Suit-Limitation Clauses in Property Insurance—File Fast or Lose Everything

Few things send shivers down a policyholder’s spine faster than discovering that an otherwise valid claim has been sunk by a missed filing deadline. That is exactly what happened in a case decided last week, The Renaissance on Memorial, L.L.C. v. Travelers Casualty Insurance Company of America. ¹ The property owner sued three and a half years after an April 2020 hailstorm, arguing that continued back-and-forth adjustment with Travelers should excuse the delay. The court disagreed and tossed both the breach of contract and bad faith counts as untimely. ?

Travelers’ Motion for Summary Judgment relied on the standard “Legal Action Against Us” clause that required any lawsuit to be filed within two years of the physical loss. Renaissance missed that window by eighteen months. To avoid summary judgment, Renaissance argued in its response that Travelers kept the claim alive through a 2022 re-inspection and a pair of 2023 e-mails that invited more information. Those gestures, Renaissance said, “lulled” it into believing payment was still on the table and therefore waived or tolled the contractual limitation.

The judge was not persuaded. He began by stressing that waiver or estoppel must be based on the insurer’s conduct before the contractual deadline expires. Conduct that happens later, no matter how encouraging, “will not be considered” when deciding whether the limitation period was waived.? Because all of Travelers’ alleged lulling gestures occurred after April 22, 2022, the day the two-year clock ran out, they were legally irrelevant.

The court then turned to what Travelers actually did before the deadline: it investigated, paid two checks totaling about $107,000, and went silent. Under Oklahoma law, silence is not waiver. As the opinion explains, once an insurer pays what it believes is owed and stops negotiating, the absence of a formal claim “denial” or file-closure letter does not extend the suit-limitation period. ? Unless the carrier is actively promising more money or otherwise assuring the insured that litigation is unnecessary, the clock keeps ticking.

With the contract claim barred, the bad faith tort claim fared no better. Oklahoma applies a two-year statute of limitations that begins when the insured “could have maintained the action to a successful conclusion.” Because Travelers’ final payment and valuation letter arrived in December 2020, the cause of action accrued then. Renaissance’s 2023 complaint was, therefore, late—and no amount of later correspondence could change that. ?

Most property insurance policies impose their own private filing deadlines that are shorter than state statutes of limitations.  If a state upholds these standard clauses, missing those deadlines is fatal. Hoping that a friendly adjuster’s post-deadline e-mail or a courtesy re-inspection will save the day is often, as this case shows, wishful thinking.

The first lesson is for public adjusters and policyholders to mark the suit-limitation date. If you are a public adjuster, remind your client (and remind yourself with great claims software like ClaimWizard) that the countdown is tied to the date of loss, not the date of claim submission or payment. If there is any chance negotiations will drag on, see an attorney and request a written tolling agreement from the carrier before the contract’s deadline arrives.

Second, don’t confuse silence with cooperation. Once an insurer issues its coverage determination and cuts a check, treat the limitation clock as running full speed unless the company expressly says otherwise in writing. Inviting additional documents “subject to a complete reservation of rights,” as Travelers did here, is not enough. Courts may view that language as maintaining, not waiving, the limitation of suit defense.

The Renaissance decision is a reminder that insurance disputes often turn on procedural traps rather than the merits of the loss. Staying vigilant about suit-limitation clauses protects both policyholders and the professionals who serve them from finding that a good claim has slipped away by the mere passage of time. Calendaring deadlines is a crucial process for claims handling.

Thought For The Day

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage.”
—Dale Carnegie

¹ The Renaissance on Memorial v. Travelers Cas. Ins. Co. of America, No. 23-cv-472, 2025 WL 1194998 (N.D. Okla. Apr. 24, 2025).