Louisiana Appeals Court Sides With Homeowners

An insurance company should have paid for Hurricane Katrina damage to a policyholder's home because it's unclear what types of flood damage were excluded from coverage by its homeowner policies, a state appeals court ruled Monday.

The law firm Gauthier, Houghtaling and Williams said the ruling affects hundreds of thousands of policy holders in Louisiana whose homes were flooded as a result of Katrina.

"The Louisiana courts are the proper courts to be interpreting state law and today's ruling could have ramifications for lawsuits pending in federal court," said attorney James Williams, who argued on behalf of Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti's office.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal upheld a state judge's ruling that Lafayette Insurance Co.'s policy failed to exclude all forms of flooding because its language was ambiguous.

"Lafayette failed to specifically exclude all floods because of the ambiguity contained within the water exclusion," Judge Terri Love wrote in a 53-page majority opinion.

The Fourth Circuit sided with policyholder Joseph Sher, who blamed much of the water damage to his property on water from levee failures in New Orleans following the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane.

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Tags:

• Hurricane
• Katrina
• flooding
• insurance
• lawsuit