CertainTeed Fiberglass Horizon Shingle Settlement

Who Is Eligible?

You may be eligible to file a claim if you:

• The class is every individual or entity that owns a building in the United States on which the shingles were installed between 1995 and 2010, and that is eligible for relief under the limited warranty covering those shingles.
• Fiberglass only. The settlement defines “Shingles” as Horizon brand asphalt fiberglass roofing shingles manufactured by CertainTeed until 2009, and states in terms that the organic Horizon line is not covered or part of the agreement. Same brand name, different product, different case.
• Ownership is tested on the day you file, not on the day the roof went on. You need proof you own the building when the claim is submitted, or a valid assignment of the claim to you.
• Trade buyers are carved out unless it is their own roof. Builders, developers, contractors, installers, wholesalers and suppliers are excluded, except where the shingles sit on their personal residence or their own commercial building.
• Five categories of claim are already spent. You cannot claim where a court resolved the matter, where you signed a release, where CertainTeed or an insurer already paid you and the check cleared, where you received replacement shingles from anyone, or where you previously made a warranty claim and signed a release for it.
• A spent claim on one roof does not spend the others. You may still claim for shingles that were not the subject of the earlier resolved claim, and nothing in the agreement reduces warranty rights on anything it does not resolve.
• Installation errors are a live defense. If CertainTeed decides bad installation predominantly caused the damage, it denies that part of the claim, though you get a proper chance to rebut the evidence.

How Much Can You Get?

There is no settlement fund. This is a claims-made settlement that CertainTeed administers and pays itself, so nothing is divided between claimants and no pro-rata reduction applies.

Material reimbursement is $40.00 per square of replacement area. A square is a unit of roof measurement: a 10-foot by 10-foot patch, or 100 square feet.

How much roof counts depends on a 5% test. If qualifying damage covers more than 5% of a roof plane, the replacement area is the whole of that plane. At 5% or less, it is limited to the individual shingles actually showing damage. A roof with scattered damage across several planes is therefore worth far more than the same number of damaged shingles clustered in one spot.

Then the proration bites. Reimbursement is reduced month by month: at 1/384 per month for roofs whose warranty term is now 30 years, and 1/444 per month for those now at 35 years. Those are 32-year and 37-year schedules. A roof fitted in 1998 has already run most of its schedule, so the cash left is small.

Shingles that were never applied to a roof earn no material reimbursement at all.

The extended warranty may be worth more than the check. Eligible claimants get five additional years of coverage from CertainTeed, taking 25-year warranties to 30 years and 30-year warranties to 35, measured from installation.

One provision protects people who were previously lowballed. If you made a warranty claim before or during the litigation and CertainTeed put a written cash offer in front of you that you did not accept, it now pays the greater of that old offer or the settlement calculation.

Class counsel were paid directly by CertainTeed. Their fees do not come out of anything paid to claimants.

How to File Your Claim

File with the administrator:

• Ignore the Submit Claim button on the settlement website. It returns a page saying the deadline has passed, which is wrong for this settlement and would stop you filing three and a half years early. That page belongs to the notice administrator, whose job ended after the approval hearing.
• Claims go to CertainTeed by post. The agreement requires a Claims Package sent to CertainTeed by US Mail or another delivery service, and it must be received by 6 p.m. on the final day of the claims period.
• Get the claim form from the Important Documents page of the settlement website, which carries a full claim form and a shorter abbreviated one. You can also request one on 1-833-797-1001 or by emailing FiberHZ@saint-gobain.com, or write to CertainTeed Roofing, Horizon Settlement Administrator, 805 W. 5th Street, Suite 7, Lansdale, PA 19446.
• Take a shingle off the roof. Product identity and installation date have to be proved, and a full shingle sample is the default evidence. CertainTeed may accept photos, original purchase documents or other proof of installation date instead, but it can insist on the sample and reject a claim that cannot identify the product.
• Photograph the roof properly, because the rules are specific. One or more shots from far enough back to show the whole structure and the roof plane, then at least two close photos of every shingle you are claiming for, and a note of exactly where each photo was taken.
• Prove you own the building now. Ownership is tested on the filing date, so a deed, tax record or similar goes in the package alongside the installation date and the quantity of shingles claimed.
• Add anything that helps. Reports from building professionals, engineers or insurance adjusters are expressly welcome as additional evidence.
• Keep the 2 March 2030 date in mind rather than rushing. The proration clock runs against you every month, so a claim filed sooner is worth more than the same claim filed in 2029.

Frequently Asked Questions