Chuck and Take Cover

Adam 79, has moved 11 times, relying on sympathetic friends. Some unit owners still obligated to pay mortgages and maintenance fees face foreclosure. Some have moved away. Family has taken others in. One is in indigent care.“There was long stretch of avoidance of responsibility by institutions that were supposed to protect us”. claimed a unit owner.

Should you have assumed that the above paragraph refers to the victims of 1st Priority you would be wrong. It is taken from an Internet report published four years after a fire gutted Ventor B Century Village Deerfield Beach in 2005.

The building was underinsured, despite being part of a bulk insurance contract negotiated by the CV Deerfield Beach equivalent of UCO. Unfortunately, the stark similarities don’t end there. The insurance agent charged with the responsibility of the Deerfield insurance contracts, now part of the Ventor B  class action suit is Plastridge.

West Palm Beach CV, Plastridge Insurance agent Charles E Knudsen, known to his friends as ‘Chuck’, has had a sudden and potentially expensive reminder of who exactly his clients are. As Dave Israel, reported on the blog in February, ‘Chuck’, sent a somewhat obtuse letter to policy-paying associations reminding them that he was at their service.

Sadly as 1^st Priority victims can testify it’s too little too late and the damage has been done. Knudsen now claims to have put his trust in UCO and Dan Gladstone."He thought”, when he expressed his concerns regarding 1st Priority in the late summer of 2009 - not to us his clients, but to the Insurance Committee ‘someone’ would take notice - he failed to put it in writing. Knudsen’s severe case of writer's block occurred again toward the end of last year when he wrongly assumed that his policy- paying associations would be informed that building insurance carrier, Philadelphia, appeared ready to drop coverage because of the huge increase in water damage claims.

It wasn’t until three months later, at the Delegate Assembly on March 5^th that Knudsen deemed fit to inform us that a more expensive insurance carrier 'Max Security' had replaced Philadelphia.Yet at the same meeting, ‘Chuck’ remained mute as former president George Loewienstein reiterated the argument Gladstone used in a T.V. news report; "The 1^st Priority problem was down to the permit department."

Speaking with me recently, Knudson finally admitted that a major hold up was the inability of 1^st Priority to provide adequate factual documentation to Philadelphia's insurance adjuster, Engle Martin,

dubbed by Gladstone as "not your friend". Engle Martin is making an enormous effort together with the belated involvement of ‘Chuck’, to ensure that these claims are settled quickly by our former insurance carrier Philadelphia. With funds finally at their disposal, 1^st Priority Victims may be able to rebuild their homes and more importantly their lives.

Incidentally, ‘Chuck’s’ conscience was pricked again a few days ago.To his credit, he gave the alert that 1^st Priority had found a new set of clients here in the Village.

It would have been hoped that lawsuit defendant Gladstone would had enough intelligence to stay out of this new equation. Alas, not so! When asked by an uninformed resident if 1^st Priority was reliable, I can but hope he'd kept a straight face when he answered – “As good as any other”.

As the victims of Ventor B in Deerfield Beach have discovered, a class action law suit provides no quick fix, but it does serve to remind those responsible that the problem is not going away and that ALL those involved will be held accountable.