An Attorney for Florida Contractors, Roofers, and Restoration Pros
Two insurance-related problems land on a Florida contractor’s desk, and they point at two different opponents. Your customer’s claim gets denied or underpaid: that fight is with the insurance company, and Florida law bars you from stepping into it yourself. And you finish the work but do not get paid: that fight is with the owner, the general contractor, or the surety, and Florida’s lien and bond statutes give you real leverage if you hit the deadlines. Cory Cannon handles both, and keeps them in separate lanes: your customer’s claim routes to our property insurance claims practice against the carrier; your unpaid invoice routes to our construction litigation practice against whoever owes you. You fix roofs; we fight insurers and chase the money you are owed.
We are Cory Cannon, a Tampa Bay property damage firm. Two things to know up front. First, we do not adjust insurance claims, and neither can you: that line is drawn by statute, and crossing it puts your license at risk, not just ours. When your customer’s claim goes sideways, the lawful move is a referral: your customer contacts us directly and decides for themselves. Second, your own receivables are ordinary construction-law work (Notice to Owner, claim of lien, bond claims, prompt-payment interest), and those may be handled on contingency or a flat fee, stated plainly before you engage us. Below is where the line sits, how a lawful referral works under the Bar rules, and a deadline desk card you can bookmark.
Findings Summary
- You may not adjust, negotiate, or interpret your customer’s insurance claim. Fla. Stat. 489.147(2)(d) bars a contractor from adjusting a claim or advising an insured about coverage without a public adjuster license; doing that for compensation is unlicensed public adjusting under Fla. Stat. 626.854.
- Roof-specific: 489.147(2)(b) bars offering to waive, pay, or rebate a customer’s insurance deductible, and 489.147(2)(a) bars prohibited claim-solicitation advertising.
- The assignment-of-benefits route is closed. A policyholder cannot assign post-loss property insurance benefits under any policy issued on or after January 1, 2023 (Fla. Stat. 627.7152); an attempt to do so is void.
- A claim has crossed into legal territory when the carrier denies on an engineer report, pays below your documented scope, misses the 627.70131 60-day pay-or-deny deadline, or nears the 627.70132 notice bars: 1 year to report, 18 months to supplement.
- Your own money runs on construction deadlines: Notice to Owner within 45 days (713.06), claim of lien within 90 days of final furnishing (713.08), one year to foreclose (713.22), and bond notices under 713.23 (private) or 255.05 (public).
- We pay nothing for referrals and take nothing from you. Florida Bar Rules 4-7.18 and 4-7.22 forbid it. Your customer chooses counsel freely and contacts us directly.
The Line You Can’t Cross
You can inspect a roof, document the damage, write an estimate, and do the repair. What Florida law does not let you do is work your customer’s insurance claim. Section 489.147(2)(d) prohibits a contractor from interpreting policy provisions, advising an insured about coverages or duties under the policy, or adjusting a claim on the insured’s behalf, unless the contractor also holds a public adjuster license. Do any of that for money, commission, or anything of value and you are engaged in the unlicensed practice of public adjusting under Fla. Stat. 626.854, which carries fines up to $10,000 per act, $20,000 per act during a declared state of emergency. The exposure is yours, not just the lawyer’s, and it is the reason “let me handle the adjuster for you” is a sentence a Florida contractor should never say.
Roofing carries two more specific bars. Section 489.147(2)(b) prohibits offering a residential owner a rebate, gift, or the waiver or payment of any insurance deductible in exchange for a roof inspection or a roof claim, and knowingly paying, waiving, or rebating a deductible is insurance fraud, a third-degree felony. Section 489.147(2)(a) prohibits soliciting an owner through a “prohibited advertisement” that pushes a roof claim without disclosing that the owner owes the deductible. Finally, the assignment-of-benefits workaround is gone: under Fla. Stat. 627.7152, a policyholder cannot assign post-loss benefits under any residential or commercial policy issued on or after January 1, 2023, so you can no longer take an assignment and stand in the customer’s shoes against the carrier.
