By Jeffrey T. Donner, Esq.

August 21, 2026

Marine insurance occupies an unusual place in American insurance law. A dispute arising from damage to a yacht, a marina, a dock, a marine construction project, cargo, or a commercial vessel may look superficially like an ordinary insurance coverage case, but the resemblance can be misleading. Marine insurance is governed by an overlapping combination of federal admiralty law, state insurance law, contractual choice-of-law provisions, specialized statutes governing wet marine and surplus-lines insurance, and longstanding maritime doctrines that have no real counterpart in an ordinary commercial general liability or property policy.

The threshold questions consequently may be as important as the conventional coverage questions. Before deciding whether a loss falls within an insuring agreement, whether an exclusion applies, or whether an insured breached a warranty, counsel frequently must determine what kind of insurance is actually involved, whether the policy is a maritime contract, whether an established federal maritime rule governs the disputed issue, whether the policy contains an enforceable choice-of-law provision, and which provisions of Florida’s Insurance Code apply to the particular coverage. The answers can determine whether an insurer must prove a connection between an alleged policy violation and the loss, whether a misrepresentation can void the policy from inception, whether Florida’s claims-administration statutes apply, whether an unauthorized insurer must post security to defend litigation, whether FIGA protection exists after an insolvency, and whether attorney’s fees may be available in a coverage action.

Recent cases have made this analytical sequence increasingly important. The Eleventh Circuit’s decisions in Travelers Property Casualty Co. of America v. Ocean Reef Charters LLC, 996 F.3d 1161 (11th Cir. 2021), and 71 F.4th 894 (11th Cir. 2023), gave renewed significance to Florida’s statutory prohibition against denying wet-marine claims based merely on technical policy violations. The Eleventh Circuit’s litigation in Serendipity at Sea, LLC v. Underwriters at Lloyd’s of London, 56 F.4th 1280 (11th Cir. 2023), followed by an unpublished second appeal in 2024, demonstrated both sides of that statute: the insured was entitled to a factual determination of whether its breach increased the hazard, but the insurer ultimately prevailed when it proved that proposition at trial. The Supreme Court then substantially changed the choice-of-law analysis in Great Lakes Insurance SE v. Raiders Retreat Realty Co., LLC, 601 U.S. 65 (2024), by holding that maritime choice-of-law provisions are presumptively enforceable under federal maritime law. More recently, Knight v. Markel American Insurance Co., No. 2:24-cv-00592-JES-NPM (M.D. Fla. Oct. 3, 2025), and Accelerant Specialty Insurance Co. v. Zubigaray, No. 24-cv-23401-ALTMAN (S.D. Fla. May 16, 2026), illustrate how these principles are now being applied by federal courts in Florida.

The result is a body of law in which terminology matters, but labels alone do not. A policy issued through an “Ocean Marine” department is not necessarily wet marine in every respect. A liability endorsement attached to a marine policy may implicate another statutory classification. A Florida loss may be governed by New York law. An undisputed violation of a marine warranty may be immaterial to coverage in one case and dispositive in another. And a policy violation that would ordinarily be evaluated under Florida’s anti-technical statute may instead be governed by an entrenched federal maritime doctrine if the dispute concerns material misrepresentations made in procuring the insurance.

For practitioners, marine businesses, vessel owners, contractors, associations, insurers, and brokers, these are not abstract distinctions. They can determine the result of a substantial coverage dispute before the parties ever reach the more familiar questions of damages and causation.

Marine Insurance and Wet Marine Insurance Are Not the Same Statutory Category

Florida defines marine insurance broadly. Section 624.607(1), Florida Statutes, encompasses insurance against loss or damage involving vessels, craft, cargo, freight, transportation risks, certain transportation instrumentalities, and related interests. The statute extends beyond vessels themselves. Among other things, its definition includes specified bridges, tunnels, piers, wharves, docks, slips, dry docks, marine railways, and other aids to navigation and transportation, subject to the statutory language concerning the risks insured.

Section 624.607(1)(b) separately defines marine protection and indemnity insurance, generally known as P&I coverage. P&I insurance encompasses insurance against loss, damage, expense, or legal liability arising out of or incident to the ownership, operation, chartering, maintenance, use, repair, or construction of a vessel, craft, or instrumentality used in ocean or inland waterways. The statutory definition expressly includes liability for personal injury, illness, death, and damage to another person’s property.

Florida then defines the narrower category of “wet marine and transportation insurance” in section 624.607(2). That category consists of specified portions of marine insurance, including insurance on vessels, craft and hulls; marine builders’ risks and marine war risks; contracts of marine protection and indemnity insurance; certain freight and disbursement interests; and specified personal property in the course of export, import, coastwise transportation, or transportation on inland waters.

The distinction is critical. The Florida Legislature did not provide that every form of “marine insurance” is automatically “wet marine and transportation insurance.” Rather, wet marine is a defined subset of the broader marine-insurance category. Thus, the fact that a policy involves water, a marine business, a dock, a vessel, or a waterfront project cannot substitute for analysis of the statutory definitions and the actual coverage involved.

That distinction can become especially important in disputes involving marine contractors, dock builders, diving operations, marinas, waterfront contractors, and policies combining several forms of commercial coverage. A policy may have an ocean-marine title and nevertheless contain coverage that also qualifies as casualty, employer-liability, property, or some other kind of insurance. Conversely, a policy that does not resemble a conventional yacht policy may nevertheless contain true marine P&I or builders’-risk coverage.

Florida expressly anticipated this overlap. Section 624.601 provides that the statutory definitions of insurance are not mutually exclusive. A particular coverage may fall within two or more statutory definitions, and classification under one definition does not prevent classification under another definition that also reasonably encompasses the coverage. That provision is central to two Florida appellate decisions that remain important in modern marine coverage litigation: Florida Insurance Guaranty Ass’n v. Pilings & Structures, Inc., 616 So. 2d 532 (Fla. 1st DCA 1993), and Indemnity Casualty & Property, Ltd. v. Hunter, 752 So. 2d 658 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000).

