Houston firm under scrutiny over hundreds of insurance claims after Hurricanes Laura and Ida
When a young man from a roofing company knocked on the door of Holly and Michael Caffarel’s Mandeville home in March 2022, telling them that their roof needed repairs, they thought he was nice, charming even.
“Very personable, not pushy at all,” is how Michael Caffarel remembers the representative from Alabama-based Apex Roofing & Restoration. They signed a contract that day and, with the help of the Apex representative, filed a claim with their homeowners insurance to repair the damage caused by a hail storm in late 2021.
Months later, when checks from the insurance company arrived, they felt that they had been scammed.
The retirees say they fell victim to an arrangement that Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon recently called fraudulent. Donelon made the accusation in a cease-and-desist order against Houston-based law firm McClenny, Moseley and Associates, which partnered with Apex Roofing to sign up clients. Some of those clients now say they were unaware they were being recruited by the law firm.
Donelon’s order was only the latest controversy surrounding the firm, which has faced intense scrutiny in court over the hundreds of insurance claims it has filed following Hurricane Laura in southwest Louisiana in 2020 and Ida the next year in the state’s southeast.
McClenny, Moseley and Associates did not respond to a request for comment. The law firm recently hired a criminal defense attorney.
While Apex is named in both the cease-and-desist order issued by the insurance commissioner and an order issued by a federal judge in New Orleans, a spokesperson for the company pointed out that Apex itself is not subject to any sanctions.
“Apex Roofing & Restoration has not been accused of any wrongdoing by the Louisiana commissioner of insurance or any regulatory authority, nor have we been notified of any investigation into Apex,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. The company would assess its relationship with the law firm moving forward, the statement said.
The arrangement with the roofing company has been a key focus for federal judges and Donelon.
According to court testimony and the Caffarels, clients who hired Apex to fix their roofs would sign a contract that included an “assignment of benefits” clause. That clause entitled the roofing company to a portion of the homeowners insurance proceeds.
Apex would then pass along the homeowners’ information to McClenny. The law firm, in turn, would reach out to the insurance company, claiming they represented the insured, according to court documents.
The arrangement recently became public, when the law firm was ordered to produce a list of cases in which it had sent demand letters to insurance companies saying it represented homeowners when it may have actually represented Apex.
In response to the order issued by New Orleans Federal District Court Judge Michael B. North, McClenny listed only one such case in which its attorneys had filed suit, the case of a Hammond woman that had brought them in front of North in the first place.
However, the firm listed 856 cases in the same category that have not gone to court. The law firm also admitted to settling nine claims despite not having a signed retention or fee agreement with the insured. In the wake of the order, the firm sent out letters to insurers in 637 cases to clarify that it, in fact, represented the roofing company, not the homeowner.
Unwelcome surprise
The Caffarels realized what had happened only after insurance checks arrived bearing the name of a law firm they’d never heard of — McClenny, Moseley & Associates.
“Why would I need legal representation?” Michael Caffarel remembers wondering.
Caffarel said he was not aware of signing an agreement to allow the firm to take a fee out of his insurance checks or of receiving an estimate from the roofing company on what it would cost to fix the roof.
The couple obtained legal representation from a family friend at The Monson Law Firm, which has emerged as a fierce opponent of McClenny in court. With the help of the attorney, they were able to get the necessary signatures to cash the checks themselves and hire a different roofing company.
Without legal help, the couple said, they are skeptical that they would have received the repairs or the funds from their insurance company. “I don’t think we would have ever seen the money,” Holly Caffarel said.
Its dealings with Apex aren’t the only thing that the Texas law firm has caught heat for in Louisiana.
In federal court in the Western District of Louisiana, a majority of the firm’s over 1,600 cases remain paused after a judge took note of the extraordinary number McClenny filed and worried about irregularities, like duplicate filings and a lack of research going into each case.
‘Thrown by the wayside’
In some cases, it was found that the firm’s clients had no insurance policy with the company they were suing — suggesting that the suit may have been filed against the wrong insurer. This might mean that those homeowners lost their chance of getting their day in court with their actual insurance company since the deadline to file for both hurricanes Laura and Delta has passed.
Others were associated with addresses far outside of the usual area for hurricane damages from Laura and Delta, located as far north as Ruston and Monroe, which was one reason for halting the firm’s cases cited by Federal District Court Judge James D. Cain.
Even for at least one client with a more standard claim, dealing with the law firm has been difficult.
In Oberlin, an hour’s drive northeast of Lake Charles, Deirdre Declouette saw her tin roof damaged and her home shifted on its foundation by Laura. After seeing a commercial for McClenny on TV, she reached out to the law firm. They quickly sent out an inspector to assess the damage and filed suit just before the deadline for Laura cases in August 2022.
“That’s been months ago and I haven’t seen or heard from anybody,” said Declouette, a mother of three and grandmother of eight who works as a secretary for the local district attorney’s office. “No emails, no phone calls back, no nothing.”
Declouette, 55, said she feels “left, thrown by the wayside,” by both the law firm and her insurance company, which refused to pay anything, arguing that the damages would fall within her deductible.
“It’s sad to me that I got treated like that,” Declouette said, sitting at her kitchen table, below buckled ceiling tiles. Water still drips into her house when it rains.
Two hundred miles east, in Mandeville, the Caffarels said they were lucky to have legal assistance at their disposal, but they’re concerned about others who might not be as fortunate. “What happened to us shouldn’t happen to anybody else,” Michael Caffarel said.
