The Florida Insurance Law Blog
By Jeffrey T. Donner, Esq.
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In State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company v. Medina, 300 So. 3d 177 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020), the Fourth District considered an argument that there had been misconduct by defense counsel and a defense expert witness. The facts of the case were these: At the conclusion of the trial, the jury rendered a defense verdict,…
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In AM Grand Court Lakes LLC v. Rockhill Ins. Co., 68 F.4th 1354 (11th Cir. 2023), the Eleventh Circuit considered a motion for new trial after a jury found $9,280,000.00 in damages in a commercial first-party property insurance case arising out of Hurricane Irma, involving a group of buildings that were operated as an assisted…
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In Vargas v. Safepoint Ins. Co., 333 So. 3d 752 (Fla. 3d DCA 2022), the Third District considered the issue of the interpretation of an insurance policy’s “concealment or fraud” provision providing for forfeiture of coverage when an insured makes “false statements relating to this insurance.” In Vargas, the insured’s statement at issue arose post-loss:…
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Lawyers who specialize in “first-party property insurance litigation” know that Citizens Property Insurance Corporation’s corporate representatives–used by Citizens to testify both at depositions and at trial–have no personal knowledge regarding anything relevant to the case. It is not that they forgot; they never had any personal knowledge. They are never a person who was involved…
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Did your property insurance company send you a check and try to tell you that if you negotiate it, you will be accepting that amount as a final settlement of your claim? (Or, more likely, the insurance company won’t tell you that; they’ll try to sneak it into the “memo” line of the check and…
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Citizens was created by the Florida Legislature in August 2002 as a not-for-profit, tax-exempt, government entity to provide property insurance to eligible Florida property owners unable to find insurance coverage in the private market. Citizens is funded by policyholder premiums; however, Florida law also requires that Citizens levy assessments on most Florida policyholders if it…
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Section 626.854(11)(b) of the Florida Statutes provides: The statute also provides that: I recently had a judge tell me that a public adjuster’s trial testimony that the Florida Statute requires him to charge on a contingency basis–as opposed to time and expense–was incorrect. I cannot find the source of the judge’s claim. I conferred with…
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In Metropolitan Dade County v. Zapata, 601 So. 2d 239 (Fla. 3d DCA 1992), the Third District considered a heart-wrenching case involving a child who drowned at Crandon Beach Park. The case gave the court the occasion to discuss the law concerning the improper “golden rule” argument. In Zapata, the jury returned a verdict in…
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On December 31, 2020, the Supreme Court of Florida, on its own motion, amended Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.510, adopting the federal summary judgment standard articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986); Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 106 S.Ct. 2505,…
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The two most common types of property insurance claims in Florida are (1) windstorm (often, but not necessarily, caused by a hurricane) and (2) damages caused by water during a plumbing leak (“a sudden and accidental discharge of water”). In these types of cases, insurance policies give the insurance company the ability to argue that…
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