MEXICO Trends and Developments Contributed by: Aldo Ocampo and Arturo Caballero Rossetti, OCAMPO 1890
A Continually Evolving Landscape in Insurance Litigation: Reform, Increased Exposure, and Defending Before Trial Introduction Insurance litigation in Mexico is undergoing the most far-reaching structural reconfiguration of the past three decades. In last year’s section, the authors argued that insurance disputes had ceased to be an exercise in contractual interpretation and had become fundamental-rights litigation. Twelve months later, that statement is no longer sufficient: the substan- tive transformation has been joined by an institutional transformation of the very forum before which these disputes are heard. Three forces are converging at once. The first is the judicial reform, which has replaced virtually the entire federal bench and altered the rules governing the formation of binding precedent. The second is a line of case law – now mandatory – that systematically expands insurers’ financial exposure in civil liability, moral damages and punitive damages. The third is economic: a market that has passed MXN1 trillion in written premiums and whose claims payments are growing faster than its income, in an environment where denial of payment is the single largest source of policyholder complaint. The combined result is not merely an increase in litiga- tion risk. It is a measurable loss of predictability, which is the essential input of any insurance operation: with- out the ability to estimate the severity of an award, underwriting, reserving and reinsurance placement all rest on fragile assumptions. The judicial reform and the cost of discontinuity The constitutional reform published in the Fed- eral Official Gazette on 15 September 2024 rebuilt the entire architecture of the Federal Judiciary. The Supreme Court of Justice was reduced to nine justic- es, its Chambers were abolished, the Federal Judici- ary Council was replaced by a Judicial Administration Body, and a Judicial Disciplinary Tribunal was creat- ed. The extraordinary election of 1 June 2025 – with turnout estimated by the National Electoral Institute at between 12.57% and 13.32% of the electoral roll – renewed 881 judicial posts, of which approximately 801 were effectively filled; the remainder were left
vacant for failure to meet academic eligibility require- ments. The newly composed court took office on 1 September 2025. For the insurance litigator, the most immediate prac- tical consequence is not political but evidential and strategic: virtually all of the district judges and circuit court judges who will hear direct amparo proceed- ings against judgments in claims against insurers are new to the bench. The institutional memory built up over decades by specialised circuits in interpreting the Insurance Contract Law (LCS) and the Insurance and Surety Institutions Law (LISF) does not transfer automatically. To this must be added a technical change of consid- erable weight: binding precedent of the court sitting en banc is now formed with six votes, as against the eight required under the previous regime, and with- out Chambers operating as a filter and as a parallel source of case law. A lower threshold, in a body of nine members means greater speed in the creation of binding criteria and, correspondingly, greater volatility. A criterion adverse to the insurance sector can today be consolidated by a majority that would previously have been insufficient. The official diagnosis of judicial operations confirms the scale of the adjustment. By General Agreement AG-POAJ-013/2026, published in the Federal Official Gazette on 12 August 2026, the Judicial Administra- tion Body acknowledged 210,459 case files carrying some degree of backlog, equivalent to 62.70% of all integrated matters. In Circuit Courts – the terminal instance for direct amparo in commercial matters – the backlog reaches 66.30%, with 13.20% of matters delayed by more than 360 days. The Agreement itself orders circuit-by-circuit action programmes, redis- tribution of judicial staff and a review of productivity standards. Finally, the constitutional reform published on 2 June 2026 postponed the second judicial election to 2028, originally scheduled for 2027, and introduced eligibili- ty verification commissions, standardised assessment methodologies and a lottery mechanism to reduce the number of candidacies. The postponement reduces
193 I NSURANCE L I T IGATI O N 2026
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