When someone has been damaged by a fire, there are many kinds of damages for which they can make a claim, including those listed below. However, every case is different, and this list is not exhaustive. A comprehensive case review is needed to determine all of your losses to ensure no money is left on the table for your case.

Property Damage

• Homes and other structures such as sheds, barns, corrals, fencing, etc.
• Personal property/contents such as furniture, clothing, collections, equipment, tools, vehicles, and other belongings.
• Trees, vegetation, and landscaping.
• Erosion damage

Evacuation and Alternative Living Expenses

• Hotel/food/gas during evacuation.
• Rent and additional costs incurred during displacement.

Loss of Use

• The market rental rate of your property while you were unable to occupy your residence.

Lost Income

• Personal income (wages and other income, including loss of sick and vacation days).
• Business income/Lost profits.

Personal Injury

• Bodily injury.
• Respiratory injury.
• Stress-related physical occurrences (stroke, heart attack, etc.).
• Exacerbation of illness (asthma, COPD, etc.).

Emotional Damages

• Fear for safety of yourself and others.
• Mental anguish, inconvenience, disturbance, and annoyance.

Wrongful Death

Insurance does not cover all losses for three main reasons:

• Most people are under-insured. Almost everyone is under-insured to some extent. Most often, this is only discovered following a disaster when the insured learns their policy proceeds will not allow them to rebuild what they had.
• Property is depreciated by the insurance company, often resulting in a payout that does not fully compensate the insured.
• Many categories of damages are outside the scope of insurable losses completely (emotional damages, erosion, or lost income).

The vast majority of Robins Cloud’s wildfire clients are insured, and we have successfully recovered money for them to compensate them for their un- and under-insured losses, including compensation stemming from the stress, mental anguish, and inconvenience of losing property and being displaced.

Yes. Renters, uninsured property owners, and other occupants who did not have insurance at the time of the fire for their losses are still entitled to make a claim for compensation.

Most of our clients have never been involved in any type of litigation prior to their fire cases. They did not ask to be harmed by a fire and had no role in the negligent actions and decisions made by the utility company who caused the fire.

To receive fair compensation for your losses, you will need an attorney to help navigate through the litigation process. Corporations have deep pockets to hire attorneys to evade liability for their negligence and to minimize payouts to settle claims. Robins Cloud has decades of experience successfully fighting utility companies and holding them accountable for their negligence in starting wildfires. We have a stable of experts in electrical engineering, metallurgy, cause and origin determination, fire progression, tree valuation, erosion, rebuilding, and other areas to establish liability and maximize the amount you are able to recover.

In addition, we are familiar with many of the challenges facing fire victims on their road to recovery and are often a good resource of advice for non-litigation issues as well. We strive to provide an excellent client experience.

Our firm does not litigate fire cases based on a class action model and would not recommend such a model for any fire victim for several reasons:

• Class Actions mean lower settlement recoveries. Class action models do not maximize case value and do not account for the unique losses of each case. While the cause of fire victims’ losses is the same (the fire), everyone experiences different and varying types of losses. Maximizing the value of each case’s losses is costly and time-consuming for law firms but is critically important to yield as high a recovery as possible. Class action models homogenize losses across similarly situated plaintiffs and generalize their recovery instead of determining the highest value for each unique case and seeking top dollar.
• Class Actions mean less control over your case. In a class action, a class representative is appointed to make decisions on behalf of everyone in the class, including decisions about settlement, thereby depriving individuals of their ability to control their own case. In a mass tort model, each case is separate and independent from every other case. As a result, individuals are in the driver’s seat of their cases and get to make the critical decisions such as whether or not to settle and in what amount to settle

No. Our firm works on a contingency fee basis, which means we front all costs of litigation, such as filing fees, expert costs, etc. Ultimately, these costs would be deducted from any settlement recovery. However, if we are not able to recover for you or the amount we recover is less than the costs we expended, you will not be obligated to pay for those costs. We feel strongly we will be successful in this litigation and believe the risk is worthwhile.

As with anything in life, there are no guarantees. Litigation is often unpredictable for a myriad of reasons. With that said, historically speaking, utility-caused wildfire cases typically resolve within 2-4 years with some exceptions.

As a threshold matter, we must prove liability against the defendant. While this is an incredibly large undertaking, it is accomplished by the work of attorneys and experts. When and if we overcome that hurdle, the next step is proving your individual losses. However, typically, this is done within the context of informal resolution and outside of any courthouse. The likelihood of you needing to appear in court or sit for a deposition is extremely remote.

We understand you are likely dealing with many new and time-consuming tasks and issues to recover from the fire. We work hard to minimize the time and effort our clients need to put into their case by streamlining our process in determining and proving your losses. For most of our clients, the most burdensome task is creating a personal property inventory (if personal property was lost), gathering documents and photos, and providing responses during discovery. To limit this work, we strive to obtain as much information we can during an initial ‘damages interview’ with our clients, which informs us of your loss types, what experts are needed, and what documents we will need to prove-up your claim. We then provide you with a ‘punch list’ of what we need from you. Because we have years of experience, we are often able to marshal all that is needed in the early days of the case.

We prefer to prepare your loss valuations as early as possible so that when and if we reach trial or some informal resolution protocol, we are ready to go and obtain compensation for you as quickly as possible. However, we know your time is precious and can work around your calendar demands as much as possible.