Lawsuits have been filed by hundreds of homeowners in the state since late last year.
According to a recent report based on data from the U.S. District Court Clerk’s Office, close to 1,000 victims of Hurricane Sandy have filed lawsuits against their flood insurance companies since late in 2013.
The same report claims that the number of lawsuits will likely double within the next 12 months.
The data showed that in New Jersey, there had been 974 flood insurance lawsuits filed, by the time the report was released. That said, officials are predicting that within a year’s time, that number will have broken the 2,000 mark. The number of cases is now high enough that Chief Judge Jerome B. Simandle was assigned the task of forming a special plan that will help to bring those cases to resolution within an average time span of six months, said the report. Simandle has formed a committee made up of six magistrate and two district court judges in order to make recommendations regarding the way that the lawsuits should proceed.
The increase in the flood insurance lawsuits became striking about one year after the storm hit.
This, according to the report, which also pointed out that when many of the homeowners insurance customers received their payments, they found that they were not adequate for covering the amount of damage that was done to their homes by the storm. Furthermore, there has also been a rash of disputes that have arisen over claims that have been denied by insurers.
Some flood coverage providers attributed damage to the homes as having been caused by winds and other factors that were not a result of rising waters, indicated the report. This has brought about hundreds of lawsuits against approximately 90 private insurers that work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in order to provide coverage through the national flooding coverage program to both homeowners and businesses.
Next door in New York, there have been another 1,000 flood insurance lawsuits that have been filed. It has been estimated by experts that victims of Superstorm Sandy have received less than 50 percent of the claims that have been made with their insurers.