Colodny Fass Litigator Matt Scarfone Warns Consumers on Assignment of Benefits Pitfalls
Dec 17, 2015
Colodny Fass lawyer Matt Scarfone warned consumers about the potential pitfalls of assignment of benefits in an interview with WPLG-TV Local 10 News’ “Call Christina” during early December 2015.
“You lose the right to payment for those services and you don’t have the same incentive as other homeowners to negotiate the price and to make sure the services being rendered are necessary,” Scarfone explained to investigative reporter Christina Vazquez.
“What homeowners often don’t realize [is that] those instruments will routinely also say that if the contractor cannot recover from your insurance carrier they can still recover from you individually,” he added.
WPLG-TV explored the assignment of benefits topic after receiving a call from a homeowner who felt her insurance claim was wrongfully denied. The homeowner had responded to an ad in a flyer from a restoration company that promised her the insurance company would “take care of it.”
Instead, she unwittingly authorized the restoration company to tear out much of her bathroom without first confirming that the claim and associated repairs would be covered by her homeowner’s insurance.
Scarfone, a senior litigation attorney at Colodny Fass, represents insurance companies and related entities in a variety of matters, including first-party property insurance litigation, liability insurance coverage opinions, bad faith, fraud investigations and sinkhole cases.
To read the story and see the video interview on its original Web page, click here.