Claims adjusters never know what they're goingto encounter when a client has a loss. They meet a lot of strangecharacters throughout their careers, and their clients' oddballpersonalities are trumped only by their similarly bizarreclaims.

PC360 queried adjusters about some the most unusual claimsthey've come across, from mounted animals to money found in booksand unloved gifts from the Queen of England.

1. Scared Jobless The inventory specialists forclaims-solutions pros Enservio visit some strange homes, but noneof them were prepared to handle a domicile that was supposedlyhaunted—so much so that it pushed one specialist to the point ofquitting his job.

The adjuster(s) assigned to investigate “were a little bitwary,” says Jay Straughan, Enservio's VP/claims. “But they didn'tbelieve [the house was haunted]—until they noticed the second timethey walked by a particular room, that a chair in that room was ina different position. And as they walked by it a third and fourthtime, the chair was in different positions again.”

The eeriness didn't end there. When the inventory specialistcame home that evening and looked at the photos that were taken atthe house, the figure of a ghost could be seen in one of them.

“It was a white shadow that had an almost human form to it,”explains Straughan. So where's the photo now? “I asked for thephotograph—and it vanished. No one has it anymore.”

The visit spooked the inventory specialists on site so badlythat one of them decided to quit their job the very next day.“Their comment was, 'This pushed me over the edge,'” saysStraughan. “'I am not going to subject myself to anything like thatever again.'”

2. Big-gameCollector  “A high-end insurance company insureda real estate developer from the city, and he built this mammothcompound outside the city in the Hudson Valley,” recalls TomKirkpatrick, consulting founder at Enservio and president ofContents Consulting LLC with expertise in antiques and fine art.“He built it with a thatched roof, and the insurance companyrefused to write coverage on the house because they thought it wasa fire hazard—a pretty good call on their behalf.

“However, because he had his home in the city insured, therewere some coverages that extended. So, when the client did havea  fire, we got a call to go to the estate.”

What the agents found when they got to the site was beyond whatany of them could have imagined. The homeowner—who happened to be abig-game hunter—had life-size, mounted African animals worthy ofthe American Museum of Natural History in the middle of his livingroom, including a full-bodied giraffe and an African elephant.

Says Kirkpatrick of the kinds of clients he works with: “Itmakes my job fascinating speaking to these people as to what theycollect and why.”

3. Cash on the BooksOftentimes as an insurance agent, you need to have a “What can gowrong, will go wrong” outlook. However, not everyone thinks with aninsurance-centric mind, as Donna Pile, owner of A. G. PerryInsurance Agency in Lexington, Ky., discovered when one of herclients called to file a claim for $700 in cash that was stolenfrom her “bank.”

“She failed to tell me that her 'bank' was the library in herhouse,” says Pile. “She had stuffed money in the pages of her booksin her library, and somebody opened a book one day and found money,and then kept finding more money, so they took it.”

When Pile asked the client just how much cash she had in betweenthe pages of her library, “I about fell over, because it was alot,” the agent recalls. “She had thousands of dollars in thatlibrary. If she had a fire, it would've all been gone.”

The policy only covered $250 cash, which Pile says the clientwas happy to get. She advised the client to move the money into amore secure and protected location; whether or not she actually didso is not known.

4. Rich and Famous Among theelite clients Kirkpatrick works with are Hollywood stars andprofessional athletes, whose everyday claims are things most of thepopulation doesn't deal with.

“I had a claim where a star tennis player's Wimbeldon trophy wasstolen,” he recalls. Also stolen was a couture gown that was wornby an Academy Award winner when she accepted her award for BestActress. “This couture gown now has the cache and panache of havingbeen worn and viewed at the Oscars,” says Kirkpatrick, who was leftwith the task of determining the gown's new worth.

“I also had a claim where a famous actor's Academy Awards andBAFTAs fell from a glass shelf, and we had to get those allreplaced,” says Kirkpatrick. “How often do you get to do somethinglike that? I'm lucky I get to.”

