Letter to the Editor: Senator's Statement On FEMA, Law Firms Confusing

The following letter was received in response to an article this week published on the Patch, where Sen. Robert Menendez warned residents to alert to possible Sandy scams as a result of the Federal Emergency Management Administration allowing the reopening of 142,000 claims.

The letter is from August Matteis, partner and chairman of Weisbrod, Matteis & Copley, a highly-regarded law firm in the nation’s capital with unique experience in disaster recovery cases. Matteis is the lead attorney in the firm’s representation of homeowners with properties that sustained damage as a result of Hurricane Sandy:

“After Hurricane Katrina, I fought for seven years and proved a FEMA insurance company defrauded the US government in Mississippi. I can say with experience that FEMA and its insurers cannot be trusted: they worked together to assure Katrina homeowners were not fully paid. Today it’s clear they did it again after Hurricane Sandy. While our clients appreciate the role many elected officials played in helping to reopen their cases, Senator Bob Menendez’s statement today is confusing. If the Senator suggests homeowners should not retain lawyers to handle their re-opened FEMA claims, thousands of Gulf Coast homeowners would completely disagree. They know FEMA was a part of their problem, just as they are in New Jersey.

There is clearly fraud in this matter; everything must be examined from scratch. Instead, FEMA has made it clear they will not hire a neutral adjuster to visit damaged homes and assess what damage really occurred. Sandy homeowners without representation may never know how much of their money they’ve left on the table.

To tell people that FEMA and its insurers will do the right thing for homeowners this time around is either naïve, political, or both. And for Senator Menendez to call vastly experienced disaster recovery attorneys “scam-artists”? That’s just flat out ironic.”