Florida Peninsula: settling, shrinking and the cracking that results from them

This is the structural-movement exclusion, and it is broader than most policyholders expect. It excludes settling, shrinking, bulging and expansion, and then extends to the cracking that results from them, across nine named building elements from footings to ceilings.

The reach is the point. Once movement is named as the cause, almost any crack in the building falls inside the exclusion by its own terms, because the clause covers the resultant cracking as well as the movement itself. So the fight is never about whether the clause is broad. It is about whether movement is actually what happened.

Cracks have signatures. Settlement cracks are typically stepped through masonry, wider at one end, and they track the foundation. Cracking from wind pressure or from impact is differently shaped and differently placed. Where a claim follows a storm, the question is whether the building moved over years or was loaded for a few hours, and that is answerable by someone who looks at the geometry rather than at the exclusion list.