This text continues an article begun right here on July 3, 2023.
(Picture by Dennis Wall)
An additional query which this new statute raises issues the query of legal responsibility for unhealthy religion by legal responsibility insurance coverage firms in Florida typically.
This new statute is a part of a Dangerous Religion Statute that applies to “any individual … broken” by sure alleged conduct of an insurance coverage firm.[1] Nonetheless, regardless of its in style title, the so-called Dangerous Religion Statute, Fla. Stat. § 624.155, will not be triggered by unhealthy religion however by alleged violations of specified statutes and actions.
In actual fact, the time period “unhealthy religion” was by no means earlier than used within the statute, though it did consult with “good religion” one time in its description of an insurance coverage firm’s actions.[2]
This new, 2023 Part 624.155(4)(a) introduces an idea into third-party unhealthy religion actions of damages lower than coverage limits, or it will make no sense to immunize a legal responsibility insurer from an “motion for unhealthy religion” when it pays lower than coverage limits. (Be aware that the statute will not be but formally printed at the same time as of immediately. The brand new language is accessible both on an unsecured website online as 2023 Florida Session Legislation Ch. 2023-15 which the reader can strategy at her or his peril, or on a safe supplier equivalent to Westlaw or LexisNexis.) The instances and statutes collected in DENNIS J. WALL, LITIGATION AND PREVENTION OF INSURER BAD FAITH (West Publishing Firm 3d Version, 2023 Dietary supplements in course of), and in different treatises — together with instances and statutes from Florida — set up the broadly held view that there ought to be no bad-faith when damages are lower than coverage limits. That really appears to have been the universally shared view on this nation, till the enactment of this new Florida Statute in 2023.
So this can be a very large deal certainly.
[1] See Part 624.155(1): “Any individual could carry a civil motion in opposition to an insurer when such individual is broken[.]”
[2] See Part 624.155(1)(b)1 (“Not making an attempt in good religion to settle claims when, beneath all of the circumstances, it might and will have completed so, had it acted pretty and actually towards its insured and with due regard for her or his pursuits”) (emphasis added).
These and related points are addressed in 1 DENNIS J. WALL, LITIGATION AND PREVENTION OF INSURER BAD FAITH § 3:28, Authorized Bases of Legal responsibility in Settlement — Statutory (West Publishing Firm 3d Version, 2023 Dietary supplements in course of).
This weblog article ©2023 Dennis J. Wall.
