Generally, selections come alongside that make me marvel if judges are studying the identical insurance coverage insurance policies and insurance coverage legal guidelines the remainder of us are. The current Florida Clark opinion 1 is considered one of them. Based on this glowing gem of judicial thought, it seems that it’s not sufficient to inform your insurance coverage firm, “Hey, my home was ripped aside by a hurricane.” No, no — you could now apparently present particular person notices for every protection you would possibly later declare — instantly. Misplaced your roof? Notify that. Misplaced your couch? Separate discover. Misplaced the flexibility to lease your now-soggy home? One other discover. Higher get your guidelines prepared the subsequent time a Class 4 ranges your property.
Let’s take a easy instance. Your stunning beachfront lodge burns to the bottom. You name your agent and breathlessly report: “My lodge simply burned to ashes!” Apparently, beneath Clark, except you additionally scream into the telephone, “And all my beds and low makers burned too! And I received’t be renting any rooms for a yr!”, the insurance coverage firm can later deny your contents and rental loss claims for lack of “immediate discover.” As a result of clearly, within the aftermath of a complete loss, what folks ought to concentrate on is ensuring they itemize each class of destruction straight away. Who cares about smoke inhalation or discovering a spot to sleep? We should fulfill the hyper-technical gods of “discover.”
Feeling skeptical? Let’s kick it, old skool. Image a ship setting sail in 1783. It sinks in a ferocious storm. The shipowner sends a dispatch to London: “The ship has sunk.” Lloyd’s of London, well-known for its bells, dutifully rings the ship loss bell. However beneath Clark’s new logic, somebody ought to have scurried over and mentioned, “Wait! Wait! That’s solely discover of the ship! The place’s the separate bell for the cargo?!” Perhaps they need to have had completely different bells: one for the ship, one for the bales of cotton, one other for the spices, and a separate, dainty chime for the silks. In spite of everything, it’s not sufficient to say the ship is on the underside of the ocean — we should notify individually that the cargo acquired moist, too.
Or let’s keep fashionable. A hurricane blows the whole roof off of your own home, the partitions are bent inward, the inside is flooded, the furnishings is floating, and the neighbor’s canoe is resting the place your eating desk was once. You promptly name your insurance coverage agent and say, “My home is destroyed.” However foolish you — except you concurrently record “roof gone,” “partitions ruined,” “furnishings destroyed,” “lack of rental earnings,” and “emotional devastation,” you will have breached your sacred obligation to offer discover. Naturally, your insurer will graciously pay you for perhaps the roof — however overlook the contents, overlook the leases, and please don’t even ask about mildew. You didn’t give “immediate discover” of these. Disgrace on you for considering frequent sense utilized to property insurance coverage.
What this resolution does is inject a brand new degree of hyper-technical nonsense right into a easy idea that insurance coverage was a product designed to guard policyholders by paying protection advantages — not lure them. This resolution now permits sure insurance coverage firms — particularly these already steeped in a tradition of delay, deny, and defend — to invent a brand new method to argue: “Gotcha!” when folks truthfully, shortly, and understandably notify them of losses.
Insurance coverage is rightfully marketed as offering safety, not creating obscure procedural hurdles that no cheap particular person may ever foresee. As a substitute, Clark invitations extra denials, delays, brawls, lawsuits, and appeals as a result of the legislation has by no means been required to provide discover on this method, and clients struggling the loss don’t buy a coverage that claims that they’ve to offer discover of every protection impacted by the loss when offering the discover of loss.
Public adjusters, threat managers, and particularly insurance coverage brokers who’re often the primary line of communication — concentrate. If you get that frantic telephone name, electronic mail, or textual content from a buyer reporting their home on fireplace, their constructing underwater, or their roof crusing off into the horizon, understand that merely forwarding “the home blew aside” is probably not sufficient anymore. Some firms, emboldened by this resolution, will now argue that you just needed to relay separate discover for the kitchen cupboards, the crown molding, and the misplaced 10-year tenant lease.
Be warned: Clark would possibly grow to be the brand new favourite instrument of these insurance coverage firms that suppose claims dealing with is a zero-sum sport. And sure, I will likely be writing extra on this case as soon as I’ve the briefs and may dive deeper into the remainder of the choice.
Keep tuned. This was simply the opening bell — and don’t overlook to ring one for the furnishings, one other for the carpets, and one other for the misplaced rental earnings whilst you’re at it.
Considered The Day
“There’s nothing so absurd that when you repeat it typically sufficient, folks will imagine it.”
— William James
1 Householders Alternative Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co. v. Clark, No. 1D2023-1622, (Fla.1st DCA Mar. 19, 2025).