Bills level playing field in insurance claims cases

The Tampa Tribune's recent editorial on insurance claim reform proposed in the Florida Legislature misleads the public about what is at stake for all Floridians ("Tinkering with bad faith puts citizens' rights at risk," Our Views, Jan. 2).

Florida has become the worst state in the nation for trial-lawyer games in so-called "bad faith lawsuits."

When, God forbid, you injure someone in an accident and your insurance company steps in to pay the policy limits and resolve the case, the claimant's lawyers will misuse the legal system with outrageous time demands and Philadelphia-lawyer conditions, never intending to settle the case.

The result is two lawsuits, not one, and you are the loser.

In a case where someone has hired a lawyer to sue you, they also can get the chance to sue your insurance company.

What the plaintiff's lawyers won't tell you is that this second lawsuit doesn't eliminate your liability, even if they coerce you into assigning away your right to sue the insurance company to them and their client; they can still hold you liable.

It's the kind of trick only a plaintiff's lawyer could love, and it is no wonder that in a November 2010 survey of Florida small-business owners, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that 69 percent said this system benefits personal injury lawyers.

The bills proposed in the Florida Legislature by Rep. Kathleen Passidomo and Sen. Steve Oelrich don't go so far as reforms passed in trial-lawyer-friendly states such as California and West Virginia, where third-party bad faith claims were eliminated. Instead, they simply bring some common sense to the claims process.

The bills simply state that trial lawyers looking to file a claim for a third-party client would be subject to the same rules that you, the first-party policyholder, already follow under Florida law, and if the insurer agrees to pay the claim, or pays the insurance policy in full, then there's no bad faith.

It's time Florida's insurance claim laws were brought into the mainstream and that Florida's insurance lawsuit industry play by the same rules that state law already asks Floridians who pay for an insurance policy to play by.