Homeowners Choice: the anti-concurrent causation clause, quoted at a Fort Myers Beach loss

This is the clause that decides most total-loss hurricane claims on the barrier islands, and here it is quoted in the denial itself.

An anti-concurrent causation clause says that if an excluded peril contributes to a loss, the loss is excluded, no matter what else contributed and no matter what order things happened in. Fort Myers Beach took Hurricane Ian’s eye wall: Category 4 wind and a storm surge measured in double-digit feet, in the same afternoon. Wind is covered, flood is not, and this clause is written so that the presence of the excluded peril carries the whole loss.

Florida’s default rule points the other way. Under Sebo v. American Home Assurance, a loss caused by a covered and an excluded peril acting together is covered, unless the policy’s own anti-concurrent language displaces that rule. So the clause quoted in this letter is exactly the provision that has to be read word for word, because whether it does displace Sebo is the entire case, and the answer lives in its wording rather than in the adjuster’s summary of it.