State Farm denied our slab foundation heave claim in Ellis County, Texas under the "earth movement" and "settling, cracking, shrinking or expansion of foundations" exclusions after our engineer measured the interior slab lifted 1.7 inches over 11 months in the exact footprint above a supply-line to the master bath, their in-house adjuster wrote a two-page denial that referenced no plumbing inspection, no leak-detection scan, and no soil analysis, and offered a $600 "goodwill inspection credit" that i had to read three times before i understood they were offering me the cost of the inspection i had already paid for. Forced $87,400 in structural coverage plus $11,900 in code-required underpinning depth and moisture barrier using the Texas ensuing-loss framework for slab heave: the licensed plumber leak-isolation test, the geotechnical causation letter, the structural engineer scope with pier count and depth, the reservation-of-rights response, the TDI market conduct complaint, and the appraisal invocation under Section VIII. the complete 19-week playbook from initial denial to signed proof of loss.
i am a 51-year-old branch manager at a small commercial bank in Waxahachie, my wife and i bought our 2,340-square-foot one-story slab-on-grade house new in 2011 from a production builder, and we knew...