After the Disaster, Adjusters Begin Their Pitch

The insurance adjuster talked very fast.

Just hours after flames had destroyed Don Fritz’s three-bedroom house near La Verne, Fritz was hearing a pitch like he’d never heard before.

“Working or retired? Who is the (insurance) carrier?” Steven G. Schulman asked Thursday afternoon, speaking in a manner that would make auto salesman Cal Worthington sound sedate. Doing his best to be polite, Fritz, 66, responded that he was retired from the plumbing business and said Allstate was his insurance agent.

“Somebody has to represent your interest,” said Schulman of Dietz International in Los Angeles. “Allstate is looking at paying you the least it can. My company’s been in business since 1928.” If Fritz would sign on the dotted line, Schulman promised, Dietz would serve as negotiators with Allstate and help him maximize his claim.

Shifting Interest

By Friday, interest of the public adjusters such as Schulman was beginning to shift from the San Gabriel Valley to the San Fernando Valley, the scene of the latest fires.

With 87 individuals and 13 corporations licensed by California’s Department of Insurance, public adjusters are the private eyes of the insurance business. They usually come on the scene in sleek cars with mobile car phone and dressed in tasseled loafers or, sometimes, they pull up in four-cylinder clunkers and wear rumpled suits.

Once they have got a homeowner’s or business owner’s permission, public adjusters begin digging through the remains of fires as well as major thefts, floods, earthquakes or hurricanes.

“We’re not allowed by law, though, to be there while the Fire Department is still spraying the water,” said Robert A. Young, general manager of Dietz International.

“If your impression of us is we seem like ambulance chasers, that’s pretty close,” Schulman said in an interview after trying to drum up business in La Verne. “Unfortunately there’s a real need for our services.”

For a 5% to 10% cut of the insurance settlement, Schulman said Dietz would help board up the house, help find other housing, figure out everything from the number of brown socks a victim owned to obtaining estimates from engineers, contractors and architects. And Dietz, Schulman said, would handle all the paper work on the claim.

“When people have losses they need technical knowledge and they need psychological support,” said Paul Cordish, attorney for the National Assn. of Public Insurance Adjusters, which represents about 600 adjusters at 100 firms nationwide. “If you’ve got appendicitis, you don’t get out a pocket knife and cut it out yourself, you call a doctor.”

‘No Reason’

Still, Jim Harrington, a supervising investigator of the state Department of Insurance, gives this warning: “There’s no reason to sign a contract while you are standing on the lawn and your house is burning.”

From the insurance industry perspective, Daniel Hanke, president of the Insurance Loss Executive Assn. in New York, said: “Are public adjusters needed for an insured person to get all that’s coming to them? No. Do insurance companies pay more on a claim if they’re dealing with a public adjuster? No.”

But he acknowledged, “A lot of people use them. A busy executive might have more important things to do than worry about putting together a claim. Public adjusters take the burden of preparing the claim off the insured’s shoulders.”

Even claims of just over $10,000 are worth pursuing, said Young of Dietz, which also has offices in Miami, Boston, New York and Montreal. But Robb Greenspan, a partner and vice president of Greenspan Co., said his Los Angeles-based company prefers to handle major commercial losses such as the Allan Paper Co., where the fires in Baldwin Park started Thursday.

By Thursday, Allstate had also talked with Fritz and promised to provide nine months of housing, emergency funds for food and clothing, even rental furniture while the family waits for their home to be rebuilt.

John D. Flanagan, owner of Custer Christiansen Mortuaries, said he used Dietz last year when his Covina business incurred $500,000 in damage from a fire. “I couldn’t have done it without them,” Flanagan said. “A layman doesn’t know all the rules and regulations and the insurance companies don’t help you.”

Flanagan’s satisfaction was invoked by Schulman and his partner Steven Holden as they stood with Fritz in the circular driveway of the home on Williams Avenue in which Fritz and his family had lived for 20 years.

“We do an adjustment analysis,” Schulman said. “Ever in the military? What branch?” Schulman asked as the answer “Air Force” came. “You ever hear the term: ‘Take the hill?’ That’s what you’ve got to do.”

“You’ve never met us,” Holden told Fritz. “You may or may not like us. But you have a very large claim here.”

After listening to all the talk by the adjusters, Fritz said he really could not commit himself.

“We need to catch our breath,” Fritz said.

He was bothered by an injury to his right knee, inflamed from a fall he took while trying to fight the blaze with his garden hose. “He’s just getting over heart surgery,” Fritz’s son, Don, said.

As the two adjusters were leaving, Holden turned to the family and looked at the remains of the house. “I’m a salesman. We’re not performing miracles,” he said.