Pilings & Structures: Courts Examine the Actual Coverage, Not Merely the Maritime Setting

In Florida Insurance Guaranty Ass’n v. Pilings & Structures, Inc., an employee was injured while working as a diver from a barge owned by his employer. The employer carried a workers’ compensation and employer’s-liability policy containing a maritime coverage endorsement. After the insurer became insolvent, the employee asserted a Jones Act claim against his employer, which sought defense expenses from FIGA. 616 So. 2d at 532-33.

FIGA contended that the maritime endorsement constituted ocean marine or wet marine insurance and therefore fell outside the guaranty association statute. The First District rejected that characterization. Reading the endorsement together with the entire policy, the court concluded that the coverage was properly understood as an extension of employer’s-liability insurance addressing injuries to specified maritime employees rather than a true marine P&I policy. Id. at 534.

The court also supplied an alternative rationale with broader importance. Even if the endorsement could qualify as marine P&I insurance, and therefore as wet marine insurance, section 624.601 permitted it simultaneously to qualify as workers’ compensation and employer’s-liability insurance, a form of casualty insurance. The classifications were not mutually exclusive. Id. at 534-35.

The precise FIGA result in Pilings & Structures must be read in light of later statutory amendments. Current section 631.52 expressly excludes ocean marine and wet marine insurance from the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association Act and now separately excludes workers’ compensation, including claims under employer-liability coverage. Thus, Pilings & Structures should not be cited today for the proposition that the same employer-liability risk necessarily falls within modern FIGA protection.

Its classification analysis, however, remains significant. The decision rejects the assumption that an endorsement becomes wet marine simply because the underlying activity occurs on or around navigable water. The proper inquiry concerns the substance of what the insurer agreed to insure. That methodology becomes even more important when a package policy contains a mixture of marine and nonmarine coverage.

Hunter: A Policy Can Be Wet Marine in One Respect and Casualty Insurance in Another

The Third District confronted a related problem in Indemnity Casualty & Property, Ltd. v. Hunter, 752 So. 2d 658 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000). The facts involved a parasailing accident. When the tow rope separated from the towing vessel, Tommy Hunter grabbed the loose tow line while attempting to rescue the parasailer. He was lifted into the air, fell, and sustained serious injuries, although he successfully rescued the parasailer. The parasailing operator’s insurer denied coverage and refused to defend. The operator eventually agreed to a $750,000 judgment and assigned its insurance-related claims to the Hunters. Id. at 659.

The insurer was unauthorized in Florida. Section 626.908 generally requires an unauthorized insurer subject to Florida’s Unauthorized Insurers Process Law to obtain authority to transact insurance or post sufficient security before defending certain litigation. The insurer argued, however, that the policy was wet marine and transportation insurance and therefore came within the statutory exemption in section 626.912.

The Third District did not simply accept the policy’s marine characterization. The contract included marine P&I coverage, but it also contained a specific parasailing endorsement. The majority concluded that the endorsement added specialized liability insurance for the parasailing activity and constituted casualty coverage in addition to the marine insurance contained elsewhere in the policy. Because section 624.601 expressly permits overlapping classifications, the court held that the wet-marine exemption could not automatically be extended to the separate liability component. Hunter, 752 So. 2d at 660-61.

Judge Cope dissented. His reasoning highlights a legitimate tension in the statutory scheme. Because Florida’s definition of P&I insurance itself includes liability for personal injuries arising from vessel operations, he reasoned that adding coverage for boat-towed parasailing did not necessarily transform the underlying P&I coverage into a separate species of casualty insurance. Id. at 661-62 (Cope, J., dissenting).

The majority opinion nevertheless supplies an important rule for modern practice. The lawyer examining an “Ocean Marine Liability,” marine contractor, P&I, yacht, or other specialized policy should not treat the policy title as dispositive of every endorsement and every risk. The classification inquiry may need to be made at the coverage level rather than at the policy level.

That can matter greatly in a mixed-coverage case. An exclusion from the Florida Insurance Code applicable to true wet-marine coverage does not necessarily follow an unrelated casualty endorsement merely because both appear between the same policy covers. Conversely, a policyholder cannot avoid the consequences of genuine wet-marine status merely by identifying some other incidental feature of the policy. The inquiry remains tied to the particular coverage implicated by the claim.

Why Classification Matters Under Chapter 627

The immediate reason classification matters is section 627.401(3), Florida Statutes. That provision states that Part II of Chapter 627—the portion of the Insurance Code governing insurance contracts—generally does not apply to wet marine and transportation insurance. The Legislature has expressly preserved only two Part II provisions for wet-marine coverage: sections 627.409 and 627.420.

That statutory architecture has consequences that are sometimes overlooked because lawyers accustomed to ordinary Florida liability and property policies naturally reach for familiar insurance statutes. For example, section 627.4137, which generally requires disclosure of liability-insurance information following a qualifying written request, is located in Part II. It is not one of the provisions preserved for wet marine insurance by section 627.401(3). If the coverage actually involved is true wet marine and transportation insurance, section 627.4137 therefore cannot simply be assumed to apply in the same manner that it ordinarily applies to conventional liability coverage.

The same issue arises with section 627.426, Florida’s Claims Administration Statute. Section 627.426 is likewise located in Part II and is not one of the two statutory provisions expressly preserved by section 627.401(3). Thus, the reservation-of-rights and claims-administration framework familiar from ordinary Florida liability litigation should not be transplanted into a genuine wet-marine dispute without first addressing section 627.401.

This is precisely where Hunter and Pilings & Structures become practically important rather than merely historical. The threshold question is not simply whether the policy has a marine title. If the actual coverage generating the dispute is also casualty or another non-wet-marine form of insurance, a different statutory analysis may follow. The text, endorsements, insured risk, and nature of the claim all matter.

The statutory scheme also illustrates why a request for policy information in a marine dispute should be drafted with some care. Counsel may request documents and information contractually, through ordinary claims communications, through applicable statutory provisions outside Part II, or ultimately through discovery if litigation becomes necessary. But it is a mistake to assume that every disclosure mechanism available in an ordinary Florida liability case necessarily governs a true wet-marine policy.

