How are you able to inform when an insurance coverage firm lobbyist will not be telling the reality? Everybody ought to know the reply. But a latest article within the Insurance Journal, Florida’s SB 2A Ended One-Way Legal Fees. Now Some Insurers Say it’s Retroactive, exhibits that legal guidelines written and supported by the insurance coverage trade are all the time suspect.
Florida legislators, relying upon insurance coverage trade lobbyists, advised fellow legislators that the one-way lawyer charges regulation wouldn’t apply retroactively and wouldn’t have an effect on Hurricane Ian policyholders whose claims had been being denied. The regulation handed and guess what? The insurance coverage corporations are actually saying the brand new legal guidelines are retroactive to flee accountability for underpaying, delaying, and denying Hurricane Ian policyholders their advantages.
The article famous:
Case regulation speaks to the query, Lozier and Merlin mentioned. In 2010, the Florida Supreme Court in Menendez vs. Progressive Express Insurance discovered {that a} Florida statute requiring notification of intent to sue couldn’t be utilized retroactively to insurance policies issued earlier than the modification was enacted.
The court docket famous that even when the Legislature meant for the pre-suit discover provision to be utilized retroactively, the court docket can not settle for that assertion ‘if the statute impairs a vested right, creates a new obligation, or imposes a new penalty.’ It was thought-about a substantive change, not merely procedural, the justices wrote.
With SB 2A’s lawyer charge provision, there was no clear legislative intent that the regulation ought to attain again in time, mentioned Lozier, with the Clausen Choquette regulation agency. Interpreting the regulation in any other case could be a substantive change, would connect new and sudden penalties, and would run afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s ex put up facto precept, she argued.
The bottom-line lesson is one for our elected leaders. When insurance coverage firm lobbyists say one thing, you can not depend on it. The statistics they cited to help the brand new legal guidelines had been made up. The impression of the legal guidelines was not in truth described.
Thoughts For The Afternoon
Trust is tough to return by. That’s why my circle is small and tight. I’m form of humorous about making new pals.
—Eminem