What does Mitigating your damages mean?

 

“As soon as any disaster such as fire, water, earthquakes, appliance breakdown and alike strikes, you have a legal duty to take reasonable efforts to stop or minimize the effects.”

 

This is a simple sentence of advisement about your duty, but in reality, specially in commercial properties, taking  action without sufficient knowledge will have negative epic consequences for recovery and getting your life back.

 

The advisement is loaded with things that could go wrong!  Here is a clear example from one of my cases to help and facilitate your understanding.

Water started leaking throughout fifth and sixth floor of a commercial building. A tenant of the affected floor was a surgeon.

 

The doctor per lease agreement had made necessary structural modification to accommodate his business. The building owner following the simplicity of the mitigation rule hired a restoration company to remove wet walls, cover all the holes created post wall removal, set up devices to dry the wet area and so forth. His policy tailored for a building owner demanded as such.

The Doctor had to impede the restoration company because he had valuable equipment and electronic devices which demanded professional removal. The doctor had to follow his policy and minimize his damages as such.

 

The restoration company wanted to maximize their own company’s benefit by moving everything in least amount of time, and set up a maximum number of their equipment for a maximized bill which in emergency situation runs up to six figures!

 

Ironically, if the owner had his way, the doctor’s recovery would be a fraction of what he was entitled to because he would have had failed to mitigate. His carrier would have him sue the owner for additional losses and if the Doctor had his way, the owner would suffer.

 

Owner’s real estate attorney was clueless as you need full hands on experience to plan a compromise that could satisfy both insurance policy where none of the carrier could accuse the owner or the doctor of failure to mitigate.

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When I stepped into this case on the doctor's behalf, I was told that the owner was contemplating calling the Police department. This was a situation that both parties would have considerable loss if they could not both compromise and satisfy their policy procedures.

 

Imagine you are suffering from stress, uncertainties, and headaches accompanying destruction of your property, and add the complications with escalation of your insurance policy that is there to “protect you.” Remember this is just one item that went wrong. I could write a book about things I have seen!