Insurance subrogation support.

§1Scope of work

R-08 retainers arrive within 24 to 72 hours of a loss event, typically from a property carrier’s subrogation desk or from a third-party administrator (TPA) handling the carrier’s field operations. The firm dispatches to the loss within the time window the carrier names, which is rarely longer than 96 hours from the call. We arrive at the scene with the suppression authority’s release in hand, work under ASTM E1188 evidence-preservation protocol from the first minute, and produce a written opinion letter to the carrier within 7 to 21 days.

The opinion letter is not a sealed PE report. The opinion letter says, in plain language, what the engineer’s working hypothesis is on cause, what additional work would be required to convert the opinion into a sealed report admissible at Daubert hearing, and what the additional cost would be. The carrier can then decide whether to authorize the additional work (typically R-01, R-02, R-03, R-06, or R-07 depending on the cause hypothesis) or to close the file. About 40% of our R-08 opinion letters convert to a sealed report under another Protocol; the remaining 60% do not, either because the carrier elects not to pursue subrogation or because the opinion letter itself becomes sufficient for the carrier’s purposes.

The firm has filed 138 R-08 matters since 2010 — by margin the most active Protocol on the docket. The carriers who retain us most frequently are Erie Insurance Exchange (the company, not the city), Liberty Mutual’s commercial division, and Travelers’ Pittsburgh branch.

§2Carriers we work for

The firm maintains current panel-engineer status with the following property carriers under the named lines:

• Erie Insurance Exchange. Commercial Lines, Industrial Property, Personal Property. The firm has held continuous panel-engineer status since 2011.
• Liberty Mutual. Commercial Lines, BOP-bridge to GL. Panel status since 2014.
• Travelers Pittsburgh Branch. Commercial Property, Inland Marine. Panel status since 2015.
• State Farm (independent retainers only). Personal Property, Farm/Ranch. We are not on State Farm’s panel; we are retained directly by the adjuster on a case-by-case basis.
• Westfield Insurance. Commercial Lines. Panel status since 2017.
• FM Global. Industrial Property (selected matters). The firm is on FM’s alternate-engineer list for Erie and Crawford counties.

The firm does not work for plaintiff’s personal-injury counsel on first-party subrogation; the practice would create a structural conflict with our carrier panel relationships. Plaintiff’s counsel may retain the firm on third-party liability matters where no panel carrier is on the other side of the matter; the conflict check runs at intake.

§3Subrogation workflow

The typical R-08 workflow is: (1) intake call from the adjuster or TPA, with conflict check completed during the call; (2) retainer letter and scope-of-work confirmation by email within the same business day; (3) scene visit scheduled within 96 hours, sooner if the structure is at risk of degradation; (4) scene investigation under ASTM E1188 protocol with photographic, sketch, and sample documentation; (5) sample retention in the firm’s evidence vault under chain of custody; (6) opinion letter to the carrier within 7 to 21 days of the scene visit, naming the working cause hypothesis and the conversion-to-sealed-report estimate; (7) carrier decision on pursuit. If pursuit is authorized, the file converts to the relevant primary Protocol (R-01, R-02, R-03, R-06, or R-07) and a new retainer letter is issued for the sealed report.

The carrier’s pursuit decision threshold is typically “more likely than not” — a 51% confidence that the cause is recoverable from a third party. This is materially less stringent than the “clear and convincing” threshold a sealed PE report is fitted to. The R-08 opinion letter is calibrated to this lower threshold; the conversion to sealed report elevates the rigor proportionally.

§4Deliverable & fee

The R-08 deliverable is the opinion letter — a 4- to 8-page document with: scope; site visit summary; preserved evidence inventory; working cause hypothesis with confidence; conversion-to-sealed-report estimate (typical Protocol, typical fee band, typical lead time). The opinion letter is not sealed; it bears the engineer’s signature but not the PE seal, because it is calibrated to a sub-Daubert threshold. The carrier may forward the opinion letter to its own staff; it is not admissible as expert testimony.

Fee band $4,500 to $18,000. Conversion to sealed report under another Protocol is billed separately at the published fee band for that Protocol, less a credit for the R-08 scene-visit work already completed.

§5References