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Utility company negligence

Domain guide, Property subrogation, theory 3.3

The theory

A utility's negligence caused the loss: a power surge from a failed transformer, a water main failure, a gas leak.

Who must be on the roster

  • utility_company.

Facts that establish it

  • cause_attribution_to_party (required): the cause must be tied to the utility. A surge or an outage on its own is not attribution.
  • utility_event_described (any one of): the utility's own event, outage or incident.
  • Neighbouring properties affected corroborates an external cause in practice, but it is not a structured trigger; confirm attribution directly.

What defeats it

  • Tariff limitations on liability: many tariffs limit a utility's liability to gross negligence or cap it. An adjuster verification; the engine does not rule on it.
  • An act of God stated as the sole cause.
  • A municipal utility: the target becomes a government entity, with its notice obligation.
  • A stated contract waiver does not bar a utility (outside the waiver's scope); it adds a material condition to confirm the waiver does not extend to the utility.

Recovery channel

  • Demand letter, usually to the utility's claims department.

What the carrier does

  • Obtain the utility's incident or outage report.
  • Canvass neighbours for the same damage.
  • Preserve damaged equipment.
  • File the utility's claim form within its stated window.

A claim that fits

Six units in the insured's strip centre lost HVAC compressors and point-of-sale systems within minutes of each other on the same afternoon. The electric utility's outage log for the feeder shows a transformer failure and a voltage excursion at 14:07. Two adjacent tenants report the same losses.

How the engine reads itUtility on the roster; cause attributed to the utility by the outage log, which is required; utility_event_described from the utility's incident record. Utility negligence confirmed, refer, demand letter, with a routine condition to verify tariff limits. The adjacent tenants' same-day losses corroborate in practice but are not a structured trigger.

Records behind it

Theory record PROP-SUBRO-THEORY-003 Defenses PROP-SUBRO-DEF-002, PROP-SUBRO-DEF-004 Waiver scope SUBRO-WAIVER-SCOPE-v1

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