A panel of Florida's Second District Court of Appeal, an intermediate appellate court, recently resolved the question: When does the statutory cure period of 60 days begin under Florida's so-called "Bad Faith Statute," Fla. Stat. § 624.155?
The statutory cure period is the period during which the accused carrier can "cure" the bad faith alleged in a Civil Remedy Notice filed under the statute. That makes the start-time question a big deal especially for carriers who want all the time they can get to cure the alleged bad faith -- and so not be sued under Florida's statute.
The appellate court held that the time starts when the Civil Remedy Notice (CRN) is electronically filed with the Department of Financial Services which houses the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, i.e., the Florida Insurance Commissioner:
Therefore, we hold that the sixty-day cure period under section 624.155 begins when the CRN is electronically filed with the Department, and to avoid a bad faith action, the insurer must pay the claim or take corrective action within sixty days from the date the CRN is electronically filed.
Harper v. GEICO General Ins. Co., 272 So. 3d 448 (Fla. 2d DCA 2019) (page numbers unavailable at time of this publication).
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