The insurance industry and plaintiffs attorneys are trying to help sway the Florida Supreme Court in a potentially high-stakes case stemming from a fatal auto accident in 2006 in Palm Beach County.
Insurance-industry groups and the Florida Justice Association, which represents plaintiffs attorneys, have filed dueling briefs in recent weeks in the case centered on whether Geico General Insurance Co. acted in "bad faith" in handling a claim from the 2006 accident.
|Expansion of bad faith liability
The insurance-industry groups said in a brief filed last week that a Supreme Court ruling against Geico could expose insurers to "bad faith liability far beyond what has long been established by this court."
"Plaintiff's position would constitute a sea change that would degrade bad faith law such that mere negligence in claims handling could constitute bad faith, even in the absence of any evidence that the insurer was acting in its own best interests or without due regard for the interests of its insured [customer]," said the friend-of-the-court brief filed by the American Insurance Association, the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, the Personal Insurance Federation of Florida and the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America.
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