mold-symptom.com

Concerns about mold in the office have spread well beyond the employee refrigerator.

Hit in the late '90s with a rash of multimillion-dollar lawsuits by homeowners with mold trouble and a subsequent surge in mold-related claims, the nation's largest insurers have excluded fungus from standard homeowner policies.

Now, building owners and insurers say, coverage of mold-related problems is drying up for apartment and office buildings, hotels and an array of other business and municipal facilities.

Insurance companies have tightened or eliminated the coverage after triple-digit increases in mold-related claims against building owners since 2000.

"These cases are very difficult to investigate and settle because there is a lot of bad science, media sensationalism and fraud out there," said Kirk Yeager, deputy commissioner of market regulation for the Colorado Division of Insurance.

"Some cases may be valid, but it's very difficult to know.

"When available, mold policies often are expensive, leaving building owners with increasingly tough choices about how to protect themselves against property damage and employee or tenant claims of mold-related illnesses.

"People start worrying about mold at home, and before too long, they're worrying about it in the workplace, too," said Loretta Worters, vice president for communications at the Insurance Information Institute. "The (insurance) industry is pretty jittery right now because people have got big dollar signs in their eyes and trial lawyers egging them on to go after the deepest pockets they can find."

Insurers and many building owners are closely watching two federal lawsuits filed in the past 11 months, including one of the first cases for a Colorado building owner involving workplace mold.

In July, two United Airlines employees filed a class-action suit against the city of Denver, alleging that mold has become a severe health hazard in Denver International Airport's Concourse B.

A lot of cleanup could be avoided if hygienists were hired to supervise new construction and if the owners of older buildings established plans for regular and thorough maintenance, said Joe Havey, president of Denver Building Owners and Managers Association.

"Mold is nothing new, but the insurance side of it is," said Havey, who also is vice president for operations at Amerimar Realty Management Co., which owns and manages 2.5 million square feet of downtown space. "BOMA stresses education and due diligence. People who don't take that seriously are asking for trouble."

To brace for potential lawsuits, many building owners are reconstructing leases to hold tenants responsible for some damages - and any subsequent mold trouble, said Russ Nassof, president of the Phoenix-based industrial hygiene and legal support services firm Environomics.

"Tenants can't adjust thermostats, block air ducts or stare at a water-stained ceiling panel for three weeks before saying something," Nassof said. "If a tenant is responsible for causing the problem, why place the burden back on the owner?"

The revamped leases promise a new wave of litigation as owners and tenants fight over who's responsible for damages, Nassof said.

"That's America for you," he said.