Arizona Slaps Down Insurance Company’s Attempt to Weasel Out of Lawsuit

Our firm has been honored by many individuals, families and businesses in Arizona with the privilege of representing them on their property insurance claims, arising out of the wind and hail storms of October 5, 2010.  I am pleased to share that we are taking these cases very seriously and we are making progress. Our American Justice system was established to treat each case individually and to resolve each case on the merits of the facts.  However, it seems that through every turn, we continue to flight the Insurance Companies and their arguments of technical defects.  Two recent examples of these are from a AAA Fire & Casualty Insurance Company (hereinafter referred to as “AAA”) case. In that specific case, an Arizona family bought an insurance policy from AAA to protect them in case a wind or hail storm struck their property and caused damage.   As most of our Arizona clients are all aware, a massive wind and hail storm struck the cities of Phoenix, Mesa and Scottsdale on October 5, 2010.  When that Arizona family realized that their property had sustained damage, they reported their property loss claim to AAA.  AAA inspected the property damage on two separate occasions in June 2012 but concluded that the amount of property damage sustained was less than the $500.00 deductible.  After the second of AAA’s property loss inspection, the AAA adjuster sent the family a letter which stated that under the terms of the insurance policy the homeowners have two years from the date of the letter to bring suit (the deadline in this letter is important later). Fortunately, that Arizona family had the foresight not to simply accept AAA’s conclusions without an evaluation from an independent source.  When the Arizona family had an independent property inspection performed, it was determined that there was damage in the amount in excess of $70,000.00.  It seems that there was little question to this Arizona family that they were going to continue to be ignored by AAA, so they decided to retain Arguello Law Firm to assist them with the remainder of their property loss claim. Upon receipt of their documents and authorization, we jumped into action and filed a law suit against AAA for lowballing our clients.  We attempted to serve AAA with a copy of the complaint and summons but found that they were again playing games and had apparently changed their legal name from AAA to ACA and had not notified their customers.  Eventually, we found that they are now named ACA Insurance Company. When we served ACA Insurance Company with the summons and complaint it attempted to manipulate the Arizona Rules of Civil Procedure and argue that we were too late to serve legal process.  Additionally, they argued that it was too late to bring suit against them according to the policy, i.e. the statute of limitations had run and now the claim was barred.  This last argument was in direct contradiction of that June 2012 letter that we discussed above, which told our clients that the deadline was in two years–June 2014. Just last week, the Honorable Judge Mark Brain with the Maricopa County Superior Court issued his decision, via Minute Entry, which denied the AAA’s motion to dismiss the suit.  The Court went on to explain that the Rule upon which AAA had placed its undue reliance “is not-self executing, and that the Court may dismiss an action or direct service to be completed within a specified amount of time.  Here, there is no good reason,absolutely none, to dismiss the case as opposed to directing the plaintiff to proceed.  The statute of limitations (for example) has not expired nor is there any real prejudice to AAA, and the Court declines AAA’s invitation to run Plaintiff around in these circumstances” (emphasis in the court’s order).