PHILADELPHIA (LN) — A federal judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted default judgment to Selective Insurance Company of the Southeast, rescinding a commercial policy issued to All Best Contractors Corporation after the company provided false contact information on its application and refused to participate in any stage of the litigation. Judge Karen Marston signed the opinion on May 6, 2026.
Marston held that All Best breached the policy's cooperation clause by supplying a phone number that was eventually blocked, an email address that was later disabled, and a mailing address — 1403 Greeby Street in Philadelphia — that turned out to have no connection to the company or its listed president, Abdulkadir Bana.
The insurer learned of the first underlying suit, a negligence action filed by Joseph and Bonni DiRenzi, on February 5, 2024, roughly a month after All Best was joined as a defendant. A second suit followed: Administrator David Birnbaum, representing the estate of Fabiano Da Silva Gomes, alleged that a worker fell four stories through an unguarded drywall ceiling at a job site where All Best or one of its alleged alter ego companies was the framing contractor.
Between February and July 2024, Selective made more than a dozen in-person visits to at least seven addresses in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, hired three private investigators, and sent certified mail and emails to every contact on file. The phone number listed on the application was blocked after the first call. Certified letters to the Greeby Street address came back unclaimed. A second address on file — 6 Lindbergh Avenue in Warren, New Jersey — was returned as undeliverable. The registered agent address All Best filed with the New Jersey Secretary of State, listed as 5332 Route 130 North in Bordentown, New Jersey, did not exist.
When a private investigator reached someone purporting to be Bana at a second number, that individual claimed he had never lived or operated a business in Pennsylvania or New Jersey and had never worked in contracting. A resident at 3244 Ryan Avenue in Philadelphia — an address associated with All Best's rumored manager, Carlos Fabricante — told investigators she had been receiving mail there for All Best and Fabricante for years, and that people had been showing up at her door looking for them.
The Gomes action complaint alleged that the principal behind All Best — identified there as Adriano de Souza — routinely created and dissolved entities for the sole purpose of obtaining certificates of insurance, then used those certificates to win construction contracts staffed by Brazilian immigrant workers placed in unsafe conditions. According to the complaint, the deceased had been an employee of All Best or one of the alleged alter ego companies when he fell four stories through an unguarded drywall ceiling while working as a framer.
Marston held that all three elements of rescission were satisfied: the contact information on the application was false, the misrepresentations were made knowingly or in bad faith, and they were material because Selective relies on that information to investigate claims and secure cooperation in litigation. The court also held that the three Chamberlain factors — prejudice to the plaintiff, absence of a litigable defense, and culpable conduct by the defendant — weighed in favor of default judgment.
Selective settled both underlying state court actions — the DiRenzi matter before the April 15, 2026 default judgment hearing, and the Gomes matter at that hearing — mooting its declaratory judgment claims. The insurer detailed the concrete harm All Best's disappearance caused in the DiRenzi matter: fact discovery closed without All Best's participation, prior defense counsel withdrew mid-case due to the lack of cooperation, and Selective was forced to settle at mediation for substantially more than it otherwise would have had to pay in order to protect All Best's interests and avoid a trial with an empty chair.
The Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office is investigating allegations of fraudulent activity related to All Best, according to the court's opinion.