As of August 2026, the operative language of section 627.401(3) continues to preserve only sections 627.409 and 627.420 for wet marine and transportation insurance. The Florida Legislature considered House Bill 1269 during the 2026 session, which would have amended section 627.401 to add a proposed section 627.4275 to the wet-marine exceptions in connection with attorney’s fees. HB 1269 died in the House Civil Justice & Claims Subcommittee on March 13, 2026. It therefore did not change the governing law.

Florida’s Anti-Technical Statute: Section 627.409(2)

The most important Part II provision expressly preserved for wet marine insurance is section 627.409. Subsection (2) provides that a breach or violation by the insured of a warranty, condition, or provision of a wet marine or transportation insurance policy, contract, endorsement, or application does not void the policy or constitute a defense to the loss unless the breach or violation “increased the hazard by any means within the control of the insured.”

This provision is frequently described as Florida’s marine anti-technical statute. The description is useful so long as it is not misunderstood. Section 627.409(2) does not make marine warranties unenforceable. It prevents forfeiture of coverage based merely upon a technical violation that did not satisfy the statutory increased-hazard requirement.

Florida courts recognized the purpose of the provision long before the recent Eleventh Circuit cases. In Pickett v. Woods, 404 So. 2d 1152 (Fla. 5th DCA 1981), the Fifth District explained that the statute prevents an insurer from avoiding coverage because of a technical omission having no meaningful role in the loss. In Eastern Insurance Co. v. Austin, 396 So. 2d 823 (Fla. 4th DCA 1981), the Fourth District considered the statutory meaning of “hazard” and focused upon danger to the insured vessel itself.

Eastern Insurance is instructive. The policy insured a yacht for noncommercial use. The owner had occasionally sold excess fish caught aboard the vessel, and the insurer argued that this activity violated the policy and increased the hazard. The yacht subsequently sank during a storm. The court rejected the insurer’s effort to connect the occasional fish sales to the sinking because the alleged commercial activity did not increase the danger to the vessel that produced the loss. Id. at 825.

The Eleventh Circuit applied the same principle in Windward Traders, Ltd. v. Fred S. James & Co. of New York, 855 F.2d 814 (11th Cir. 1988). There, the insured had failed to notify the underwriters of the vessel’s location as required by the policy. The Eleventh Circuit concluded that the notification failure itself did not increase the hazard and plainly played no role in the casualty. Importantly, the court did not decide every separate policy issue presented by the vessel’s location; its holding concerning section 627.409(2) was directed to the particular notification breach before it.

The distinction is important. Section 627.409(2) calls for an issue-specific inquiry. Counsel should identify the precise warranty or condition allegedly violated, the manner in which it was violated, the hazard that allegedly increased, the role of circumstances within the insured’s control, and the connection between those matters and the claimed loss.

The Federal Maritime Overlay: Wilburn Boat

Marine insurance is not simply Florida insurance law applied to vessels. A marine insurance contract is generally a maritime contract, and federal admiralty law therefore supplies the initial framework. The modern starting point remains the Supreme Court’s decision in Wilburn Boat Co. v. Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co., 348 U.S. 310 (1955).

Wilburn Boat involved alleged breaches of warranties contained in a marine insurance policy. The Supreme Court declined to create a uniform federal maritime rule governing the warranties at issue. Instead, it held that when there is no established federal maritime rule controlling a particular marine-insurance issue, state law may supply the rule of decision.

The resulting doctrine has never been entirely tidy. Admiralty law ordinarily values national uniformity, while Wilburn Boat permits state insurance law to govern important aspects of marine policies where federal maritime law has not developed an entrenched rule. The consequences can be significant because states differ substantially in their treatment of insurance warranties.

The important point for practitioners is that Wilburn Boat does not stand for the simplistic proposition that state law always governs marine insurance. The inquiry is more precise. A court asks whether an established federal maritime rule governs the particular issue. If one exists, federal maritime law controls. If no established rule exists, state law may fill the gap, subject now to the increasingly important effect of enforceable contractual choice-of-law provisions.

That issue-specific approach explains both the Ocean Reef warranty cases and the federal doctrine of uberrimae fidei. Captain-and-crew warranties did not have an entrenched federal maritime rule requiring strict compliance, according to the Eleventh Circuit. Material misrepresentations in applications for marine insurance, by contrast, implicate the established federal maritime doctrine of utmost good faith. Similar-looking disputes can therefore proceed under different substantive law.

Ocean Reef I: No Entrenched Federal Rule of Strict Compliance for Captain and Crew Warranties

The first Ocean Reef appeal is one of the most important recent decisions concerning Florida marine insurance. Travelers Property Casualty Co. of America v. Ocean Reef Charters LLC, 996 F.3d 1161 (11th Cir. 2021), involved a 92-foot Hatteras yacht destroyed during Hurricane Irma. The Travelers policy contained warranties concerning an approved full-time professional captain and crew. The insured had not complied with those provisions.

Travelers argued that federal maritime law required strict compliance with the warranties. Under that theory, the inquiry would largely end once the breach was established. The district court accepted Travelers’ position.

The Eleventh Circuit reversed. It examined whether there was an entrenched federal maritime rule requiring strict compliance with the captain and crew warranties and concluded that there was not. Because no established federal maritime rule governed those particular warranties, Wilburn Boat required application of state law, and Florida law supplied the governing rule. Ocean Reef, 996 F.3d at 1167-72.

That determination brought section 627.409(2) squarely into the case. The fact that Ocean Reef had breached a captain or crew warranty was not, by itself, sufficient to eliminate coverage. Travelers had to satisfy Florida’s statutory increased-hazard standard.

The significance of Ocean Reef I should not be overstated into a broader proposition that federal maritime law never strictly enforces marine warranties. That was not the holding. The court addressed the particular captain and crew warranties before it and determined that no entrenched federal rule governed those warranties. Marine-insurance analysis under Wilburn Boat remains issue-specific.

Nevertheless, Ocean Reef I materially changed the litigation. A dispute that appeared initially to present a straightforward question of contractual compliance became a factual dispute over what effect the absence of the required captain and crew had upon the vessel’s destruction during Hurricane Irma.

