USA – FLORIDA Trends and Developments Contributed by: John David Dickenson, Nicole Connors and Juan Garrido, Cozen O’Connor
The underlying litigation Baker was injured in a 2020 automobile accident and ultimately obtained a USD3.6 million jury verdict against A-One Commercial Insurance Risk Retention Group’s (“A-One”) insureds in March 2023. A-One had declined opportunities to settle within policy limits. Three days before Governor Ron DeSantis signed the 2023 reforms into law, Baker filed a separate bad faith lawsuit against A-One on 21 March 2023. However, at that time, no final judgment had been entered in the underlying tort case, and an appeal had not yet begun, much less been concluded. Accordingly, under long established Florida law, the bad faith claim was not ripe. Specifically, a bad faith claim is not ripe until a final judgment is entered and all appeals have been concluded. Indeed, Baker later conceded that a bad faith claim remains unripe while the underlying judgment is on appeal. The court identified HB 837, and its resulting tort reforms, as the driving force behind the timing of the lawsuit. According to the Court, HB 837 significantly altered Florida bad faith law under Section 624.155. The court found that Baker’s lawyers believed the changes could negatively affect her recovery and therefore sought to lock in application of the pre- HB 837 law by filing before the legislation became effective. The most damaging evidence cited by the court was counsel’s own statement to the state court that dismissal of the prematurely filed action could be harmful because the tort reforms “may negatively impact” Baker’s rights. The federal judge treated that statement as direct evidence of counsel’s objective. Ultimately, the thrust of the opinion is the court’s conclusion that plaintiff’s counsel engaged in a cal- culated strategy to preserve a pre-HB 837 filing date for the bad faith claim, while preventing the insurer from meaningfully responding. The court repeatedly emphasised that Baker’s attorneys knew the bad faith claim was unripe when they filed it. The judge charac- terised the filing as a “race to the courthouse” moti- vated by a desire to avoid HB 837 reforms. Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the opin- ion is that the court referred Baker’s attorneys to the
Florida Bar. The court specifically requested inves- tigation into potential violations involving candour, truthfulness, meritorious claims, fairness to opposing counsel, competence, diligence and related ethical duties. The opinion can fairly be read as a forceful judicial rebuke of what the court viewed as an attempt to do an end run around the new tort reform framework. In short, the court treated the case as an example of purposeful procedural manoeuvring designed to avoid the new legislation and responded with dismissal, a finding of bad faith and a Bar referral. In other words, the reforms are here to stay, and courts will not toler- ate attempts to avoid them. The Tran Verdict: The First Comparative Bad Faith Finding As the Abdullah court noted, claimants, insureds and their lawyers now owe reciprocal good-faith duties to insurers pursuant to Section 624.155 (5)(b), Florida Statutes. The new good faith standard for claimants in Section 624.155 (5)(b) provides in pertinent part: “In any action for bad faith against an insurer, the trier of fact may consider whether the insured, claimant, or representative of the insured or claimant did not act in good faith pursuant to this paragraph, in which case the trier of fact may reasonably reduce the amount of damages awarded against the insurer”. Accordingly, the statute provides a defence to insur- ers who are facing bad faith claims. On 24 April 2026, this defence was tested in a case styled Julie Tran v Progressive Select Insurance Company , Case No 2021-CA-004508, pending in the United States Dis- trict Court (USDC) for the Middle District of Florida. It is the authors’ understanding that this is the first verdict in Florida to consider the good faith duties defence in 624.155 (5)(b). In Tran , the insurer alleged as an affirmative defence that the plaintiff or her representatives failed to act in good faith in their dealings with the defendant insurer. Because of this alleged defence, the jury, in consider- ing the claim against the insurer, was also required to consider the bad faith actions of “the insured, claim- ant, or representative of the insured or claimant”.
314 I NSURANCE L I T IGATI O N 2026
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