Body of Evidence

In my first post, I recounted how on December 13, 2014, our dream home on a little farm—realized through a lot of sacrifices, sweat and blood burned down. Despite our opting-out and protests, Citizens insurance company sold our policy, along with about 65,000 others, to Heritage Property and Casualty company. A couple of days after the fire, Senior Claims Adjuster David Kiliszek and a vice president (who has since given an affidavit denying he was there) came to our property. He convinced us not to hire a lawyer and that the claim would be paid. They gave us money to pay the first, last, and security deposit of a rental. They asked us to give them an interview. It was taped. My husband and I were interviewed separately. This interview was not the examination under oath, which would come later and which would be submitted to the court. They used the first interview to pry information from us, which they used to frame the questions for the examination under oath.

By the middle of 2014, Heritage had denied our claim. They alleged that I committed fraud by “not disclosing” on the original, three year old application to Citizens that the house is on a farm and that we had prior claims. A closer look at the application (revealed that it had been tampered with. It wasn’t the application that I had originally submitted. The original application I submitted had a fax header that showed 8 pages were faxed to the agent, Jorge Perez, of IPC insurance agency.  The copy they provided into evidence showed that the first four pages were typed and did not have the fax header.  The last four pages, which contained my signature have the fax header. The four, newly typed pages show exactly what is needed to support the insurance company’s case. 
My case LOCAL number is 14-14429 ca (13) if you want to look at all the documents I refer to, go to miamidade.gov, choose clerk of courts, choose online civil online services, and put the case number. The case number for my appeal in the 3rd DCA is 3D15-2753. See the screen shots below of pages 1, 2, 5, and 6:

In their Motion for Summary Judgement, they said they relied on the information from the application to assume the policy. My lawyer deposed one of their top executives, Ernie Garateix, who revealed that they had not read one application. Despite that fact, they still denied my claim.

 Despite this and other glaring inconsistencies, Heritage filed for summary judgment, which means that the insurance company’s lawyer asked the Judge to dismiss the case and not grant us a jury trial because, as a matter of law, there were no facts in dispute. He granted it.