Serendipity at Sea: The Anti-Technical Statute Can Save a Claim, but It Can Also Defeat One

The Eleventh Circuit’s Serendipity at Sea litigation is particularly useful because its full procedural history illustrates both sides of section 627.409(2).

In Serendipity at Sea, LLC v. Underwriters at Lloyd’s of London Subscribing to Policy No. 187581, 56 F.4th 1280 (11th Cir. 2023), a yacht was destroyed by Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas. The policy contained a captain warranty, and the Eleventh Circuit concluded that the insured had breached it. That conclusion did not end the coverage analysis because Florida law required Lloyd’s to establish that the breach increased the hazard.

The district court initially granted summary judgment to Lloyd’s based substantially upon expert testimony supporting the insurer’s increased-hazard theory. The Eleventh Circuit reversed because the insured had presented evidence disputing facts underlying that expert’s opinions. Whether the captain-warranty breach increased the hazard therefore remained genuinely disputed. The appellate court emphasized that increased hazard ordinarily presents a factual question when competing evidence exists. Id. at 1289-90.

It would be incomplete, however, to stop the case history there. On remand, the district court conducted a bench trial. Lloyd’s presented testimony that a compliant full-time captain would have developed a hurricane evacuation plan, investigated haul-out alternatives and safer storage locations, perceived the developing risk early enough to act, and moved the vessel from the path of the storm. The district court credited that evidence and concluded that the absence of the required captain increased the hazard.

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed in an unpublished decision. Serendipity at Sea, LLC v. Underwriters at Lloyd’s of London Subscribing to Policy No. 187581, No. 23-13176 (11th Cir. June 4, 2024) (unpublished). Applying clear-error review to the factual findings following the bench trial, the court held that the district court permissibly found that a compliant captain would have prepared and acted differently and that those actions would have allowed the vessel to avoid the worst of the hurricane. The court therefore affirmed the conclusion that the breach increased the hazard and that denial of coverage under the captain warranty was appropriate.

The complete Serendipity history is more instructive than either appeal standing alone. Florida’s anti-technical statute does not excuse a proven warranty breach merely because causation is disputed. Instead, it requires the insurer to prove the additional statutory facts. The insured avoided summary judgment because the evidence was disputed, but the insurer ultimately prevailed when it proved increased hazard at trial.

The case also demonstrates the importance of expert preparation. In the second appeal, the Eleventh Circuit noted the district court’s reliance on experienced captain and meteorological testimony. The coverage dispute therefore turned not simply on policy wording but on evidence about hurricane planning, available alternatives, vessel movement, timing, and the conduct expected of a compliant professional captain.

Ocean Reef II: The Insurer Must Prove the Material Relationship to the Loss

The Ocean Reef case also returned to the Eleventh Circuit. In Travelers Property Casualty Co. of America v. Ocean Reef Charters LLC, 71 F.4th 894 (11th Cir. 2023), the court addressed whether Travelers had satisfied its burden under section 627.409(2).

Travelers’ general theory was intuitive: a yacht employing the professional captain and crew required by the policy would ordinarily be safer and better prepared for severe weather than a yacht without them. The difficulty was evidentiary. Section 627.409(2) required more than an abstract proposition that professional captains generally reduce maritime risk.

The Eleventh Circuit held that, under the circumstances before it, the policy breach needed a material relationship to the particular loss. Travelers had not presented sufficient competent evidence in its case in chief establishing what a compliant professional captain would have done differently before Hurricane Irma and how those actions would have materially affected the loss. The procedural treatment of the expert evidence was important to the outcome. Ocean Reef, 71 F.4th at 902-07.

The contrast with the ultimate result in Serendipity is instructive. The insurer in Ocean Reef failed to carry the necessary evidentiary burden concerning the effect of the captain-and-crew violation. Lloyd’s in Serendipity, after remand and trial, proved through evidence credited by the factfinder that a compliant captain would have materially altered the vessel’s hurricane preparation and location.

Those cases together provide a much more accurate understanding of Florida’s anti-technical statute than the general observation that Florida disfavors technical forfeitures. The statute creates an additional factual burden. Whether that burden can be met depends upon the evidence.

Knight v. Markel: Increased Hazard and Insured Control Are Separate Questions

The Middle District of Florida’s 2025 decision in Knight v. Markel American Insurance Co. adds another important dimension to the analysis. The case involved a yacht insured under a policy containing a windstorm haul-out requirement. The provision required the vessel to be removed from the water when a qualifying windstorm warning was issued. Hurricane Ian approached Southwest Florida, the vessel remained in the water, and it ultimately sank.

The insured did not merely contend that the warranty was irrelevant. He presented evidence that he had attempted to arrange haul-out service and had been unable to locate a facility willing and able to remove a vessel of that size once the storm approached. That factual background implicated both components of the statutory language in section 627.409(2).

In an October 3, 2025 summary-judgment order, the district court concluded that failure to remove the vessel from the water increased the hazard posed by Hurricane Ian as a matter of law. That determination did not completely resolve the statutory inquiry, however. The court concluded that a factual dispute remained over whether the noncompliance resulted from means within the insured’s control, given the evidence concerning the inability to secure a haul-out facility. Knight v. Markel American Insurance Co., No. 2:24-cv-00592-JES-NPM (M.D. Fla. Oct. 3, 2025).

Knight is a district-court decision and should not be treated as binding Eleventh Circuit precedent. It is nevertheless a useful contemporary application of the statutory text. The decision illustrates that “increased the hazard” and “within the control of the insured” are not necessarily one question. A breach may plainly increase physical risk while still leaving a factual dispute over the insured’s practical ability to comply.

The case also identifies important evidence that lawyers should preserve immediately in hurricane-related marine disputes. Communications with marinas, haul-out requests, waiting lists, hurricane plans, telephone logs, e-mails, facility capacities, communications with captains, and the timing of storm warnings may become substantive coverage evidence. By the time the dispute reaches litigation, witnesses’ memories concerning those details may already have deteriorated.

