LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A military veteran fed up with his homeowners’ insurance company’s stagnant response to a 2023 pipe burst that left his house in shambles said the experience has left him in poor physical health, emotionally numb, and financially tapped.
Daxton Lyon had a hot water pipe burst in his Las Vegas area home two Novembers ago, and his public insurance adjuster said USAA has employed a tactic they call “Delay, Deny, Defend.”
That strategy, apparently gaining popularity with large carriers, generally draws out the appraisal process as close to the statute of limitations on a lawsuit as possible, at which point they would hope to either deny a claim or force the homeowner to sue them.
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A military veteran fed up with his homeowners’ insurance company’s stagnant response to a 2023 pipe burst that left his house in shambles said the experience has left him in poor physical health, emotionally numb, and financially tapped. (KLAS)
In the many months since water invaded Lyon’s home, he has seen repeated delays from USAA, which advertises itself as the insurer of choice for veterans and their families. Lyon, originally from Alabama, served in the Marines as a network system operator and then worked for the Air Force.
“I’m numb. Completely numb,” Lyon told NewsNation local affiliate KLAS earlier this year at the two-story home he says he bought for his wife as a birthday gift.
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Since the pipe burst, he says he and his wife lived in temporary housing for as long as USAA would pay for it – about six months – until USAA said they were not paying for an additional six months of housing as they originally promised.
A military veteran fed up with his homeowners’ insurance company’s stagnant response to a 2023 pipe burst that left his house in shambles said the experience has left him in poor physical health, emotionally numb, and financially tapped. (KLAS)
Instead, Lyon said, USAA offered to pay for six months of their food expenditures. But the public insurance adjuster, with 26 years in the claims business, points out that food costs pennies on the dollar compared to temporary housing.
“They do know that he has a viable claim and they’re under-paying it,” Neil May, public insurance adjuster for Spartan Claim Resources told KLAS, adding that USAA has only paid Lyon 40% of what it would take for Lyon to recover enough money to return his house to the condition it was before the incident.
“They’ll have to go into financial ruin and take out more loans for something that should be paid by their carrier,” May said.
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May said USAA has dragged its feet at every turn. He said when he sent USAA a request for an appraisal, which usually comes back in a week, USAA gave them an answer 40 days later. The federal Unfair Claim Settlement Practices Act, designed to protect consumers, gives an insurance company 14 days to answer. Nevada also has a similar act.
The actual appraisal process, May said, generally takes two to three months to complete. Lyon’s process, under USAA, took six months.
“We are in appraisal purgatory,” May said, noting that an appraisal committee and umpire will visit Lyon’s home on Wednesday.
In the interim, May said he had to send his young daughter to live with her grandparents this summer, and move himself and his wife into Lyon’s home office, a small room off the garage.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” Lyon said. “I can’t sell the house. I can’t repair the house.”
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Steven Bush, a property insurance litigation attorney, said homeowners are stuck paying for insurance required by mortgage companies for policies that offer less and less coverage, in large part because of powerful insurance lobbies in Washington, D.C.
“They’re not getting justice,” Bush told KLAS on Monday. “And these insurance companies are preventing them from getting that, and they’re just ignoring them and they’re silencing their voice.”
Bush appeared on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in September 2024 and said he had evidence of insurance fraud where, in the wake of a national disaster, insurance carriers manipulated estimates, changed them, and then misrepresented to policyholders that it was the work product of the field adjuster.
In his interview with KLAS, Bush doubled down on the impact such insurance tactics have on homeowners.
“From just the pure stress of dealing with these insurance claims when you drive up to your house every day and you walk in and you see it is in a mess, in a shambles, and you can’t get it fixed because you don’t have the money and you’re living in that environment, that has an emotional toll on you,” Bush said.
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Lyon said it has had an emotional and physical toll. He said in addition to other health problems, being without a kitchen since 2023 and eating a disproportionate amount of take-out, his cholesterol has skyrocketed. He said prior to the water loss, his cholesterol was normal.
“I am having life-threatening symptoms of irreversible vein and blood flow damage,” Lyon said.
And his wife and daughter are not faring better with asthma and the dust and debris left in his home.
“With everything else that I have to deal with health-wise, it’s taken years off my life,” Lyon said. “I mean it’s the, the stress, the diet, all of the things that we take for granted every day that a house provides are not happening, and then not knowing what to expect day over day is just making it unbearable.”
Lyon said he hopes USAA will fix his house and allow his life to return to normal.
KLAS reached out to USAA twice, once earlier in the year and again this week, without any response.
