If a business carries business interruption insurance, it may cover losses due to the shutdown from COVID-19.
Transcript:
Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill Law Firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis.
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Currently we’re in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. In San Antonio that means offices will be shut down shortly. This is something that’s going to be with us for a little while. What we know is that a lot of people in our community are suffering. Businesses are suffering, their employees are being laid off. What we’re doing currently is we’re helping out with small businesses and big businesses and all kinds of businesses. A lot of businesses have taken out what’s called business interruption insurance. What this provides is under certain conditions, insurance policies provide for lost profits or revenues depending on the language for periods of time in which a business is either closed or shut down.
Now, whether or not coverage will exist in this scenario will depend upon the language of the insurance policy. Currently we’ve agreed to review insurance policies for free. We’ve reviewed about 10 as we sit here right now and we expect more to come in the future. We’ve also reached out to Launch SA, a small business incubator, and told them we will be willing to review business interruption policies for their clients. What we’re trying to do is provide some clarity and guidance in this pandemic for small businesses. A lot of small businesses feel as though they have no recourse and a lot of them did not even know they had purchased this coverage.
Small businesses are like normal people. They buy insurance. Sometimes their insurance agent tells them they need other things and they say yes. What we’re doing is providing this service for free and if it exists and the insurance company wrongfully denies or delays the claim, which they will likely do, we will represent these people as they make claims against their insurance companies. This is not what we do every day, but this is what we’re doing right now. It’s something we’re doing to help, some guidance we’re providing to small business who feels as though they have no answers. If you need us to look at your business interruption policy, just shoot it to us. We’ll take a look for free.