Disagreeing with what it recognized to be a minority of decisions from the Middle District and the Southern District of Florida, a federal judge in the Southern District followed the majority rule and dismissed a premature insurance bad faith claim without prejudice, in Terenzio v. LM Gen. Ins. Co., ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, 2019 WL 7841718 (S.D. Fla. April 18, 2019). The Terenzio case presented a premature claim of Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist carrier bad faith under Florida law:
The Court finds that dismissal is a better remedy than abatement. For one, it appears that a majority of federal district courts in Florida have ruled in favor of dismissal. [Citation omitted.] Because it is unsettled whether abatement of a premature bad-faith claim is permitted in federal court, the Court favors the outcome that does not risk running afoul of Article III of the Constitution or the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Therefore, the Court will dismiss without prejudice, rather than abate, Plaintiff's bad-faith claim.
Terenzio, 2019 WL 7841718, at *3.
The decision by a federal court in Terenzio in Florida has implications for solving the same problem in federal courts across the United States.
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