My Insurance Company Attributed the Damage to Organic Soils Rather Than a Sinkhole, What is Organic Soil?
Organic soils are one of the insurance companies and their experts’ favorite non-sinkhole, non-covered causes of damage to your residence. Ultimately, organic soils are soils rich in wet, vegetative matter that as water passes through them they gradually compress and decompress. As you can imagine as these soils compress and decompress, tremendous stress is put on the ground above the soil. The gradual fall and rise of the ground surface eventually translates to minor stucco and foundation cracking in your residence, thus mirroring the effects of a sinkhole according to your insurance company and their experts. Overtime, if the water table changes and water levels drop below these organic soils, they will slowly fall apart and degrade leaving a potential void in the area they previously occupied. This can obviously lead to a significant lack of support for the soils above the void.
Your insurance company and their experts will also fail to acknowledge neighboring confirmed sinkholes, when attributing the damage at your residence to organic soils. Ultimately, this simply defies logic and they know juries made of your neighbors will not buy or accept this simple explanation either. Also, they always fail to explain why damage at your home would suddenly show up if this organic compression and decompression cycle has supposedly been going on for the last thousand years. If this has been going on forever, wouldn’t one expect some sort of damage to have been evident for all those years?
The sinkhole lawyers of Hackworth Law have experience dealing with organic soils and explaining away the impact of organic soils. If you or someone you know has been told their home is suffering from organic soils rather than a sinkhole by their insurance company, contact the sinkhole attorneys of Hackworth Law for a free case consultation. We look forward to working with you.