
An approved claim and a denied claim are two completely different fights
This is the part I want homeowners to really sit with, because it is the whole reason I am writing this.
If the carrier accepts the claim, the argument is about money. How much does it cost to put the house back to its pre loss condition. That is a scope and pricing dispute. Those get resolved. Section 627.70131, Florida Statutes, gives them deadlines to acknowledge, inspect, and pay or deny. Estimates get exchanged. Contractors get involved. People get their roofs fixed.
Once the claim is denied, everything changes. Now the argument is about coverage itself, and coverage fights are slower, more expensive, and far more uncertain. There is a presuit notice of intent to litigate under section 627.70152, Florida Statutes. There are experts. There is a lawsuit. Meanwhile the damage does not pause and wait for the litigation to catch up. The water keeps doing what water does, the mold question shows up, and the repair number climbs while the house sits there.
And normally, when a carrier wants to deny based on wear and tear, prior damage, or long term intrusion, the burden is on them to prove it. That usually means hiring an engineer and getting a cause and origin determination that ties the damage to something other than your reported date of loss. That is expensive for them, and it is beatable, because engineers can be cross examined and reports can be contradicted.
But when the denial rests on the policyholder’s own sworn words, we are not arguing about their expert’s methodology. We are arguing about what she said, on the record, with a court reporter typing it. That is a much harder hill, and she created it herself with one sentence she thought was small talk.
What you should actually do
None of this means lie. Do not lie. Lying at an EUO turns a coverage dispute into a fraud and misrepresentation defense, and that is a far worse day.
It means this instead:
1. Answer the question that was asked. Not the one you think is coming next.
2. If you do not know, say so, and then stop. Do not fill the silence with theories about Florida weather, your neighbor’s roof, or how old the shingles might be.
3. Know your date of loss and know what changed after it. What did the house look like before, and what did it look like after.
4. Do not guess at causation. You are a homeowner, not an engineer. “The ceiling was dry before the storm and wet after” is a fact you can testify to. “I guess the roof was probably worn out” is not your job and not your opinion to give.
5. Treat the carrier’s field adjuster, sometimes called an independent adjuster, as what they are. They were not hired by you. Their notes go in the file, and the recorded statement they take early in the claim can resurface later.
6. Get advice before you talk, not after the denial. An attorney or a licensed public adjuster can prepare you so that you answer truthfully and completely without volunteering the sentence that guts your own claim.
I would much rather spend an hour with you before your EUO than a year with you after your denial. The insurance company is allowed to ask you questions. It is not entitled to have you do its denial work for it.
If you have been asked to give a recorded statement or sit for an Examination Under Oath, call before you do it. There is no charge for that conversation, and once you have said it under oath, it is said.
About the Author
Louis P. Meyer, Esq. is a Senior Attorney at Kanner & Pintaluga, P.A., where he represents Florida homeowners and business owners in first party property insurance disputes and personal injury matters. His practice covers hurricane damage claims, wind and roof damage, water damage, fire and smoke loss, mold claims, denied and underpaid insurance claims, insurance bad faith, and property damage litigation, as well as personal injury cases involving car accidents, motorcycle accidents, truck accidents, boat accidents, and slip and fall injuries. He handles claims throughout Florida, including Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Sarasota, Orlando, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Naples, Fort Myers, and Jacksonville.
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