5. Royal Things Working with manyhigh-net-worth clients, Kirkpatrick has dealt with some characters.When working with one such claimant after a fire at her estate, hewas stunned by the callous way the New York socialite referred tointernational royalty.

“I picked up a mirror that was damaged, and asked for specificdetails,” says Kirkpatrick. “I'll never forget: She tipped herhead, looked at it, and said, 'Oh, that was a wedding present fromthe Queen [of England].' Then she paused and said, 'I don't meanthe twit that's there now; I mean the Queen Mum.'

“Being of middle-class demographics myself, the fact that thiswoman could speak of the Queen as frankly as she did just kind ofshocked me,” laughs Kirkpatrick.

In the same home, one agent found a stunning gold-plated andengraved shotgun hidden behind a row of books in the library. Whenshown to the client, she casually said, “Oh, where did you find it?That was a present from the King of Spain. It's so pretty to lookat, but doesn't shoot worth a damn.”

6. Burnin' LoveYou're from a very prominent and wealthy family. You live in a homethat was constructed to look like a Medieval castle, atop a Malibumountaintop. A wildfire is approaching your home, and you have toevacuate immediately. What would you grab before you left?

In this unfortunate claim, the homeowner grabbed her Persiancats—and Elvis Presley's army fatigues.

“She was an Elvis fan,” says Kirkpatrick. “She had gone toGraceland and attended auctions and accumulated a collection.

“She had two cats, and she grabbed Elvis' army fatigues—andthat's all she managed to escape with,” he explains. “The large,three-story estate burned down to nothing.”

In addition to the homeowner's Elvis memorabilia, other itemslost include a chandelier that “that was probably 25 feet tall, ina pink, rose-colored cut crystal that was just incredible,” hesays. “And the family had one of the largest jewelry collections inthe world, after Queen Elizabeth. A good part of it was destroyedin the fire.”

7. International Bank Theft Enservio'sStraughan recalls one claim that involved 200 differentpolicyholders and resulted in a loss of over $5 million when aninternational bank was robbed. “The thieves figured out that ifthey dropped in through the ceiling, they could get into the bankvault—and they did,” he recalls. “With no guards on duty, they gotinto 200 safety deposit boxes, most of which had cash and jewelryin them.”

Among the stolen treasures was a tourmaline rubellite necklacewith a 190-carat stone worth $35,000 and a pink diamond appraisedfor $780,000. One particular box had over $3 million worth ofvaluable items in it.

“[The loss] was absolutely tragic,” Straughan adds.

8. Trash to Treasure One ofthe important aspects of inventorying a home after a major loss ismaking sure that everything is accounted for. Without carefulinspection, one of Kirkpatrick's clients could have accidentallybeen relieved of a treasure.

“She and her husband were cornerstones of the New York socialscene,” says Kirkpatrick. “They had a fire at their waterfront homein Connecticut, and when I arrived, there was a restoration companyalready on site. They were throwing everything that was damaged inthe house in the dumpster—not recording it, not doing anything withit.

Kirkpatrick picked up a designer handbag with some fire damage,and opened it. “Inside the side pocket was a diamond and sapphirenecklace worth $400,000.” 

9. Maid in the Library Onepolicyholder had become convinced that her housekeeper had damageda 12-piece collection of paintings by a very prominent artist.

“The person believed that their housekeeper had taken differentpainting and artistic utensils and changed the original paintingsby the artist,” explains Straughan. “But because fine art is welldocumented, we were able to compare the works in the policyholder'spossession with images from the artist's catalogue and note that,in fact, no changes had been made.”

So much for implicating the maid as a suspect.

10. May Cause … Growth One ofthe more unusual claims that Gregory Vallie, director of casualtyclaims for Burns & Wilcox, encountered in his career didn'tinvolve a loss—in fact, it involved a gain.

A young man sued a nutrition center after he developed breastsfrom taking a banned substance from China that was being sold atthe center.

“The USDA had taken that particular product off the market, and[the nutrition center] failed to do that,” says Vallie. “Theproduct contained an anabolic steroid, and he developed 'manboobs.'”