Great Lakes v. Raiders Retreat: Choice of Law Became an Antecedent Question

The Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Great Lakes Insurance SE v. Raiders Retreat Realty Co., LLC, 601 U.S. 65 (2024), substantially changed the practical order in which marine insurance issues should be analyzed.

Raiders Retreat’s vessel ran aground near Fort Lauderdale. Great Lakes denied the claim based upon an alleged violation involving the vessel’s fire-suppression system. The alleged violation had no obvious causal relationship to the grounding. The marine policy, however, contained a provision selecting New York law to govern disputes.

The policyholder sought to invoke Pennsylvania law and argued that Pennsylvania’s strong insurance public policy should override the contractual selection. The Third Circuit accepted the possibility of such an exception. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed.

The Supreme Court held that the enforceability of a choice-of-law clause in a maritime contract is itself governed by federal maritime law. Under that federal rule, maritime choice-of-law provisions are presumptively enforceable. Great Lakes, 601 U.S. at 69-78.

The Court recognized narrow exceptions. A chosen law cannot be enforced when doing so would contravene a controlling federal statute or established federal maritime policy, and the parties must have a reasonable basis for their selection. But the Court rejected a broad exception allowing the public policy of whichever state has the strongest connection to the dispute to override the parties’ contractual choice.

The Court also rejected the suggestion that Wilburn Boat created a general exception for insurance contracts. Wilburn Boat asks which substantive law fills a gap when no entrenched federal maritime rule governs an issue. Great Lakes held that there is an established federal maritime rule concerning the antecedent question of whether a maritime choice-of-law clause should be enforced.

The distinction is critical in Florida. Suppose a yacht is owned by a Florida entity, principally kept in Florida, and damaged in Florida. If the policy validly selects New York law, counsel cannot assume that Florida’s section 627.409(2) governs merely because Florida has the most obvious factual relationship to the insured and the casualty. The choice-of-law clause must be analyzed first.

That principle creates an important difference between Ocean Reef and more recent cases. Ocean Reef applied Florida law after determining that no entrenched federal maritime rule required strict compliance with the captain and crew warranties. After Great Lakes, however, a court must also consider whether the parties contractually selected a different state’s substantive law to fill that federal gap.

Wave Cruiser and the Eleventh Circuit’s Pre-Great Lakes Treatment of Contractual Choice

The Eleventh Circuit had already demonstrated its willingness to give effect to marine insurance choice-of-law clauses before the Supreme Court decided Raiders Retreat. In Great Lakes Insurance SE v. Wave Cruiser LLC, 36 F.4th 1346 (11th Cir. 2022), the court considered coverage for damage to a vessel’s engines under an all-risk marine policy.

The principal merits issue in Wave Cruiser concerned the insured’s burden to establish that an accidental external event brought the loss within an exception to an exclusion. In reaching the governing substantive rule, however, the Eleventh Circuit applied New York law pursuant to the marine policy’s choice-of-law provision after concluding that no established federal maritime rule controlled the particular burden question. Id. at 1352-55.

Thus, Wave Cruiser should not be reduced to a pure choice-of-law case; its central coverage holding concerned the burden associated with an exclusion and its exception. Nevertheless, its enforcement of the policy’s governing-law structure anticipated the broader rule later adopted by the Supreme Court. Indeed, the Supreme Court cited Wave Cruiser in Great Lakes as part of the federal appellate authority supporting presumptive enforcement of maritime choice-of-law clauses.

For Florida practitioners, the combined lesson of Wave Cruiser and Great Lakes is straightforward. The governing-law provision should be reviewed near the beginning of the case, not after completing an extensive Florida statutory analysis.

Zubigaray: The Practical Consequence of Great Lakes in a Florida Marine Case

The Southern District of Florida’s 2026 decision in Accelerant Specialty Insurance Co. v. Zubigaray demonstrates the practical significance of Great Lakes. The dispute concerned a 62-foot Azimut motor yacht. The marine policy provided that established federal admiralty law would govern where applicable and that New York substantive law would govern in the absence of an established federal maritime rule.

The policy contained a survey-compliance warranty requiring recommendations contained in a marine survey to be completed and appropriately certified. The insured admitted that certain recommendations had not been completed before the vessel later ran aground near Miami.

Applying Great Lakes, the district court enforced the contractual choice-of-law structure. The court concluded that no entrenched federal maritime rule governed the particular survey-compliance warranty and therefore turned to New York law. Under the New York marine-insurance law applied by the court, breach of the express warranty defeated coverage without requiring the causal relationship that Florida section 627.409(2) would have required if Florida law controlled.

The court entered summary judgment for the insurers. Accelerant Specialty Insurance Co. v. Zubigaray, No. 24-cv-23401-ALTMAN (S.D. Fla. May 16, 2026). The court separately concluded, for reasons discussed below, that material misrepresentations made in the insurance application also violated the federal maritime doctrine of uberrimae fidei and supplied an independent basis for declaring the policy void from inception.

Zubigaray is a federal district-court decision and therefore persuasive rather than binding Eleventh Circuit authority. Its importance lies in demonstrating the very different outcomes that can result from the governing-law analysis.

Under the Florida law applied in Ocean Reef, a technical captain-warranty violation was insufficient by itself; Travelers had to prove the statutorily required relationship between breach and increased hazard. Under the New York law applied in Zubigaray, the survey-compliance warranty was strictly enforced. Both results fit within modern maritime law because the cases reached different state substantive law after the antecedent federal analysis.

Uberrimae Fidei: Marine Insurance Applications Present a Different Legal Problem

The preceding warranty cases largely concern compliance with policy obligations after coverage was issued. Material misrepresentations made in procuring marine insurance require a different analysis because the Eleventh Circuit recognizes the federal maritime doctrine of uberrimae fidei, or utmost good faith, as entrenched federal law.

Marine underwriting developed historically under circumstances in which the insurer often had limited practical ability to inspect vessels or independently investigate distant risks before binding coverage. The doctrine therefore imposes an unusually demanding disclosure obligation upon marine insurance applicants. Material facts concerning the risk must be accurately disclosed, and the duty is not necessarily limited to answering narrowly phrased application questions.

