After a Texas hailstorm, the trucks usually arrive before the adjusters do. Someone knocks, points up at the shingles, and makes two offers that sound like favors. The first: let us deal with your insurance company for you. The second: don’t worry about your deductible, we’ll take care of it.
The Texas Department of Insurance has spent years telling homeowners that both halves of that pitch are against state law. Court records from Tarrant County show what can happen when a homeowner accepts the first one.
What the contract actually said
A May 2011 hailstorm damaged a family’s roof in North Texas. The homeowner called his insurance carrier, then signed a contract with a roofing company for a new roof at a total price of $33,769.50, according to the opinion later issued by the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth. The contract’s “Acceptance and Agreement” clause said the job covered the “FULL SCOPE OF INSURANCE ESTIMATE AND UPGRADES,” was “subject to insurance company approval,” and authorized the roofer “to pursue homeowners[‘] best interest for all repairs, at a price agreeable to the insurance company and LSRC.” One more line settled who was really negotiating: “The final price agreed to between the insurance company and LSRC shall be the final contract price.”
The roof went on. The insurance company paid $18,926.69, and the homeowner handed that over to the roofer. That left roughly $14,843 of the contract price unpaid. The roofer sued the homeowner in justice court to collect and won a default judgment. The homeowner fought back and got that judgment set aside as void in June 2015.
The license nobody asks about
Then the homeowners sued the roofing company, and the case turned on a licensing law most people have never heard of. Texas Insurance Code Section 4102.051 says nobody may act as a public insurance adjuster, or hold themselves out as one, without a license from the insurance commissioner. Section 4102.163 separately bars a contractor from adjusting a claim on a property where the contractor is doing or might do the work. Violating the chapter is a Class B misdemeanor…