Floridians race to court in March to beat onset of new tort regime

Florida policyholders launched a race for the courthouses, issuing a record 8276 new notifications of pending litigation just as lawmakers moved to close the gate.

The March tally, 15% above an already record count in February, is nearly twice the average monthly count submitted in Q4 2022 after Hurricane Ian, data from Florida's Department of Financial Services showed.

The March tally brings Q1 totals to 22,841 new notifications, after excluding withdrawals, up 83% year on year.

The state's insurer of last resort, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, accounts for an even higher portion of the total pending lawsuits, the data indicated.

Citizens saw its pending caseload grow by a record 1442 new potential cases, up 29.4% from the February additions and twice the Q4 average. Citizens accounts for 17% of the new notifications versus neighbourhood 13% throughout 2022.

Some 21 firms saw a triple digit count of pending lawsuits.

High on the rankings, Universal Property & Casualty Insurance with 884 new notifications, American Integrity Insurance with 775 new notifications and State Farm Florida with 472.

Floridians are required to warn of their pending legal actions against insurers since mid-2021.

The first quarter run-up in notifications comes amid a convergence of drivers. Hurricane Ian claims could already be felt in the numbers starting at points in Q4, and Florida legislators have made two major attempts to stem litigation, presumably prompting a flood of last-minute entrants.

Reforms enacted at a special legislative session mid-December eliminated Florida's one-way attorney fee provisions on property insurance suits that protected plaintiffs from legal fees. It also eliminated assignment of benefits as of January 1 for residential and in a roll-out for commercial.

Those former legal provisions, critics claimed, had enabled an alliance of lawyers and contractors to flood the courts without risk of legal fees for losses. Florida ends up with an overwhelming majority of the nation’s lawsuits on a small minority of the nation’s claims, critics claimed.

More recent legislation, enacted in March, took a broader shot at tort law. Anticipating a flood of rushed claims, authors of the bill made a last minute move to limit the avalanche by giving the bill immediate effect, but many would-be litigants will have rushed all the harder.

For Citizen's, additional regulatory relief may come as the firm secured new rights to put legal conflicts to expedited resolution at Florida’s Division of Administrative Hearings.

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