The Firth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to the insurer due to the insureds’ failure to establish the date of loss after a hailstorm. Cutchall v. Chubb Lloyds Ins. Co. of Texas, 2026 WL 625633 (5th Cir. March 5, 2026).

In September 2021, the Cutchalls made a claim on their policy for interior water damage due to a hailstorm that breached their roof. Chubb retained two engineers to inspect the home, but neither found evidence that a hailstorm caused the damage. Instead, the engineers concluded a variety of other causes, such as poor ventilation and as-built defects, caused the damage. Because Chubb concluded that some of these other causes were covered by the policy, it paid only for the covered portions.

The Cutchalls sued. They designated an independent adjuster and a public adjuster as expert witnesses. Each of the experts came up with a variety of dates on which the hailstorm struck.

Chubb designated the two inspecting engineers as experts. They attributed the interior damage to no-storm-related causes. Chubb also designated a meteorologist who opined there were no reports of hail or damage winds within 400 miles of the Cutchall home on the dates the Cutchalls claimed the loss occurred.

Chubb filed a motion for summary judgment. It argued the Cutchalls could not prove a covered loss within the policy period. The Cutchalls responded to the motion by attaching an affidavit of the public adjuster who now fixed the hailstorm on a new, previously undisclosed date.

The district court granted summary judgment to Chubb. It found that Cutchalls’ evidence did not raise a “genuine dispute about whether a storm capable of causing the alleged damage affected their neighborhood on that date or at another time during the policy period.” The court noted the multiplicity of contradictory dates for the alleged storm that were offered.

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Chubb.