Property subrogation

What it is

This page is the Property counterpart to the Auto material elsewhere in the manual. It explains how the subrogation module reads a commercial property loss, which records decide each outcome, and which questions a property subrogation adjuster still has to answer by hand. Every statement about engine behaviour is tied to a record; statements about practice the engine does not model are marked as such in the last two sections.

Property differs from Auto in three ways that shape the engine. The responsible party is rarely named on an official report; it is identified from the cause of loss, so cause attribution is the decisive fact on most theories. Contracts decide recovery rights: construction contracts and commercial leases routinely carry waivers of subrogation. And two clocks run: the limitation period from the date of loss, and a statute of repose from completion of the work or sale of the product, which can bar a claim before the loss occurs.

The roster and the trigger

A Property theory is considered only when a party with a targeted role is on the roster. The carrier format's role vocabulary (contractor, tenant, landlord, utility, municipality, governmental_entity, manufacturer, product_seller, adjacent_owner, adjacent_occupant) is mapped by the normalizer to the engine's roles: utility to utility_company, governmental_entity to government_entity, adjacent_owner to adjacent_property_owner, adjacent_occupant to neighbor, product_seller to distributor and parts_supplier . landlord is carried but unmapped, because no landlord theory exists. A role with no theory never produces a target. The carrier role municipality is not in the normalizer's map; whether it raises the government presence flag that triggers the municipal theory is to be confirmed, and until it is, carriers should be told to send governmental_entity for a public body.

The six theories

Each theory is a corpus record with a trigger, a requirement structure and a channel. The requirement column below is taken from the active records, not from the domain guide; where the two disagree the record is right .

Record	Theory	Must be stated	Any one of	Corroborating	Channel
PROP-SUBRO-THEORY-001	Contractor negligence		work_performed_described	work_completion_timing_stated, cause_attribution_to_party	Demand letter
PROP-SUBRO-THEORY-002	Product liability		component_failure_described	installation_or_age_stated, damaged_component_disposition	Lawsuit
PROP-SUBRO-THEORY-003	Utility negligence	cause_attribution_to_party	utility_event_described		Demand letter
PROP-SUBRO-THEORY-004	Tenant negligence	tenant_conduct_described		cause_attribution_to_party	Demand letter
PROP-SUBRO-THEORY-005	Municipal negligence	cause_attribution_to_party	prior_notice_described, condition_duration_stated		Government claim
PROP-SUBRO-THEORY-006	Neighbouring property	cause_attribution_to_party	source_property_condition_described, prior_notice_described		Demand letter

Read the table as an adjuster would. Contractor and product theories can confirm on a description of the work or the failure, because the work or the component is itself the link to the target. Utility, municipal and neighbouring-property theories need the cause tied to the party, because a surge, a backed-up drain or water from next door is not negligence until someone attributes it. Tenant negligence needs the conduct described; attribution corroborates. Tenant conduct alone is not attribution, and the engine never infers attribution from a condition or a weather word.

Gates and defenses on the Property path

The Phase 0 gates run on Property as on Auto, with three differences.

Comparative fault. Property routes to the same fault_system records as Auto, because state tort law is one record set. The carrier format carries no Property fault facts, so with none stated the gate is not_applicable, not cleared . An insured's own contribution to a property loss (heat left off, a known leak ignored) is therefore not assessed today; see the last section.

No-fault. Does not apply. No-fault is an Auto head gate.

Waiver, scoped by target. Two policy facts are read, core.policy.waiver_of_subrogation_present and core.policy.lease_subrogation_waiver, and each bars only the roles in its scope under SUBRO-WAIVER-SCOPE-v1: a contract waiver bars contractor, tenant and landlord targets; a lease waiver bars tenant and landlord targets . The Property waiver defense, PROP-SUBRO-DEF-001, is material and a full bar within scope. A waiver stated true with a target outside its scope (a utility, a manufacturer, a neighbour) does not bar; it adds a material condition to confirm the waiver does not extend to that party. A waiver reason code, waiver_of_subrogation, is the eighth referral reason. not_stated on a waiver is a verified absence and clears; an omitted waiver leaves the defense indeterminate with a verification item to read the contract or the lease.

First-party payment. Reads the response of the building (dwelling) coverage. Coverage that does not respond yields no_first_party_payment; the theory is still identified in the trace, so the analysis is preserved for the day coverage changes.

