found mold behind the drywall 9 months after Liberty Mutual closed a "fully repaired" dishwasher leak claim and they tried to make us open a NEW claim instead of reopening the old one

last september our dishwasher line started weeping into the wall behind the cabinet. didnt notice until our 3 year old started waking up with a stuffy nose every morning that summer and we tracked the smell to that corner of the kitchen. Liberty Mutual paid out the water damage claim around $9,400 total - mitigation, drywall, cabinet base, new flooring on that side. claim closed in early october. fine.

fast forward to last month. i was rehanging a spice rack and noticed the lower part of the new drywall felt slightly cool and a little spongy. pulled the baseboard. found visible black mold up about 14 inches behind the freshly painted wall, plus mold on the back side of the new cabinet base they had installed. so the mitigation company missed it, or it grew back because something was still wet when they closed up. either way it was inside their work.

called Liberty Mutual to reopen the original claim. their first move was to push me toward filing a new claim instead. a NEW claim means a NEW deductible ($2,500 on our policy), a new claim on our CLUE report, and probably a brand new fight over whether mold is even covered (we have a $10k mold sublimit). meanwhile the original claim still had the warranty period on the mitigation work and they would have been on the hook to fix their failure for free.

i pushed back hard. i pulled the original claim file via written request, found the mitigation company's certificate of completion that specifically said "all affected areas dried to industry standards per IICRC S500." i had photos of the visible mold and air quality test results showing elevated Stachybotrys spores in the kitchen but nowhere else in the house. i sent all of it with a letter saying this is a continuation of the original claim, the mitigation work failed within the contractor warranty period, and i wanted the claim reopened.

took about 5 weeks of back and forth and one escalation to a supervisor but they finally reopened the original claim. mitigation co is coming back at their cost under the warranty, and Liberty is covering the additional remediation and reinstallation. saved the second deductible and avoided a second CLUE entry. lesson: when an adjuster tells you to open a "new claim" on something that looks like a continuation of an old one, slow down and ask why that benefits THEM, not you.