By Miles Layton
PLYMOUTH — A member of the Plymouth Town Council says her home became unsafe to live in after water damage struck in 2022 — and that her insurance company took nearly two years to even take a real look at the problem.
Donsenia Teel has filed a lawsuit against Homesite and GEICO-affiliated insurance companies, claiming they dragged their feet on her homeowners insurance claim for so long that she was eventually forced to move out of her own home.
Lawsuit and photos of the damages appear at the end of this story. Check out the photos — wow!
Donsenia, I hope everything works out for you.
According to the complaint, filed Feb. 25 in Washington County Superior Court, Teel had a homeowner’s policy through GEICO that was underwritten by Homesite Insurance Company. She says she first reported water intrusion damage around July 13, 2022. The case has since been moved to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
Teel says the water damage got progressively worse — warped floors, pest problems, mold risk, and plumbing damage — but that the insurance companies kept failing to act, even as she repeatedly flagged how serious the situation had become.
She says she had no choice but to keep living in those conditions for about 22 months, finally leaving the home on May 5, 2024. By then, she says, she’d racked up significant expenses just trying to keep a roof over her head and start fixing the damage herself.
The lawsuit lays out a timeline that Teel’s attorneys argue shows the company slow-walked her claim at every turn:
- Homesite didn’t send its first repair estimate until Jan. 27, 2023 — six months after she reported the damage — and Teel says that estimate lowballed what the repairs would actually cost.
- She claims the company’s own estimator saw the warped floors and structural problems in person, but somehow left them out of the written report.
- With no real settlement offer coming, Teel says she ended up hiring her own contractors and doing her own investigation into the damage — work she argues the insurers should have done themselves.
- A second inspection didn’t happen until Aug. 12, 2024 — more than two years after she first reported the problem — and Teel says that estimate still didn’t capture the full damage.
- Her lawyer sent a formal demand letter in February 2025. Homesite reportedly said its investigation was still “ongoing,” then denied her loss-of-use claim outright on June 20, 2025.
Teel argues she held up her end of the policy the whole time, while the companies knowingly delayed her claim, undervalued the damage, and prioritized their bottom line over their obligations to her.
Her lawsuit brings four legal claims: breach of contract, bad-faith refusal to settle, violation of North Carolina’s unfair claims settlement practices law, and unfair and deceptive trade practices. She’s seeking more than $25,000 in damages, plus additional damages, attorney’s fees, court costs, interest — and a jury trial.
The case is now pending in federal court. The insurance companies deny any wrongdoing and are fighting the claims. It’s worth noting that nothing in the lawsuit has been proven in court — these are Teel’s allegations, and the companies dispute them.
That said, we’ve all dealt with insurance companies…
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One response to “Plymouth Council Member Sues Insurers Over Years-Long Delay in Water Damage Claim”
A lot of folks do not realize this, but all should remember–with any insurance problems in NC, the 1st step is to contact the NC Dept of Insurance, “NCDOI” and file an online claim concerning the Insurance company, with details, documentation. We did that with a State Farm situation about our roof in Orange county NC– in TWO DAYS, SF paid the entire huge claim. I was amazed.