The defenses are records with a class and a severity :

Record	Defense	Fires when	Effect
PROP-SUBRO-DEF-001	Waiver of subrogation	Waiver stated true, target in scope	Material, full bar
PROP-SUBRO-DEF-002	Limitation period	Property-damage period expired	Material, full bar
PROP-SUBRO-DEF-003	Sovereign immunity	Government notice obligation resolved	Material, full bar
PROP-SUBRO-DEF-004	Act of God	Natural event stated as the cause	Material, full bar when sole cause
PROP-SUBRO-DEF-005	Spoliation	Failed component discarded	Material, partial bar

Act of God bars only as the sole cause. A natural event stated with no party attribution bars every Property theory. A natural event stated alongside a cause attributed to a party does not bar: the theory stands and carries a material condition to confirm the natural event was not the sole cause. This is the ruled rule (SL-FIX-06P E3); the gate implements it and the theory-level defense is being brought into line under SL-FIX-07P .

Spoliation is a partial bar. A discarded component leaves product liability confirmed but viable_with_caveats, and the referral carries a material lost-evidence condition, which is also the stated reason for the decision.

Our own insured. When the target role is tenant or contractor, the referral must carry a routine condition to confirm the target is not an insured or additional insured under the policy, because an insurer cannot recover from its own insured (SL-FIX-06P E4; not yet delivered, carried in SL-FIX-07P). A waiver stated true with a target outside its scope currently stops the run; SL-FIX-07P makes it run with the material condition described above.

Money

Property damages arrive as three heads, structure, contents and ALE, each an estimate. The screener keeps them as separate pd_components and recoverable_base is their sum; it is never called a repair estimate . On the brief they read as building, business personal property, and business income and extra expense. The carrier format carries no Property deductible, so the brief prints no deductible figure and ends the first-party line "Confirm the deductible." legally_recoverable stays pending, as on Auto.

Deadlines

The governing deadline is the state's property-damage limitation period from the date of loss, and the brief shows that row only; personal-injury and product rows are not listed on a Property claim. Every confirmed theory must have a deadline row, and a confirmed theory with no row is a defect to report. Two further clocks are not yet computed and the brief says so in plain words: the construction statute of repose on a contractor theory, and the notice-of-claim deadline on a government target, which can be months rather than years.

What the engine does not yet assess

These are known gaps, each with an open record or ruling, and each a question the adjuster answers today.

• Statute of repose. Drafted and reviewed, not wired to the Property path. A contractor claim in Texas, where improvements to real property carry a ten-year repose period, is not tested against it.
• Government notice. The section is withdrawn pending a re-draft by deadline type, entity class and claim class. Notice periods differ by claim class within a state: in California, Gov. Code § 911.2 gives six months for injury to personal property and one year for other claims, so building damage and business personal property can fall under different periods. New York's General Municipal Law § 50-e is 90 days.
• Implied co-insured tenant. In states following Sutton v. Jondahl, a tenant may be treated as a co-insured under the landlord's policy and cannot be subrogated against. The general P&C anti-subrogation rows exist; a structured tenant_co_insured_rule is needed before the tenant theory can read them.
• Landlord negligence. No theory exists, so a landlord who causes a tenant-insured's loss is not a target.
• Two candidate targets. Format v1.0 evaluates one candidate per theory; a loss caused jointly by a contractor and a product is a v1.0 limit.
• Utility tariff limits. Many tariffs limit a utility's liability to gross negligence or cap it; this is an adjuster verification, not an engine ruling.
• Florida limitation period. Fla. Stat. § 95.11 as amended in 2023 gives two years for negligence accruing after 2023-03-24; the engine record still carries four. An approved record change is required.

Practice the engine leaves to the adjuster

Some judgments are outside the module by design and should never be read into a referral.

• Recovery is measured in tort, not by the policy. The insurer pays replacement cost under the policy; recovery against a third party is usually limited to the tort measure, often actual cash value or cost of repair less betterment. recoverable_base is the sum of stated estimates and applies no depreciation.
• Insured's uninsured loss. The deductible and any uninsured loss are the insured's to recover alongside the carrier; how a recovery is shared, and whether a made-whole rule applies, is not computed.
• Economic loss. Where the contractor's duty arises only from the contract, some states confine recovery to contract remedies, which changes the deadline and the defenses. Not modelled.
• Cause and origin first. No Property theory is better than the cause and origin evidence behind it. Preserve the scene and the failed component, put every potential target on notice to inspect before anything is moved, and record who attributed the cause. The engine's preservation actions and spoliation defense assume this discipline; they do not replace it.

Open items

• SL-FIX-07P: waiver-scope crash, act-of-God defense in line with the gate, the insured-target condition, lost-evidence reasoning, the fault-rule label from the record, and Property brief wording.
• Confirm the carrier role municipality triggers the municipal theory, or add it to the normalizer's role map.
• Florida limitation period record change; statute of repose wiring; government notice re-draft; tenant_co_insured_rule; landlord theory.
• The internal domain guide's Property requirements predate the current records (contractor completion timing shown as required, utility area effect shown as a route) and should be brought into line.