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An obscure denial of a motion to consolidate was the legal holding of the U.S. Magistrate Judge in Vickers v. Green Tree Servicing, LLC, Case Nos. 15-1252-JTM-GEB & 15-1290-JTM-GEB, 2015 WL 7776880, at *1 (D. Kan. December 2, 2015).
This obscure little case reveals that the events at issue are as much a part of the day as an alarm clock. The events alleged in this case went at least through the appointment of a new mortgage servicer, Green Tree, in "late 2014" before both lawsuits were filed.
Both cases involved American Security Insurance Company's (ASIC's) denial of coverage for hail damage to the roof of the same home under a lender force-placed insurance policy.
ASIC denied all coverage either on the assertion that the plaintiffs failed to pay the premiums "or," as the Court wrote seemingly as if that were not sufficient or perhaps ASIC was uncertain, "or because Plaintiffs were not entitled to insurance coverage during [their] bankruptcy" when the hailstorm damaged the house. Further, the home was "owned and operated as a rental property."
The same LFPI carrier, ASIC, denied another claim for property damage on a rental property that was at issue in another case: Zyzek v. American Security Ins. Co., Civil Action No. 15-1891, 2015 WL 7779597, at *2-*3 (W.D. La. December 2, 2015). The narrow issues presented to a different U.S. Magistrate Judge in the Zyzek case did not involve consolidation but instead involved other legal oddities: unopposed motions filed by ASIC to compel the plaintiffs to provide initial disclosures, to compel the plaintiffs to provide discovery, and to pay ASIC's costs and attorney's fees. ASIC prevailed, unopposed.
That case too involved a property damage claim upon a lender force-placed policy issued by ASIC, and it too involved alleged hail damage to a house operated as a rental property.
It would be of interest to know how the LFPI policy came to be placed upon Nancy Zyzek's rental house. And how she in her case against ASIC, and Mr. and Mrs. Vickers in their case against ASIC (they do not apparently sue ASIC in their other case, which they filed against Beneficial Finance and Green Tree), all came to have standing to claim coverage under an LFPI policy, since LFPI policies usually provide coverage only to protect the lender's interests in the collateralized property.
Please Read The Disclaimer. ©2015 by Dennis J. Wall, author of "Lender Force-Placed Insurance Practices" (American Bar Association 2015). All rights reserved.
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