CLEVELAND — After early August storms left The Happy Dog in Cleveland without power for five days, the restaurant is still struggling to regain the revenue lost.
Co-owner Sean Watterson tells 3News the outage caused them to lose nearly $15,000 worth of food, beer and other perishable items, and also, a full week of revenue which he estimates at $30,000.
Though he said the loss was scary, Watterson said he hoped his insurance company would help. Instead, Watterson’s claim was denied.
“You just go numb when they call and they deny the claim,” said Watterson. “You almost don’t even know what questions to ask, because it doesn’t seem real. So then, it’s just a process of channeling disappointment and the anger into, ‘how are we going to make this work?’”
Watterson says his provider, Mesa Underwriters Specialty Insurance Company, told him his policy didn’t cover the losses, because the tornado or storm didn’t physically hit his building.
We reached out to the company to ask why the claim was denied, but we haven’t heard back.
Watterson tells 3News he’s paid into the policy for over a decade and this is just the second claim he’s ever filed, but both have been denied. He’s now writing to lawmakers and filing a complaint with the Ohio Department of Insurance, hoping he can get a different outcome.
The early August power outages impacted hundreds of properties, and Jaeson Taylor, Regional VP for Sill Public Adjusters, says their company has seen an increase in calls from people seeking their service.
“We are licensed by the state to be an advocate for the insured. We only work for the insured,” said Taylor. “You’re doing everything in your power to make sure that the insured gets what’s coming to them. The policy language can be very, very difficult to interpret. There are things slipped in past that declarations page that everyone looks at. There are a lot of issues that can come up, a lot of landmines as we call them that can come up and completely wipe out your claim or it can add coverage that you might otherwise not know about.”
Taylor says people experiencing property damage or a sudden event often don’t realize they need to call in help quickly, but public adjusters are of most value when they can walk the policyholder through the claims process from start to finish. In that way, Taylor says they can help policyholders get the most money possible.
If you’d like to file a complaint with the Ohio Department of Insurance to contest the decision made in your insurance claim, you can do that here.
The state website also provides a search tool to find a licensed public adjuster near you.