In HIH Marine Services, Inc. v. Fraser, 211 F.3d 1359, 1362-63 (11th Cir. 2000), the Eleventh Circuit reaffirmed that uberrimae fidei constitutes controlling federal maritime law in the circuit and that a material nondisclosure or misrepresentation may render a marine policy void ab initio. The doctrine concerns the formation of the marine insurance relationship itself.

The Eleventh Circuit applied the doctrine again in AIG Centennial Insurance Co. v. O’Neill, 782 F.3d 1296 (11th Cir. 2015), in connection with material representations concerning a vessel and its loss history. In Quintero v. GEICO Marine Insurance Co., 983 F.3d 1264 (11th Cir. 2020), the court applied the doctrine to representations made when an insured sought reinstatement after his marine policy had expired. The court concluded that the material misrepresentations rendered the renewed coverage void from inception.

The distinction from the Ocean Reef line of cases is fundamental. A captain warranty, haul-out requirement, navigation provision, or similar policy obligation typically concerns the insured’s conduct during the policy period. A material underwriting misrepresentation concerns whether the policy validly attached in the first place. Because uberrimae fidei is an established federal maritime doctrine in the Eleventh Circuit, the issue is not merely another Florida anti-technical warranty dispute.

Zubigaray illustrates the difference within a single case. The district court concluded both that the insured violated the survey-compliance warranty under the governing New York law and that material application misrepresentations violated uberrimae fidei. The latter holding independently rendered the policy void from inception.

Practitioners should therefore divide the evidence chronologically. Applications, renewal questionnaires, ownership disclosures, operator histories, purchase prices, prior losses, surveys, valuations, and underwriting correspondence raise policy-formation issues. Captain warranties, crew requirements, hurricane plans, haul-out provisions, navigation limits, maintenance requirements, survey-compliance provisions, and other obligations arising after issuance raise policy-performance issues. The applicable legal standards may differ materially.

Unauthorized Insurers, Security Requirements, and the Continuing Significance of Hunter

Marine insurance frequently involves specialized insurers and underwriting markets. Some policies are issued by admitted carriers, others through surplus-lines markets, and still others involve foreign or alien insurers. Florida’s regulatory structure therefore deserves attention at the beginning of a substantial marine coverage dispute.

Section 626.908 generally requires an unauthorized insurer subject to the Unauthorized Insurers Process Law, before filing a responsive pleading in specified proceedings, either to procure authority to transact insurance in Florida or deposit cash, securities, or a court-approved bond sufficient to secure payment of a potential final judgment. That was the statutory framework at issue in Hunter.

Section 626.912 contains exemptions from those requirements. Among other things, the statute excludes actions arising from contracts covering wet marine and transportation risks and qualifying surplus-lines contracts satisfying the statutory requirements.

The practical significance of Hunter is therefore still apparent. An insurer cannot necessarily obtain the wet-marine exemption merely by pointing to a marine label if the lawsuit actually arises from a different component of a mixed policy. Conversely, when the litigation genuinely arises from wet marine and transportation insurance, the Legislature has expressly exempted that category from the unauthorized-insurer process provisions identified in section 626.912.

Florida also contains a specialized export provision for certain wet marine and transportation risks. Section 626.917 permits qualifying wet-marine and aviation risks to be exported under specified circumstances through a licensed Florida surplus-lines agent and an insurer made eligible for those coverages. The statute separately states that the specialized provision does not apply to boats used solely for personal pleasure, family use, or the specified transportation of executives, employees, and guests.

These regulatory questions can become important when counsel evaluates not merely whether coverage theoretically exists, but whether the insurer is properly before the court, which statutory protections govern the placement, and what sources of recovery will exist if the insurer encounters financial difficulty.

FIGA and Marine Insurance Insolvency

The Florida Insurance Guaranty Association is often an important backstop when a conventional property or casualty insurer becomes insolvent. Marine insurance presents a different problem.

Current section 631.52 excludes ocean marine and wet marine insurance from the scope of the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association Act. The statute also separately excludes surplus-lines insurance and workers’ compensation, including employer-liability coverage. Those modern exclusions explain why the ultimate result in the 1993 Pilings & Structures case cannot simply be carried forward to a present-day insolvency.

The distinction can affect litigation strategy from the outset. Specialized marine risks may be written in markets where the ordinary guaranty-fund assumptions do not apply. Counsel evaluating the practical value of a substantial marine claim should therefore determine the insurer’s status, financial condition, surplus-lines placement if any, and the availability or absence of guaranty protection before assuming that a favorable coverage judgment will necessarily be collectible in the same manner as a judgment against an admitted conventional insurer.

Florida’s 2023 Attorney-Fee Changes Also Affected Marine Coverage Litigation

Florida insurance lawyers practiced for decades under section 627.428, the familiar one-way attorney-fee statute that generally permitted insureds obtaining judgments against insurers to recover reasonable attorney’s fees. Wet marine insurance was expressly one of the categories for which former section 627.401 preserved section 627.428 despite the general exclusion of wet marine policies from Part II of Chapter 627.

The Legislature substantially changed that landscape in 2023. Chapter 2023-15 repealed section 627.428 and the parallel surplus-lines attorney-fee provision in section 626.9373. The Legislature also amended section 627.401(3), removing the former reference to section 627.428. The current wet-marine exceptions in section 627.401(3) are therefore limited to sections 627.409 and 627.420.

Section 86.121 now provides a narrower potential attorney-fee remedy in specified declaratory-judgment actions following a total coverage denial. The statute contains significant limitations concerning the persons entitled to recover, the nature of the coverage dispute, assignment of the fee right, and excluded categories of insurance litigation. Counsel should therefore analyze section 86.121 on its own terms rather than assuming that it recreates the former section 627.428 regime.

The issue was revisited legislatively in 2026. House Bill 1269 proposed revisions to insurance attorney-fee provisions and would have amended section 627.401(3) in connection with a new fee statute. The bill died in committee and did not become law. Thus, as of August 2026, the post-2023 statutory framework remains in place.

