Governor vetoes repeal
Within hours of the release of our June 28 edition of the LMA Newsletter, SB 54 sponsored by Senator Danny Burgess of Pasco County, was presented to the Governor and subsequently vetoed. The voices around this legislation were strong – from those who believe that Personal Injury Protection (PIP) auto coverage’s usefulness is long gone to those who think no matter how useless it is, it’s better than the “solution” proposed in SB 54 to substitute bodily injury liability coverage in its place.
The sides stacked up like this: Insurance companies who have long held that mandatory PIP needed to be repealed could not support the legislature’s idea of repeal because the over 100 page bill didn’t contain guardrails around the potential for litigation growth akin to what the property insurance industry is seeing. The other side off the line of scrimmage were plaintiff lawyers, some auto insurance defense lawyers, and PIP medical clinics who also believed that repealing it wasn’t a good idea. And yet another faction of plaintiff lawyers believed the bill should be signed by the governor and they would hone their bodily injury liability litigation skills when the bill became effective.
The regulators? Look no further than the Pinnacle Study, The Impact of Repealing Personal Injury Protection Coverage in Florida, released just four weeks ago after the bill passed the legislature. It said in a nutshell “premiums will go up if the Governor signs the bill.” In the end, the Pinnacle study’s findings appeared to have been the key to the Governor’s veto decision, as he wrote in his veto letter that the bill “does not adequately address the current issues facing Florida drivers and may have unintended consequences that would negatively impact both the market and consumers.” (You can read more about the bill in the PIP section of our final Bill Watch of the legislative session.)
So our state is status quo, no changes to the PIP statutes and who knows what will be filed in the 2022 session. As they say, “stay tuned…news at 11!”
LMA Newsletter of 7-12-21
