Digital Images Destroyed by Fire

April 4, 2011

I have a total loss fire being handled under an all risk policy. A portion of the claim is for $3,755 worth of digital images that were stored in the computer.

We paid to replace the computer but would we owe anything for the stored photos? They are not recoverable as they were not backed up. How do you place a value on this if it is covered?

Arizona Subscriber

There is no coverage for this type of property on the standard ISO commercial property form. There is an additional coverage for electronic data, but, provided these files could be categorized as electronic data, the provision stipulates that if the electronic data cannot be replaced or restored, the loss will be valued at the cost of the replacement of the media on which the media was stored. The replacement would be blank media of substantially identical type. Since you paid to replace the computer, which is the media on which the images were stored, there is not any other recovery available for this loss.