Transcription of Video

Whitney M. : I'm here again with Bill and Clay Hopkins. We're going to talk a little bit about how COVID, what you're seeing at the firm in relation to COVID cases.

Clay Hopkins: Yes, certainly. Some of the areas that we are seeing, more and more claims for. At least clients are calling us and inquiring about one of those areas is business interruption insurance. A lot of businesses, their personal policies for the business can include provisions for business interruption for certain instances where the business may have to shut down for a certain period of time to cover those lost expenses, lost revenue that business could be expected to bring in during those times. And certainly, that has become a bigger issue with the state-mandated quarantines. And with a lot of the food and beverage industry having to shut down because of the quarantines or because we weren't allowed to let people get in close proximity to one another.

And what is happening now, at least what we are hearing about it, is that a lot of firms throughout the country are pursuing cases like this as businesses have submitted these claims to their insurance companies and the insurance companies are denying those claims for various reasons. One is these were government orders. These were executive orders from Governors or from Mayors or County Counsels to shut down. And those are really something that they are claiming is beyond their reach. They are also claiming acts of God is a defense that we often see with some insurance claims. And this was something that was not controllable and certainly something that could not be contemplated by the insurance contract.

But those, we certainly want to try and help folks with. We think that if you pay for a policy, you were paying your premiums, and certainly, you had to shut down through no fault of your own, no choice of your own, and lost revenue, folks lost their jobs, or you were paying taxes and unemployment taxes for employees. And certainly didn't have revenue or income coming in to cover those loses or cover your normal business expenses. Those are claims or cases that we certainly want to talk to folks about or that we are interested in investigating. It's something that, I think, is going to be a bigger issue nationally, at least through the end of COVID. We don't know how long it is going to go on. This could be, you know, years that this is going to keep going on. We just have no idea of knowing how long this is going to go on or if we will have to be shut down or quarantined again. So, that's the area that we're interested in looking at right now.

Whitney M. : Well, it is certainly frustrating for people who buy insurance, they don't always read the fine print either. But they do it in good faith that, you know, it's unexpected for all of us and we would hope that they would help. Certainly, if anyone is experiencing that with their insurance, I would encourage you to call.