The surrounding Calcasieu Parish communities took a direct hit from Hurricanes Laura and Delta in 2020. People continue to be reminded of the storms that claimed their homes, still trying to recover years later. For many homeowners the fight wasn’t with the storm itself, though, it was with the insurance companies that refused to make them whole.
Our client was one of them. After the storms damaged their property, the insurance carrier paid, but it paid far less than the damage actually cost to repair. Underpaid and left short of what it would take to rebuild, our client turned to the Townsley Law Firm.
TLF made the carrier pay in full. The recovery of over $600,000 included 100% of the damages, plus penalties and attorney fees that Louisiana law imposes on insurers that fail to pay what they owe.
The Storms Passed. The Insurance Fight Did Not.
For homeowners across Calcasieu Parish, the difference between a full recovery and a stalled one often comes down to whether the insurance payment matched the real cost of rebuilding. Frequently, though, insurance carriers fall short of this responsibility to make homeowners whole.
A carrier does not have to deny a claim to leave a family stranded. It can simply pay an amount that falls well short of the actual repair cost. The roof estimate does not account for the full damage. Labor and material prices are set below what local contractors charge, especially with post-storm demand driving costs up. Some damage is written off as pre-existing or excluded. The homeowner is left holding a check that will not cover the work.
That gap is where these cases live, and it is often large. A policyholder is not required to accept the insurer’s figure as final and closing the distance between a lowball payment and the true cost of the loss is frequently the entire value of a claim.
Louisiana Makes Insurers Pay a Price for Underpaying
Louisiana law does not leave policyholders without leverage. Insurance companies owe their policyholders duties of good faith and fair dealing, and the state imposes real financial consequences on carriers that fail to pay covered claims properly and on time.
When an insurer fails to pay a satisfactorily proven claim within the deadlines the law sets, or handles a claim arbitrarily and without reasonable cause, a policyholder can recover more than the amount originally owed. Statutory penalties and attorney fees can be added on top. That is precisely what happened for our client: the carrier was made to pay the full damages, and then penalties and attorney fees beyond that.
These provisions exist to change an insurer’s incentives. Without them, a carrier could underpay routinely and risk nothing more than eventually paying what it should have paid at the start. The penalties are what make underpayment a gamble the insurer can lose.
What a Full Recovery Looks Like
For our client, a full recovery did not mean the insurer’s improved second offer. It meant 100% of the actual damages, established through proper documentation of the full scope of the loss, plus the penalties and attorney fees Louisiana law allowed.
Reaching that outcome generally involves documenting the complete damage independently rather than relying on the carrier’s estimate, holding the insurer to the coverage the policy actually provides, and, when the carrier will not pay fairly, using the leverage the bad-faith statutes create. The result is a recovery that reflects what it truly costs to make the homeowner whole, not what the insurer hoped to pay.
