In an appeal from Seminole County, Florida, two judges of the Fifth District Court of Appeal agreed in Landers v. State Farm Fla. Ins. Co., No. 5D15–4032, 2017 WL 3443077 (Fla. 5th DCA August 11, 2017) (STATED NOT RELEASED FOR PERMANENT PUBLICATION AND SO SUBJECT TO REVISION OR WITHDRAWAL), that the onset of Florida's "Bad Faith" statute was not delayed by the insurance policy before the court in that case.
In Landers, the Florida court was confronted with a homeowner's insurance policy provision requiring an appraisal in the event of a dispute over value. The policy's appraisal provision is reproduced in footnote 3 of the majority opinion on appeal.
The appraisal provision applied to a dispute over the claim's value, in essence. The insurance policy did not make appraisal a condition precedent to coverage, and it did not raise a bar to suing the carrier under a statute or otherwise for bad faith or unfair dealing until after an appraisal process was finished.
Resting its analysis on the Florida statute, neither does the Florida "Bad Faith" Statute make completing the appraisal process a condition precedent, the majority held. The policyholder in that case was permitted to proceed with a civil remedy notice of insurer violation which he had filed under the statute even before the appraisal process was completed.
Parenthetically, the one judge who dissented did not file a reported opinion.
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