This is a court’s written decision. The judges had the claim file in front of them, and where they quote the insurer’s denial language, that quotation is part of the official record of the case.
Everything quoted below is read off that document. The reading of what it means for each side is ours, and it is marked as such.
| Case | Morales v. Citizens Property Insurance Corporation |
|---|---|
| Court | Florida Third District Court of Appeal |
| Citation | No. 3D21-276 |
| Decided | March 16, 2022 |
| Who is involved | Miami-Dade homeowners and Citizens. |
| What happened | Citizens denied interior water damage on the ground that no covered peril created an opening in the roof. Summary judgment for Citizens was reversed. |
| Where | Miami-Dade County, Florida |
| When | Hurricane Irma, 2017. Claim timely filed. |
| Why it came out that way | Citizens put in an engineer who found no storm-created openings. The homeowners put in a licensed contractor who explained how wind lifts shingles and creates openings in the underlayment. Competing experts create a jury question. |
| The holding | Reversed and remanded. The homeowners get their trial. |
Our reading of the document above, not the court's words.
For the insurance company
The no-opening argument turns an interior water claim into an uncovered one without disputing that water came in. It works whenever the only expert in the record is the insurer's.
For the homeowner
This is the mirror image of the wear-and-tear case that Citizens won. The difference is not the law and not the roof. It is that these homeowners paid for their own expert and put his affidavit, report and photographs into the record.
- 1 An opening does not have to be a hole you can see. A licensed expert can explain lifted shingles and broken seals in the underlayment.
- 2 Get the expert early and get the report in writing, with photographs.
- 3 A carrier's engineer affidavit is not the end of the case. It is one side of a fact dispute, and fact disputes go to a jury.
Morales v. Citizens Prop. Ins. Corp., No. 3D21-276 (Fla. 3d DCA Mar. 16, 2022) Read the document ↗
Case summaries are drafted from the document and have not been reviewed by counsel; verify against the current docket before relying on any of it. Not legal advice; consult an attorney about your specific claim.
The interior-rain rejection in its standard form: the letter quotes the exclusion for rain entering a building, then the exception requiring a storm-created opening, and concludes no opening existed, so nothing pays. The Third DCA opinion preserves the quoted policy language, which is the same language on virtually every Florida HO-3.
What reversed it was one document: a contractor’s affidavit that Irma’s wind created the openings the rain came through. That single sworn statement converted the carrier’s inspection conclusion into a disputed fact, and disputed facts go to juries, not to summary judgment. The entry is in the library as the counterweight to the wear-and-tear defaults: the no-opening letter is only as strong as the policyholder’s silence, and the cheapest rebuttal in the archive, a tradesperson’s sworn observation, was enough to beat it.
Morales v. Citizens Prop. Ins. Corp., No. 3D21-276 (Fla. 3d DCA Mar. 16, 2022) · public record ↗
Quotes are verbatim from the cited public record. Case status and statute summaries drafted August 2026; verify against the current docket and statute. Not legal advice; consult an attorney about your specific claim.
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