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Flood Insurance Refund

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Michael in SJ

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? CA
My house was incorrectly shown in a FEMA Flood Zone due to errors by cooperating agencies (City of San Jose and Santa Clara Valley Water District.

Because of the error in Flood Zone mapping my lender required I get a Flood Insurance Policy, and I did starting in 2009. I renewed the policy in 2010.

Early this year, the City of San Jose completed the requirments for and recieved a Letter of Map Revision (LOMR) from FEMA remapping my property correctly.

Per FEMA rules which only apply to the current policy year, I applied to my Flood Insurance Carrier for a refund and received the refund for the current policy year.

Question: Since there was no chance of my house being flooded, should I be able to get a refund for the first policy year? If so, what theory of law would I use if I need to use Small Claims Court to sue for the refund (~$1,500)?
 


Zigner

Senior Member, Non-Attorney
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? CA
My house was incorrectly shown in a FEMA Flood Zone due to errors by cooperating agencies (City of San Jose and Santa Clara Valley Water District.

Because of the error in Flood Zone mapping my lender required I get a Flood Insurance Policy, and I did starting in 2009. I renewed the policy in 2010.

Early this year, the City of San Jose completed the requirments for and recieved a Letter of Map Revision (LOMR) from FEMA remapping my property correctly.

Per FEMA rules which only apply to the current policy year, I applied to my Flood Insurance Carrier for a refund and received the refund for the current policy year.

Question: Since there was no chance of my house being flooded, should I be able to get a refund for the first policy year? If so, what theory of law would I use if I need to use Small Claims Court to sue for the refund (~$1,500)?
Who would you like to sue?
 

Zigner

Senior Member, Non-Attorney
Not FEMA. The insurance carrier, and maybe the producer.
Seems to me that those are the folks with the LEAST responsibility in this. They issued a policy based on the existing information, as published by the government.
 

Michael in SJ

Junior Member
I agree they are the least responsible, but they are the ones with my money.

While they wrote the Flood Insurance policy in good faith, they would not have been exposed to a loss and therefore have received revenue without earning the revenue.
 

justalayman

Senior Member
=Michael in SJ;2811834]I agree they are the least responsible, but they are the ones with my money
.and?

for you to prevail, you would have to prove why they owe you the money. As it stands, it doesn't appear that they owe you anything.

While they wrote the Flood Insurance policy in good faith, they would not have been exposed to a loss and therefore have received revenue without earning the revenue.
your risk has nothing to do with this.

you need to figure out whose fault it is that resulted in you having to buy this insurance. That is who caused your injury and as such, that is who you need to go after for your money.

Personally, I don't think you have any right to recover from anybody but your more than welcome to try as hard as you wish.
 

ecmst12

Senior Member
You have about as much right to a refund as someone who wants a refund of their car insurance premiums because they didn't have any accidents that year. Or perhaps a better analogy would be, they didn't even drive the whole year - but they owned the car, so they still had to have the insurance.
 

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