I appreciate the advice but we did get a lawyer involved at the start. Dealing with the city is not at all the same with dealing contractors.

First off, most lawyers didn’t want to touch this issue with a 10ft pole because it’s near impossible to challenge a city on these matters. We had to call the Rhode Island bar association to even get someone to talk to us about what our rights were and what we can do. If the city had refused to take responsibility that would have been different but they admitted responsibility from Day 1.

Secondly, we were basically told that the insurance company is under no obligation to chase the city on our behalf. Our policy allowed for $5k in sewer damages, and as noted, we were lucky we even got that. They denied us twice. Could we have kept fighting them? Maybe, but that would have slowed down this process even more. No one wants to deal with city claims because cities are slow to pay out.

And for the record, if we don’t get an answer from the city lawyer soon we will go the legal route again but that means losing money again and we don’t get to recoup those fees.