USAA: foot fall damage on the tiles, and repairs priced under the deductible

Foot fall damage is the finding to examine. It says someone walked on the tile and broke it, which makes the breakage a mechanical event rather than a storm one, and mechanical damage is excluded.

The difficulty is that tile roofs get walked on during claims. The field adjuster goes up. So does the engineer, if there is one, and the roofer who provided the homeowner’s estimate. A finding of foot fall damage recorded after inspection does not by itself establish whose feet, or when, and the sequence is documented: inspection dates are in the file and dated photographs from before the inspections show the condition then.

Slippage is the companion finding and it cuts differently. Tile slips under wind uplift as well as with age, and where it has slipped, in what pattern and on which elevations, distinguishes the two. Meanwhile the deductible does the real work here, as it does throughout this archive: the repairs were priced below it, so the coverage argument was never reached.