The economic significance should not be underestimated. Fee shifting can fundamentally affect the settlement value and litigation economics of an insurance dispute. Lawyers relying upon older marine coverage decisions should therefore update not only the substantive case law but also any statutory fee analysis contained in those opinions.

A Coverage Victory Is Not Automatically a Bad-Faith Case

The later history of Ocean Reef provides a related caution. After Ocean Reef ultimately prevailed in the coverage litigation, it pursued a first-party bad-faith claim against Travelers.

In Ocean Reef Charters, LLC v. Travelers Property Casualty Co. of America, No. 9:23-cv-81222-BER (S.D. Fla. July 16, 2025), the Southern District of Florida entered summary judgment for Travelers. The court concluded that no reasonable jury could find bad faith merely from Travelers’ denial where, at the time of the coverage decision, the applicability of Florida’s anti-technical statute to the captain and crew warranties was genuinely unsettled. The court also addressed deficiencies in the insured’s evidence concerning claimed bad-faith damages.

The decision reflects an important distinction between contractual liability and extra-contractual misconduct. An insurer can ultimately lose a difficult coverage issue without having acted in bad faith when it denied the claim. The legal uncertainty existing when the decision was made, the insurer’s investigation, the information available to the carrier, the reasonableness of its legal position, and the evidence concerning damages all remain relevant.

That principle has particular force in marine insurance because the governing law itself can be unusually complex. Ocean Reef I required appellate resolution of whether an entrenched federal maritime rule governed captain-and-crew warranties. Great Lakes subsequently changed the significance of contractual choice-of-law provisions. A carrier’s incorrect prediction concerning a genuinely unresolved marine-law question is analytically different from ignoring settled law or evidence establishing coverage.

For insureds, the practical lesson is to build the coverage case first. The policy language, governing law, statutory classification, factual record, expert evidence, and carrier communications should be developed independently of assumptions about later bad-faith remedies.

Marine Contractors, Docks, Seawalls, and Waterfront Projects

The modern wet-marine framework is not confined to recreational yachts. Florida’s statutory definition of marine insurance expressly extends to certain docks, piers, wharves, slips, dry docks, marine railways, and other transportation and navigation instrumentalities. Marine contractors may also carry P&I, builders’-risk, marine general liability, or package coverage addressing operations in or around navigable waters.

Those cases can present harder classification questions than a traditional yacht policy. A vessel hull policy ordinarily fits comfortably within section 624.607(2). A commercial package issued to a marine contractor may contain several distinct forms of coverage, some of which qualify as wet marine and some of which may also satisfy casualty or property definitions.

Suppose, for example, a contractor performing waterfront work allegedly damages a dock, seawall, neighboring property, or another marine structure. The fact that the contractor purchased a policy administered as “ocean marine” does not automatically answer whether the liability coverage implicated by the particular claim is marine P&I, another category of wet marine insurance, casualty insurance, or some overlapping combination. The statutory definitions, policy language, endorsements, insured operations, and nature of the alleged liability must be examined together.

That classification can affect far more than terminology. It may determine whether section 627.4137 applies to a request for insurance information, whether section 627.426 governs a reservation of rights, whether section 627.409(2) supplies an anti-technical rule, whether the Unauthorized Insurers Process Law applies, and whether FIGA protection exists after insolvency.

This is why a sophisticated marine coverage analysis should begin with the complete policy rather than the certificate of insurance. Certificates are useful evidence of identified coverage, limits, and policy periods, but they typically do not reveal the complete set of insuring agreements, endorsements, governing-law provisions, warranty language, exclusions, classifications, or regulatory features that determine the actual coverage dispute.

The same caution applies when the construction project predates the known policy period. Marine contractors may have maintained successive annual policies, changed insurers or forms, or operated under occurrence-based liability coverage potentially triggered by events occurring at different points in a project’s history. Identifying all potentially responsive policy periods may therefore be as important as interpreting the one policy initially produced.

The Evidentiary Dimension of Modern Marine Coverage Litigation

The modern cases demonstrate that marine coverage disputes often cannot be resolved by policy interpretation alone. When section 627.409(2) applies, the relationship between a warranty violation and increased hazard may require evidence resembling the evidence used to litigate the underlying casualty itself.

The two Serendipity appeals illustrate this particularly well. At summary judgment, disputed evidence concerning weather conditions and hurricane preparation prevented judgment for the insurer. After trial, detailed testimony concerning what a full-time captain would have done, when the vessel could have been moved, available alternatives, and the hurricane’s development persuaded the court that the absence of the required captain increased the hazard.

Ocean Reef II demonstrates the converse problem. A carrier bearing the burden on increased hazard cannot necessarily rely upon the commonsense proposition that compliance with a safety-oriented warranty is generally safer. Competent proof concerning the actual loss and what compliance would materially have changed may be necessary.

Knight further demonstrates why evidence concerning control matters. When an insured contends that compliance became practically impossible because every suitable marina was unavailable, the dispute may turn on contemporaneous communications and operational evidence rather than the wording of the warranty itself.

The same considerations arise outside hurricanes. A navigation-limit violation may require evidence concerning sea conditions, vessel location, navigational risk, and the mechanics of the casualty. A maintenance warranty may require surveyor, engineer, or mechanic testimony. A crew warranty may implicate evidence concerning qualifications, responsibilities, operational decisions, and causation. A marine construction loss may require engineering analysis concerning whether the disputed damage resulted from design, construction, materials, environmental forces, maintenance, or another cause.

Marine coverage counsel should therefore consider expert needs early. Waiting until after dispositive-motion deadlines to identify the evidentiary burden can be fatal, as the procedural histories of these cases demonstrate.

A Disciplined Order of Analysis

The cases and statutes discussed above suggest a more reliable method for evaluating a significant Florida marine coverage dispute.

The first question should be what coverage is actually implicated. The complete policy should be obtained, including declarations, schedules, forms, endorsements, applications, surveys, renewal documents, warranty provisions, and governing-law language. The analysis should distinguish hull coverage, P&I, marine general liability, builders’ risk, cargo, employer liability, property insurance, contractor liability, and any other material coverage rather than treating the contract as a single undifferentiated “marine policy.”

