Napa resort with $100 million in wildfire losses sues insurance companies

The Calistoga Ranch resort, targeted by residents who lost their pricey vacation homes to last year’s catastrophic Glass Fire, says its insurance company is to blame for failing to pay up.

On October 28, Calistoga Ranch Investors LLC and Auberge Resorts LLC were among the plaintiffs who filed a complaint in Napa Superior Court alleging that insurers were refusing to pay their “full limits coverage” after the Glass fire burned the 157-acre private residence club to the ground in September 2020, causing $100 million in damage, according to WineBusiness.com.

The defendants include AIG Specialty Insurance Co.; Arch Specialty Insurance Co.; Landmark American Insurance Co.; Homeland and Insurance Co. of New York; and Interstate Fire and Casualty Co. The complaint also names insurance adjuster Mark Voronin as a defendant, saying that Voronin had stated the insurance program limit was $100 million, but that the policies did not provide the $100 million for one location and that therefore Calistoga Ranch was only covered for $58.5 million in losses, according to court filings.

The plaintiffs argued that Voronin allegedly made “material misrepresentations as part of the claim adjustment process, including representing that the policies did not have a $100,000,000 blanket limit and instead included a far lower limit of liability,” according to the court filing.

When reached for comment, Voronin told Wine Business that he had not seen and was not aware of the complaint.

While Calistoga Ranch’s operators and investors blame their insurance companies, the fractional owners whose vacation homes were burned say Auberge is at fault for lowering its insurance coverage just months before the Glass Fire. There were 140 interests in the time-share resort and dozens of those owners said the company was “reckless” and knew “the risk of fire in California,” according to a court filing from July. They allege Auberge Resorts reduced the policy coverage four months before the Glass Fire without notifying the plaintiffs, according to the complaint, and that two nearby Auberge entities, Auberge du Soleil and Solage, were added to the same insurance program that covered Calistoga Ranch.

Auberge du Soleil and Solage sustained some damage during the Glass Fire, which raged through over 60,000 acres in Napa and Sonoma counties for a month last fall. But it was minimal compared to the total loss at Calistoga Ranch, which now does not have enough money to rebuild its fractionally-owned lodges, restaurant, spa and other amenities, according to the plaintiffs.

After Auberge challenged the allegations, a judge said last month that the plaintiffs could file an amended complaint for breach of contract and negligence but not two other allegations, including fraud, according to the court filings.

[Wine Business] – Emily Landes