Just over a week ago, the Governor signed House Bill HB 337 – called the “Courts Bill.” It had some last minute changes included that legislative leadership labeled “must pass” dealing with clerk of courts budget issues. The bill raises the threshold of disputes assigned to circuit court from $15,000 to $50,000 over the next three years, pushing those cases into county court. As a result, many insurance cases that used to be heard in circuit court will instead be heard in county court.
As with most sweeping legislation, the devil is in the details. Take a look at the number of county judges here . It is plain to see that over 30 of Florida’s 67 counties have but one county court judge and do not have the resources for the volume of insurance industry litigation about to hit them.
In essence, this law shifts court caseloads from circuit court down to county judges from the current $15,000 dispute threshold (an amount which hasn’t changed since 1992) to $30,000 on January 1, 2020 and to $50,000 on January 1, 2023. This will result in an estimated 75% of insurance litigation being shifted to the county courts.
Current law keeps homeowners associations’ disputes in the circuit court. It makes no sense that the legislature would not add property (condos and homeowners) insurance cases to keep them in circuit court jurisdiction as well. And not one legislator would give a rational answer when asked why we were doing this when the Supreme Court, in its own study of court caseloads, stated that “most cases involving property damage insurance claims have a jury trial demand.
Prior to this “Courts Bill” taking effect, County Court Judges were already tasked with an overwhelming caseload. According to the Florida Office of State Court Administrators for fiscal year 2017-18, there were a total of 762,685 Circuit Court case filings and 599 Circuit Judges (1,273 cases per Judge) and 3,426,339 County Court case filings and 322 County Court Judges (10,640 cases per Judge). Increased jury trials will cause county court workload and facility impacts that cannot be met within existing resources.
As many of you follow here, I am in Hurricane Michael-impacted counties often and these rural, county courts do not have the expertise nor the resources to handle insurance disputes. We even asked a chief circuit judge if it’s common for court dockets and caseloads to be shifted from county to circuit court at will. He said that does not happen since dockets are set months in advance and shifting caseloads is not a snap of the finger! So the impact of Hurricanes on the court system and how this bill will FURTHER DELAY access to courts cannot be overstated!
There are nearly 150,000 claims (and growing) in the Florida Panhandle from Hurricane Michael, with the expectation that 1 in 3 of hurricane claims will wind up in a court dispute because of the push by a handful of lawyers continuing to game the system and take advantage of hurricane victims. ALL of the Hurricane Michael impacted counties, except Bay, have one county court judge each. That means 50,000 cases will hit Panhandle COUNTY courts about the time HB 337 provisions take effect this January 1.
Bill sponsors say that the law has not changed since 1992 and the time has come to change, to redistribute caseload to purportedly make the court system more efficient. Old laws are great to change but when you insert a hurricane, all bets are off and the unintended consequence of HB 337 changes will be enormously harmful to Panhandle and small county consumers. What can you do? Contact me so I can guide you on how we work to reverse this awful law in the January 2020 session. Next up: your read on some terrific stories. Thanks for always reading and following our work!
LMA Newsletter of 6-3-19