The next inquiry is statutory classification. Counsel should compare the actual coverage with sections 624.601 through 624.607 and determine whether the disputed coverage constitutes wet marine and transportation insurance under section 624.607(2). Where overlapping classifications are plausible, Hunter and Pilings & Structures should be considered rather than assuming that one classification excludes all others.

The governing-law clause should then be addressed before extensive substantive warranty analysis. Great Lakes makes contractual choice of law an antecedent federal maritime question. A Florida statutory argument may have little value if an enforceable maritime choice-of-law clause selects another jurisdiction whose law governs the disputed warranty.

Counsel must then ask whether an established federal maritime rule governs the specific issue. Wilburn Boat does not authorize reflexive application of state law. If entrenched federal maritime law controls, as with uberrimae fidei in the Eleventh Circuit, federal law applies. If no established federal rule governs the particular issue, applicable state law fills the gap, subject to the contractual choice-of-law analysis.

Policy formation and policy performance should be analyzed separately. Allegedly false information concerning ownership, value, prior losses, surveys, operation, or other underwriting matters may implicate uberrimae fidei. Post-issuance compliance with captain, crew, navigation, survey, storm-plan, haul-out, maintenance, or similar warranties presents a different inquiry.

If Florida law and section 627.409(2) govern, counsel should investigate the statutory elements factually. It is not enough to identify a breach. The increased hazard, relationship to the loss, circumstances within the insured’s control, and evidence necessary to prove or rebut those issues should be identified early.

Regulatory status should also be investigated. Whether the insurer is admitted, surplus lines, unauthorized, foreign, or alien may affect litigation procedure, statutory security requirements, policy placement, and the availability of guaranty-fund protection.

Finally, attorneys should analyze current remedies rather than relying upon the Florida insurance regime that existed before March 2023. Fee statutes, bad-faith law, and wet-marine statutory exclusions have materially changed over time. Older authorities may remain correct on the substantive issue they decided while no longer accurately describing today’s remedial framework.

The Broader Significance of the Recent Cases

Viewed together, the recent cases reveal a developing tension in American marine insurance law. Florida has made a deliberate legislative decision to prevent technical forfeitures of wet-marine coverage unless a policy violation increased the hazard through means within the insured’s control. Ocean Reef, Serendipity, and Knight give that policy practical effect when Florida law governs.

Federal maritime law simultaneously values contractual predictability and national commercial uniformity. Great Lakes advances those interests by enforcing maritime choice-of-law provisions in most circumstances. An insurer and insured may therefore select the law of a jurisdiction that treats marine warranties more strictly than Florida does.

The resulting legal structure is not contradictory, but it is layered. Florida decides what happens when its substantive law governs a wet-marine warranty. Federal maritime law decides whether an established federal rule supersedes state law and, after Great Lakes, whether the parties validly selected another state’s law instead. The contractual choice-of-law clause can therefore determine whether Florida’s protective anti-technical rule ever enters the case.

At the same time, uberrimae fidei demonstrates that some aspects of marine insurance remain governed directly by established federal maritime law. An insured cannot assume that every disputed representation or warranty will receive the same treatment merely because the policy is wet marine.

The central skill in these cases is therefore not simply reading the exclusion or warranty cited in the denial letter. It is identifying the correct level of legal analysis before deciding what that provision means.

Conclusion

Marine insurance disputes in Florida sit at the intersection of several sophisticated bodies of law. Florida’s Insurance Code distinguishes broad marine insurance from the narrower category of wet marine and transportation insurance. Sections 624.601 and 624.607, together with Pilings & Structures and Hunter, demonstrate that classification depends upon the actual coverage and that statutory categories can overlap.

That classification has immediate consequences. True wet marine insurance is generally excluded from Part II of Chapter 627 except for sections 627.409 and 627.420. Familiar provisions routinely invoked in conventional Florida liability litigation therefore cannot automatically be assumed to govern a marine coverage dispute. The 2023 repeal of section 627.428 materially altered the attorney-fee landscape, and the proposed 2026 legislation that would have changed the current statutory scheme did not become law.

When Florida law governs a marine policy warranty, section 627.409(2) remains critically important. Ocean Reef establishes that captain-and-crew warranties are not governed by a universal federal rule of strict compliance and that an insurer relying on such a breach must satisfy Florida’s increased-hazard standard when Florida law controls. The complete Serendipity history demonstrates that the statute creates a meaningful evidentiary burden but does not eliminate enforceable warranties: the insured survived summary judgment but ultimately lost after the insurer proved increased hazard at trial. Knight further illustrates that increased hazard and circumstances within the insured’s control may present distinct issues.

Great Lakes v. Raiders Retreat adds an antecedent question that should now be examined near the beginning of virtually every significant marine insurance dispute. Maritime choice-of-law clauses are presumptively enforceable under federal maritime law. A policy selecting New York law may therefore produce a different warranty result than a policy governed by Florida law, even where the vessel and casualty have substantial Florida connections. The 2026 Zubigaray decision provides a concrete Florida example of that consequence.

Separate from the warranty cases is the federal doctrine of uberrimae fidei. The Eleventh Circuit treats utmost good faith as entrenched federal maritime law, allowing material underwriting misrepresentations to render marine coverage void from inception. The distinction between a statement made in procuring the policy and a breach occurring during the policy period can therefore determine the body of law that controls the dispute.

For vessel owners, marine businesses, associations, contractors, brokers, insurers, and lawyers confronting substantial waterfront or maritime losses, the practical lesson is that marine coverage should be analyzed from the outside inward. Determine what insurance is actually involved. Determine whether it is wet marine. Examine the choice-of-law provision. Identify any entrenched federal maritime rule. Only then apply the relevant state insurance law and policy language to the facts.

In ordinary insurance litigation, lawyers often begin with the denial letter and work backward through the policy. In a significant marine dispute, that may be the wrong starting point. The more reliable approach is to determine the governing legal architecture first. Once that architecture is correctly identified, the policy wording, factual investigation, expert evidence, and ultimate coverage issues can be analyzed under the law that actually governs them.