How One Florida Engineer Tried to Blow the Whistle on Plaintiffs’ Expert Witnesses

He’s been called a “do-gooder,” a “troublemaker” and a whistleblower. And he may be the best friend the Florida property insurance industry has.

A mechanical engineer based in Edgewater, George Miles has filed formal complaints with the Florida Board of Professional Engineers against no fewer than 12 other engineers, alleging that all of them have committed fraud by making false assertions for plaintiffs in insurance claims litigation.

The assertions include a questioned wind-acceleration theory; claims that widespread rust on a metal roof happened overnight during a storm; that heavy tile and concrete roofs were damaged by relatively minor winds; multiple examples of wear and tear that the plaintiffs’ witnesses said came from storms; inspection reports made without on-site inspections; and even what Miles said was tomato paste smeared on a ceiling in an attempt to show staining from a roof leak.

“For me, it’s about stopping the fraud and deceit,” said Miles, age 51, who has testified for or drafted inspection reports for insurance defense attorneys as well as for plaintiffs’ lawyers. “It’s about morals and ethics in engineering.”

Miles said that in recent years, he has investigated 25 to 30 insurance claims per month. And, he argues, 95% of them were fraudulent.

“We’ve heard so much about what’s causing the insurance crisis in Florida,” said Miles, who has seen the premiums on his own stately home more than double in recent years. “But it’s not the hurricanes. It’s not the wind. It’s the fraud. I’ve seen it over and over again.”

Insurance companies have long complained about a flood of unnecessary litigation and suspected fraud in claims. They have blamed unscrupulous roof contractors, a few public adjusters and even some homeowners for exaggerating or falsifying damage. But few carriers, if any, have taken the step of seeking disciplinary action against plaintiffs’ expert witnesses.

So far, the Florida Board of Professional Engineers has investigated Miles’ complaints but has declined to discipline any engineers, although it sent a letter of guidance to one of the accused. Miles, head of Alligator Consulting Engineers since 2018, recently filed two new complaints. The board is expected to release its findings on those cases sometime in September.

Perhaps the highest-profile complaint was made against Grant Renne, an engineer in Port Orange and one of the most prolific expert witnesses in Florida in recent years. Renne, in business for 34 years, said he has worked in more than 8,000 property insurance disputes in his career, mostly for plaintiffs.

In some 2,000 civil trials, Renne said, his testimony has been disallowed only a handful of times.

One of Renne’s frequent and most contentious assertions in claims disputes is that storm winds can speed up – as much as 2.5 times – as they move over the roof of a structure, causing more damage than would be expected from weather-service-recorded wind speeds in the area. Renne’s reports have given credence to many claims of wind damage that Miles and insurance lawyers say are the result of nothing more than age and wear and tear.

“It’s completely wrong,” Miles said. “There’s no proof that his view is correct.”

Renne’s hypothesis, known as the “longer-path” or “wind up-speed” theory, employs an interpretation of the famous Bernoulli’s Principle, which was first posited in the 1700s. The principle has been cited to explain how airplane wings create lift, but it continues to be the subject of some debate.

When asked about his theory, Renne told Insurance Journal that it is supported by a number of academic studies, including one by University of Florida engineering Professor Forrest Masters.

Renne, known for his combative nature and pithy remarks in lawsuit depositions, also cautioned about trying to understand the science of it all.

“These are pretty complicated things for insurance people,” Renne said in a recent telephone interview.

Other engineers have said the evidence is not so complicated but has been misused by Renne. One of the studies Renne leans on, in fact, was recently used to disqualify him from testifying as an expert witness.

“The papers I co-authored with Dr. Masters, and Mr. Renne refers to in his testimony, have no reasonable bearing on whether a storm has caused damage to a roof,” engineering Professor Kurtis Gurley wrote in an affidavit in an Orange County claims lawsuit in July.

Yes, the wind can speed up in a storm as it climbs over the roof of a structure, but only under certain circumstances, Gurley noted.

“Mr. Renne’s method does not appear to consider the direction of the peak wind speed relative to the building,” the professor wrote.

Miles argued that data show that the wind is amplified only in small areas near the hips and ridges of roofs – not across an entire structure as he believes Renne has asserted. Miles maintains that if Renne’s idea held water, wind speeds over roofs would be off the charts, and no strutures could be built to withstand the force. Miles gave this example: If the southern tip of Florida is in a wind-velocity building zone that can expect hurricane winds of 140 mph, Renne’s theory would mean that roofs in the area would actually experience winds as high as 300 mph in a storm.

“That’s an EF-6 tornado,” Miles said. “Nothing can stand up to that.”

In another claims lawsuit, Citizens Property Insurance Corp. took issue with Renne’s theory. In a 2023 motion to strike Renne as an expert in a Miami-Dade dispute, Citizens’ lawyers argued that Renne had cited a NASA document about Bernoulli’s Principle but had conveniently left out a key caveat.

“As the Court will note, Mr. Renne removed the part of the chart that says, ‘Incorrect Theory #1,'” reads the motion by attorney Bradley Trushin. “Not only did Mr. Renne apply airplane science to a property, but he actually applied incorrect airplane science to a property.”

For his part, the 61-year-old Renne, of YAS Consultants, a consulting engineering firm, contends that his critics have it all wrong. Miles, in particular, is not qualified to know of which he speaks.

“He has a mechanical engineering degree, not civil engineering,” Renne told Insurance Journal.

Structural engineering, perhaps most relevant to roof and other structure damage claims, is a subcategory of civil engineering. Renne’s curriculum vita shows Renne holds a civil engineering degree from Auburn University.

Miles acknowledged his M.E. degree from San Francisco State University and the fact that he also has worked as a wastewater engineer. But he argues that he has done extensive research, testing, as well as scouring of academic and engineering studies on the effects of wind and water on structures.

And Miles is not the only engineer that has questioned Renne’s wind-speed assertions.

In one recent claim lawsuit in Martin County, Florida, filed against Tower Hill Prime Insurance, a Texas-based engineer reviewed a transcript of Renne’s deposition in the case.

“It was a lot of nonsense, to put it in a nice way,” said Kifle Gulilat, a licensed structural and forensic engineer.

Topics Florida