Hurricane Debby hit Florida on Aug. 5 with up to 30 inches of rain, high winds and flash floods before heading north and hitting the Carolinas with tornadoes and heavy rains. Although not a large hurricane, the slow-moving storm caused plenty of damage.
As a result, contractors are facing a glut of warranty claims that are constantly making their phones ring. Calls about collapsed roofs or wind damage can add up quickly and can become messy when determining what a warranty covers.
Hurricanes and Tropical Storms: Get your Contracts Up To Date
Legal Insights expert Trent Cotney, partner at Adams and Reese, provides some helpful advice on properly dealing with storm warranties, especially in the face of named storms. He also touches on how to become a successful bidder for public projects at the local, state or federal level.
To tackle them properly, we speak with Legal Insights expert Trent Cotney, partner at Adams and Reese, for advice on how to handle storm-related warranty calls.
“[There are] a lot of moving parts with these types of claims, because if they are warranty, obviously, you've got some exposure. There's some potential insurance claims, so [there are] a lot of different moving parts,” he said. “The key thing is internally, you want to make sure that you’ve got that process prepared.”
Cotney is quick to point out that just because a storm has a name doesn’t mean contractors are off the hook for warranties. This is especially true when it comes to wind uplift and damage, which he warns needs to be carefully worded.
“You need to make sure that you're parsing that language that deals with wind uplift and the system that you've installed versus when that warranty becomes void,” he said.
Contractors looking to avoid legal challenges will benefit from Cotney’s advice on how to improve your warranty language, whether it’s with notice provisions, “carve-outs” and other requirements, while ensuring it’s still worth the paper it’s printed on for the customer.
“Be careful about making a warranty basically meaningless,” he said.
Watch the full video here or download the audio version on our podcast page.
