Generally, selections come alongside that make me surprise if judges are studying the identical insurance coverage insurance policies and insurance coverage legal guidelines the remainder of us are. The current Florida Clark opinion 1 is certainly one of them. In accordance with this glowing gem of judicial thought, it seems that it’s not sufficient to inform your insurance coverage firm, “Hey, my home was ripped aside by a hurricane.” No, no — you need to now apparently present particular person notices for every protection you may later declare — instantly. Misplaced your roof? Notify that. Misplaced your couch? Separate discover. Misplaced the power to lease your now-soggy home? One other discover. Higher get your guidelines prepared the subsequent time a Class 4 ranges your property.
Let’s take a easy instance. Your stunning beachfront lodge burns to the bottom. You name your agent and breathlessly report: “My lodge simply burned to ashes!” Apparently, beneath Clark, until you additionally scream into the cellphone, “And all my beds and occasional makers burned too! And I received’t be renting any rooms for a yr!”, the insurance coverage firm can later deny your contents and rental loss claims for lack of “immediate discover.” As a result of clearly, within the aftermath of a complete loss, what individuals ought to give attention to is ensuring they itemize each class of destruction straight away. Who cares about smoke inhalation or discovering a spot to sleep? We should fulfill the hyper-technical gods of “discover.”
Feeling skeptical? Let’s kick it, old skool. Image a ship setting sail in 1783. It sinks in a ferocious storm. The shipowner sends a dispatch to London: “The ship has sunk.” Lloyd’s of London, well-known for its bells, dutifully rings the ship loss bell. However beneath Clark’s new logic, somebody ought to have scurried over and stated, “Wait! Wait! That’s solely discover of the ship! The place’s the separate bell for the cargo?!” Perhaps they need to have had totally different bells: one for the ship, one for the bales of cotton, one other for the spices, and a separate, dainty chime for the silks. In any case, it’s not sufficient to say the ship is on the underside of the ocean — we should notify individually that the cargo received moist, too.
Or let’s keep trendy. A hurricane blows all the roof off of your home, the partitions are bent inward, the inside is flooded, the furnishings is floating, and the neighbor’s canoe is resting the place your eating desk was once. You promptly name your insurance coverage agent and say, “My home is destroyed.” However foolish you — until you concurrently record “roof gone,” “partitions ruined,” “furnishings destroyed,” “lack of rental earnings,” and “emotional devastation,” you’ve got breached your sacred responsibility to offer discover. Naturally, your insurer will graciously pay you for possibly the roof — however overlook the contents, overlook the leases, and please don’t even ask about mould. You didn’t give “immediate discover” of these. Disgrace on you for pondering widespread sense utilized to property insurance coverage.
What this choice does is inject a brand new stage of hyper-technical nonsense right into a easy idea that insurance coverage was a product designed to guard policyholders by paying protection advantages — not lure them. This choice now permits sure insurance coverage corporations — particularly these already steeped in a tradition of delay, deny, and defend — to invent a brand new strategy to argue: “Gotcha!” when individuals truthfully, shortly, and understandably notify them of losses.
Insurance coverage is rightfully marketed as offering safety, not creating obscure procedural hurdles that no cheap particular person may ever foresee. As a substitute, Clark invitations extra denials, delays, brawls, lawsuits, and appeals as a result of the legislation has by no means been required to offer discover on this method, and prospects struggling the loss don’t buy a coverage that claims that they’ve to offer discover of every protection impacted by the loss when offering the discover of loss.
Public adjusters, threat managers, and particularly insurance coverage brokers who’re often the primary line of communication — concentrate. Once you get that frantic cellphone name, e-mail, or textual content from a buyer reporting their home on hearth, their constructing underwater, or their roof crusing off into the horizon, notice that merely forwarding “the home blew aside” might not be sufficient anymore. Some corporations, emboldened by this choice, will now argue that you simply needed to relay separate discover for the kitchen cupboards, the crown molding, and the misplaced 10-year tenant lease.
Be warned: Clark may turn into the brand new favourite device of these insurance coverage corporations that suppose claims dealing with is a zero-sum recreation. And sure, I can be writing extra on this case as soon as I’ve the briefs and may dive deeper into the remainder of the choice.
Keep tuned. This was simply the opening bell — and don’t overlook to ring one for the furnishings, one other for the carpets, and one other for the misplaced rental earnings whilst you’re at it.
Considered The Day
“There’s nothing so absurd that if you happen to repeat it usually sufficient, individuals will consider it.”
— William James
1 Owners Selection Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co. v. Clark, No. 1D2023-1622, (Fla.1st DCA Mar. 19, 2025).
