(Gridview imagefull / Florida Department of Consumer and Agricultural Services)
In the case of Julien v. United Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co., ___ So. 3d ___, No. 4D19-2763, 2020 WL 5652364 (Fla. 4th DCA Sept. 23, 2020) (STATED NOT YET RELEASED FOR PERMANENT LAW REPORTS), Junior Julien sued his homeowner's carrier on account of his fire loss. Since he was suing in Florida, Julien had to send the carrier a Civil Remedy Notice of Insurer Violation to comply with a statutory condition precedent to his bad faith lawsuit.
Florida, like many States, requires a Civil Remedy Notice or CRN in connection with a bad faith lawsuit; in Florida, unlike many States, first-party insurance bad faith is strictly a statutory cause of action, making compliance with the Florida statute all the more significant in Florida first-party bad faith actions.
Parenthetically, this first-party case is not limited to first-party cases. Its holding concerns the legal sufficiency of a CRN. That includes the issue of legal sufficiency of CRN's in third-party cases too, of course.
Mr. Julien's strategy might be analogized to "flooding the zone." In his case, Julien opted to provide the carrier with a notice that listed most of the provisions in his insurance policy and all of the statutory provisions that the carrier might have violated in handling his claim. "Julien's civil remedy notice, it seems, listed every statutory provision and every policy provision available to him as the insured." Julien, 2020 WL 5642364, at *2.
The Florida statute has required in the past, and continues to require, that a plaintiff in a first-party bad faith insurance case identify "with specificity" the statutory provision "which the authorized insurer allegedly violated" and refer to "specific policy language that is relevant to the violation, if any." Fla. Stat. § 624.155(3)(b). The trial court eventually dismissed Mr. Julien's complaint with prejudice because Julien's civil remedy notice, while citing "thirty-five statutory provisions and list[ing] nearly every provision in the insurance policy," did not meet the statutory requirement of specificity in a Civil Remedy Notice. Julien, 2020 WL 5652364, at *1.
The appellate court affirmed the trial court's ruling. The appellate court held: "We agree with the circuit court that the notice failed to specify the statutory and policy provisions at issue." Julien, 2020 WL 5652364, at *1. That is their succinct holding, although the Court's opinion went on for a couple of pages after that demonstrating the statute's specificity requirements and contrasting Julien's notice document.
"Specify the statutory and policy provisions at issue." That is the crux of the sufficiency of a Civil Remedy Notice of insurer bad faith under Florida's statute.
The various requirements for Civil Remedy Notices across the United States, including Florida, are examined in third-party cases in 1 DENNIS J. WALL, LITIGATION AND PREVENTION OF INSURER BAD FAITH § 3:30, "Legal Bases of Liability in Settlement -- Statutory Requirement of Notice of Violation" (Thomson Reuters West 3d ed. & 2020 Supps), and in first-party cases in id., Volume 2, § 9:21, "Common Law and Statutory Regulation of Civil Remedy Notice to Act in Good Faith."
Defenses raised by failure to comply with CRN requirements are also discussed in third-party insurance bad faith actions in id., Volume 1, § 5:57, and in first-party insurance bad faith actions in id., Volume 2, § 11:24.
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