None of this stops your customer from getting real help. You fix roofs. When a claim turns into a coverage or payment dispute, that fight belongs with a lawyer, and the choice of lawyer belongs to your customer alone. If they ask you for a name, you are free to give one; the referral is lawful precisely because the decision is theirs. Either way, the fight moves to the party it belongs against, which is the insurance company.
When a Claim Crosses Into Legal Territory
You can see a bad claim taking shape from the roof. The question is whether it is still a paperwork problem your customer can push through or a legal fight that only counsel can move. Use this as a triage sheet. Every row here is a dispute between your customer and their insurer, not between you and anyone.
| What you are seeing on the job | Why it is now a legal fight with the carrier | Where to read more |
|---|---|---|
| Claim denied after the carrier’s engineer inspected the roof | Whether creasing or cracking is wind damage or wear is a causation-and-coverage question, tested with evidence, not a repair question | what a carrier engineer inspection means and denied-claim strategy |
| Payment came in far below your written scope; matching or code upgrades ignored | Underpayment on an accepted claim runs on the policy’s replacement-cost, matching, and ordinance-and-law terms | underpaid-claim review |
| Carrier is past the 60-day pay-or-deny window with no decision | A missed 627.70131 deadline is a prompt-pay violation; interest accrues and the delay becomes part of the file | what to do after a denial or stall |
| The customer is nearing one year from the date of loss, or 18 months on a supplement | Miss the 627.70132 notice window and the claim is barred outright: no repair scope saves it | this one is about time, not paperwork; it needs counsel immediately |
If your customer asks who can help, our phone number is public and so is our guide to a denied homeowners insurance claim. That is all there is to give: no script, no claim form, no pitch on our behalf. Your customer calls or does not, and your customer decides. That restraint is not just courtesy: it is what keeps a referral clean under the rules explained next.
How a Referral Works
This part is governed by the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, so we state it plainly. The decision to refer is yours and your customer’s: never ours to engineer through you. We do not solicit clients through contractors. There are no scripts for your sales crew, no pitch sheets or claim-referral packets branded to us, no leave-behind brochures that read as our advertising, and no “tell them we sent you” arrangement of any kind. Rule 4-7.18 forbids a lawyer from soliciting prospective clients by proxy; Rule 4-7.22 forbids compensating a nonlawyer for channeling clients. So there is no referral fee, no per-file payment, and no bonus running in either direction: offering or accepting one would be a disciplinary problem for us and a problem for you.
What the relationship actually is: when a claim has crossed into a coverage or payment dispute, your customer may hear from you that a lawyer is an option, and if they ask for a name you are free to give one, ours or anyone’s. Then you step back. Your customer contacts the firm directly and chooses freely whether to talk to us and whether to hire us. You refer a matter; we evaluate it; the customer decides. That is the whole mechanism, and keeping it that simple is what protects your license alongside ours.
Your Own Money: Liens, Bonds, and Prompt Payment
Your receivables are a different fight with a different opponent, and here Florida law is on your side if you move on time. This is contract-and-collection work against the owner, the general contractor, or the surety, never against the insurance company. The construction lien statutes in Chapter 713 give you security against the property itself, and they run on hard deadlines with no grace for a missed date.
The sequence in plain terms: if you are not in direct contract with the owner, you preserve your lien rights by serving a Notice to Owner within 45 days of first furnishing labor or materials (Fla. Stat. 713.06). When the work is done and you are still unpaid, you record a claim of lien within 90 days of your final furnishing (Fla. Stat. 713.08). A recorded lien is enforceable for one year, and you protect it by filing a foreclosure action within that year, a window that collapses to just 60 days if the owner serves a Notice of Contest of Lien (Fla. Stat. 713.22).
Where the job is bonded, you look to the bond instead of the property. On a private project, a payment bond claim under Fla. Stat. 713.23 requires a notice to the contractor within 45 days of first furnishing (if you are not in privity) and a sworn notice of nonpayment no later than 90 days after final furnishing; public projects run on the parallel structure in Fla. Stat. 255.05. And on any written improvement contract, late payment accrues statutory interest under the Construction Contract Prompt Payment Law (Fla. Stat. 715.12), a lever most owners do not expect.
