Here is a call I get a few times a month. A homeowner says the field adjuster came out, everything seemed fine, and now the insurance company is sending an engineer to look at the roof. They usually say it in a hopeful voice, like the carrier is finally bringing in the expert to get this right.
That is generally not what is happening.
When an insurance company retains an engineering firm before it has made a coverage decision, the direction of the decision has often already been set inside the file. What is missing is support for it. The engineering report becomes that support.
Why they spend the money in the first place
Carriers do not send engineers on small claims. They send a field adjuster, the adjuster writes a number, and the file moves. Engineers cost real money, often several thousand dollars once you count the site visit and the written report.
So pay attention to when they show up. In my experience it is almost always one of two situations. Either there is a tile roof involved, which is expensive to replace and where the carrier badly wants to argue repair instead of replacement, or the claim is heading north of $100,000. At that point the math changes. A few thousand dollars spent up front on a report that supports a denial is inexpensive compared to a six figure payment.
That is the part policyholders miss. The engineer is not a neutral referee brought in to settle a disagreement between two sides. The engineer is retained by, paid by, instructed by, and frequently rehired by the company that does not want to pay the claim.
What the inspection is actually looking for
The engineer is not there to determine whether your roof is damaged. Of course it is damaged. That is why the claim exists.
The engineer is there to identify a cause of damage that falls inside an exclusion. Wear and tear. Deterioration. Age of the roof. Manufacturing or installation defect. Settlement or cracking. Long term or repeated seepage. Pre existing damage from an older storm. Anything that allows the report to conclude, to a reasonable degree of engineering certainty, that the damage was not caused by a sudden covered event on the reported date of loss.
Once that sentence exists in a signed report, the carrier has what it needs. The denial letter more or less writes itself, and the burden of disproving it shifts onto the homeowner.
The questions matter more than the ladder
Here is the part almost nobody prepares for. The engineer does not just climb up and take photographs. The engineer talks to you. Casual, friendly, clipboard in hand. How long have you owned the house? When did you first notice this? Any leaks before? What do you think happened?
I worked with a homeowner who thought she was being clever. She decided the safest move was to play dumb. When she was asked how the loss happened, she said something close to this: I do not really know, this is Florida, it rains a lot, we have had a lot of storms lately, and there was some flooding.
Read that again. She believed she had said nothing. She had actually supplied two separate defenses in one breath.
Problem one: ongoing and continuous. A homeowners policy does not cover the fact that Florida has weather. It covers direct physical loss from a sudden and accidental event tied to a specific date of loss. The moment damage is described as the product of many storms over many months, it has been described as a gradual, ongoing, continuous process. That is precisely what the wear and tear, deterioration, and constant or repeated seepage exclusions were written to eliminate.
Problem two: the F word. Flood. Say that word in a wind claim and watch what follows. Flood is excluded under a standard homeowners policy and is covered, if at all, under a separate flood policy. So the moment flooding enters the file, the carrier has a new argument available: this was not wind, this was water that arrived from somewhere else, and that peril is not covered. Where the policy contains an anti concurrent causation clause, the argument goes further, that even if wind contributed, the flood component defeats the entire loss.
She was trying to say nothing. She said the two worst possible things in about eleven words.
This is not an argument for refusing the inspection
Let me be clear, because this part gets misread constantly. Standard homeowners policies contain post loss obligations, and one of them is allowing the carrier to inspect the property. Refusing an inspection is not a strategy. It is a potential breach, and it can produce a cleaner denial than any engineering report would.
The issue is not whether to allow the inspection. The issue is walking into it alone and unprepared.
In practical terms, that means understanding the following before an engineer arrives:
• Representation, whether by an attorney or a licensed public adjuster, is more useful before an inspection is scheduled than after a report is issued.
• A homeowner is entitled to have a qualified expert of their own present for the same inspection, documenting the same conditions on the same day. Contemporaneous photographs of what was actually on that roof carry weight later.
• Factual questions with known answers can be answered. Date of loss. What was observed. When it was observed.
• Causation is not a homeowner’s job to explain. Speculating out loud is not cooperation. It is evidence.
• History, prior storms, earlier repairs, and any reference to flooding should be handled carefully and accurately, not offered casually to fill a silence.
Denied is a much worse place to stand
There is an enormous practical difference between arguing about how much is owed and arguing about whether anything is owed at all.
When coverage is open and the dispute is the number, the parties are negotiating within an accepted claim. When a claim is denied on causation and backed by a signed engineering report, the policyholder has to fund an expert, rebut the carrier’s expert, and litigate the causation question from behind.
Florida law does provide structure here. Section 627.70131 sets the deadlines for acknowledging, investigating, and paying or denying a claim. Section 627.70152 governs the pre suit notice process. Sections 624.155 and 626.9541 supply the bad faith framework. Those provisions carry real weight. They simply carry more weight when the policyholder has not personally handed the carrier its causation defense during the inspection.
The inspection is not a formality. It is often where the claim is actually decided.
About the Author
I’m Louis P. Meyer, a Senior Attorney at Kanner & Pintaluga, P.A., and I represent Florida policyholders and injured people, never insurance companies. My practice is built on first party property insurance claims: hurricane damage, windstorm damage, roof damage, water damage, fire and smoke damage, and mold claims. I also handle personal injury matters throughout Florida, including car accidents, motorcycle accidents, truck accidents, boating accidents, and slip and fall injuries.
I write No Fine Print on Substack, where I break down insurance policies and carrier tactics in plain English for Florida homeowners. I also host the podcast Off The Record by Louis Meyer, which you can find on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, and Deezer. When I’m not fighting insurance companies, you’ll usually find me with my family or out on a dirt bike.
Louis P. Meyer, Esq. | Kanner & Pintaluga, P.A. | Tampa and Boca Raton, Florida
561-206-2949 | Lmeyer@kpattorney.com
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