“A grave injustice to storm victims who trusted their government.”
(WASHINGTON, DC) – Eager to stop paying Hurricane Sandy claims, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) flood insurance program is on track to slam the door shut on hundreds of homeowners who waited the longest but never got a promised hearing.
With the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Sandy just around the corner, national flood insurance authorities are holding fast to an arbitrary October 25th deadline for all hearings in front of neutral arbitrators. Unfortunately, hundreds of Sandy survivors haven’t had their proverbial day in court – and it looks like they won’t.
“This is completely unfair, a grave injustice against Hurricane Sandy survivors who trusted their government,” said Augie Matteis, managing partner of Weisbrod Matteis & Copley (WMC). “The homeowners who were forced to wait the longest for their ‘day in court’ are now being told that day will never come.”
Instead, Sandy victims want the October deadline rescheduled for December 15, 2017, giving FEMA time to hold all promised hearings.
In March 2015, after FEMA admitted to fraud and underpaying homeowners, the agency agreed to let Sandy victims reopen their flood insurance claims to determine if they were underpaid. Caught in an embarrassing scandal, FEMA made two big promises: to review and pay all claims properly within 90 days, and to provide all policyholders who didn’t agree with FEMA’s findings the right to a hearing with a third-party neutral arbitrator.
“Two years later – just days before the fifth anniversary of Sandy – we know FEMA completely misrepresented the timing of its review process,” said Matteis, whose firm represents hundreds of homeowners still waiting. “And after doing virtually nothing the first year, the bureaucracy is now denying hundreds of victims the hearing that they were promised.”
In the two years of the Sandy Claims Review program, FEMA averaged less than 20 neutral hearings per week. To meet its own arbitrary October deadline, the agency would have to conduct 1,000 proceedings in the next three weeks.
ABOUT WMC
Weisbrod Matteis & Copley is the nation’s leading disaster recovery law firm. Based in Washington, DC, the firm still represents 350 Hurricane Sandy victims with pending FEMA flood claims who waited five years for a hearing and may be cut off by the agency’s arbitrary deadline. WMC has represented thousands of disaster victims and in 2016 prevailed in the United States Supreme Court in a billion dollar National Flood Insurance Program fraud case.