One flip-side to watch: if the paperwork on your desk is a defect claim against your work, that is Chapter 558 territory, with its own 60-day pre-suit notice-and-cure process (120 days when the claimant is an association representing more than 20 parcels). Our explainer on the Florida 558 notice walks through what to do when one arrives; do not ignore it, and do not answer it without reading it first.
On fees for your own matters, we are direct: lien and bond work may be handled on a contingency or a flat fee, set in a written agreement before we start. Where a case has real collection upside, fee-shifting typically runs through a proposal for settlement under Fla. Stat. 768.79, a served offer that, if unreasonably rejected, can shift fees from the offer forward. We use that tool deliberately, and it is one more reason clean records and timely notices matter.
Florida Contractor Deadline Desk Card
A bookmarkable reference for the two clocks that run on an insurance-adjacent job: your money and your customer’s claim. Each citation links to the current statute on Online Sunshine. These are general deadlines; the exact date on your file depends on your facts.
Your Money: Liens, Bonds, and Payment
| Statute | Trigger | Deadline | If missed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 713.06 | First furnishing labor or materials (lienor not in privity with the owner) | Serve Notice to Owner within 45 days | No construction lien rights |
| 713.08(5) | Final furnishing of labor or materials | Record claim of lien within 90 days | Lien invalid |
| 713.22 | Recording the claim of lien | File foreclosure within 1 year, or within 60 days if a Notice of Contest of Lien is served | Lien extinguished |
| 713.23 | Private-project payment bond (not in privity) | Notice to contractor within 45 days of first furnishing; sworn notice of nonpayment within 90 days of final furnishing; suit within 1 year | No recovery on the bond |
| 255.05 | Public-project payment bond | Sworn notice of nonpayment within 90 days of final furnishing; suit within 1 year | No recovery on the bond |
| 715.12 | Payment past due on a written improvement contract | Prompt-payment interest accrues (s. 55.03 rate plus 12% per annum) | Interest left on the table |
| 558.004 | A construction-defect claim is served on you | 60-day pre-suit notice-and-cure window (120 days for an association of more than 20 parcels) | Skipping the process can derail or delay the later suit |
Your Customer’s Claim: Insurance Deadlines
| Statute | Trigger | Deadline | If missed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 627.70132 | Date of loss | Customer reports the claim within 1 year; supplemental claim within 18 months | Claim barred |
| 627.70131 | Insurer receives notice of the claim | Insurer pays or denies within 60 days | Prompt-pay violation; interest accrues from the notice date |
| 95.11(2)(e) | Date of loss | 5 years to sue the insurer for breach of the policy | Claim time-barred |
The bottom table is your customer’s ledger, not yours. You cannot act on those dates for them: that is exactly the line 489.147 and 626.854 draw. Track them so you know when a customer is running out of time to get help.
Working With the Firm
There are two ways this firm ends up in a contractor’s orbit, and they map to the two problems at the top of this page. Your customer’s insurance dispute: our number and the denied-claim guide are public, and customers who need us find us on their own. Or your own receivable: a lien to record, a bond claim to preserve, an invoice an owner will not pay, or a 558 notice that just landed.
One honest note on conflicts. Because we represent property owners against their insurers, we run a fast conflict check before we take on your receivable. Usually the interests line up rather than collide: if your customer becomes our client on the insurance claim, getting your repair invoice paid out of that recovery is aligned with the claim, not adverse to it. A customer made whole is a customer who can pay for the repair: that alignment, not any arrangement between us, is what drives work back to you. The flip side we screen for is Chapter 558: if we already represent an owner or association in a construction-defect claim against you, we cannot be on both sides, and we will tell you that on the first call. Either way, you get a straight answer fast.
Before you send policies, estimates, or contracts, reach out first and we will set you up with a direct line and a secure, encrypted upload rather than trading sensitive documents in the clear. Start with our construction litigation practice for the full lien and bond picture, or our resources library for the deadline calculators and statute explainers your customers ask about, and reach out when your own matter is ready.