Farinas v. Florida Farm Bureau General Insurance Co.

850 So. 2d 555, 2003 Fla. App. LEXIS 5742
CourtDistrict Court of Appeal of Florida
DecidedApril 23, 2003
DocketNos. 4D02-11, 4D02-96
StatusPublished
Cited by27 cases

This text of 850 So. 2d 555 (Farinas v. Florida Farm Bureau General Insurance Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court of Appeal of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Farinas v. Florida Farm Bureau General Insurance Co., 850 So. 2d 555, 2003 Fla. App. LEXIS 5742 (Fla. Ct. App. 2003).

Opinions

PER CURIAM.

This consolidated appeal arises from litigation regarding a February 23, 1996 car accident. Nicholas Copertino lost control of his car and crossed a median, hitting an oncoming car. This tragedy resulted in the unfortunate deaths of five teenagers and severe injuries to another seven, including Copertino and a 14-year-old girl rendered a quadriplegic. Copertino’s liability for those resulting injuries was not in question.

Copertino was covered by his father’s Florida Farm Bureau General Insurance Company (“Farm Bureau”) policy with bodily injury limits of $100,000 per claim and $300,000 per accident. Consequently, with the five death claims and seven significant personal injury claims, the policy limits were plainly inadequate.

Farm Bureau settled for the limits with Lisa Boccia, the driver of the other car, and the Rashidian and Cordes estates, two of the death claims, by March 8, 1996. After exhausting the limits, Farm Bureau filed a declaratory judgment action in July 1996 against the insured, the Copertinos, [558]*558to determine whether it had any further duty to defend the Copertinos after having paid the policy limits. Appellants intervened and ultimately all filed third-party bad faith actions alleging that Farm Bureau entered into settlements without due regard for the interests of the insured.

Farm Bureau moved for summary judgment against all appellants, and the Fari-nases moved for cross-summary judgment. The trial court granted summary judgment to Farm Bureau as to all the appellants and denied the Farinases’ summary judgment. Now, all appellants seek review of the summary judgment granted to Farm Bureau, and the Farinases also seek review of the denial of their summary judgment.

We are confronted with three questions: 1) what was Farm Bureau’s good-faith duty to the insured, the Copertinos, in a multiple claimant situation, 2) did Farm Bureau meet that duty and 3) are there any remaining issues of fact for a jury to determine.

A brief background of insurance good-faith law is necessary to provide context for our analysis. Good-faith law in Florida evolved as liability insurance policies began to replace traditional indemnity policies.

Under liability policies, however, insurance companies took on the obligation of defending the insured, which, in turn, made insureds dependent on the acts of the insurers; insurers had the power to settle and foreclose an insured’s exposure or to refuse to settle and leave the insured exposed to liability in excess of policy limits. This placed insurers in a fiduciary relationship with their insureds similar to that which exists between an attorney and client. Consequently, courts began to recognize that insurers “owed a duty to their insureds to refrain from acting solely on the basis of their own interests in settlement.” This duty became known as the “exercise of good faith” or the “avoidance of bad faith.” Under this new standard of culpability, if an insurer was found to have acted in bad faith, the insurer would have to pay the entire judgment entered against the insured in favor of the injured third party, including any amount in excess of the insured’s policy limits. This type of claim became known as a third-party bad faith action.

State Farm Mut. Ins. Co. v. Laforet, 658 So.2d 55, 57-58 (Fla.1995).

Even though the bad faith occurs between the insurer and its named insured, Florida law allows the injured third party insured to bring an action directly against the insurer. See Thompson v. Commercial Union Ins. Co., 250 So.2d 259 (Fla.1971). The rationale behind this procedure is that the injured party, as the beneficiary of any successful bad faith claim, is the real party in interest as a sort of judgment creditor. See id. at 264.

In 1982, the Florida legislature enacted section 624.155, which created a statutory bad faith claim and extended the claim to the first-party insureds. See § 624.155, Fla. Stat. (Supp.1982). A 1990 amendment noted the existence of common-law bad faith and added that a person may obtain a judgment under either the common law remedy or the statutory remedy, but not both. See § 624.155, Fla. Stat. (Supp. 1990). The third district has determined that this statutory obligation did not change the common law obligation of good faith or the measure of damages. See Hollar v. Int’l Bankers Ins. Co., 572 So.2d 937, 939 (Fla. 3d DCA 1990). All the appellants in the present case, except the Farinases, grounded their claims on both the common law and statutory standards.

[559]*559The Florida Supreme Court announced the case law standard for insurer good faith in Boston Old Colony Insurance Co. v. Gutierrez, 386 So.2d 783 (Fla.1980). The general standard of care that the insurer must exercise when handling claims against the insured is “the same degree of care and diligence as a person of ordinary care and prudence should exercise in the management of his own business.” Id. at 785 (citation omitted). Because the insured has relinquished control of all decisions regarding claims to the insurer, the insurer’s standard of care requires the insurer to act “in good faith and with due regard for the interests of the insured.” Id. (citation omitted). The extent of this good faith duty is explicitly defined in detail by the court:

This good faith duty obligates the insurer to advise the insured of settlement opportunities, to advise as to the probable outcome of the litigation, to warn of the possibility of an excess judgment, and to advise the insured of any steps he might take to avoid the same. The insurer must investigate the facts, give fair consideration to a settlement offer that is not unreasonable under the facts, and settle, if possible, where a reasonably prudent person, faced with the prospect of paying the total recovery, would do so.

Id. (citations omitted). The determination of whether an insurer has satisfied this standard is one for the jury. Id. (citation omitted).

This standard of care is further reflected in the applicable Florida Statute, which states that an insured has a cause of action for bad faith, when the insurer did not attempt “in good faith to settle claims when, under all circumstances, it could and should have done so, had it acted fairly and honestly towards its insured and with due regard for her or his interests.” § 624.155(b)(1), Fla. Stat. (2002).

Both prior and subsequent to the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Boston Old Colony, courts have recognized attendant duties of good faith under Florida law. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, when interpreting Florida bad faith law in a diversity action, concluded that the jury is to decide whether an insurer has given inappropriate primary regard to his own interests over those of the insured in making a settlement determination. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. v. Davis, 412 F.2d 475, 480 (5th Cir.1969). Additionally, when there are multiple claimants ánd minimal policy limits, “it follows that, insofar as the insureds’ interest governs, the fund should not be exhausted without an attempt to settle as many claims as possible.” Id. at 481. More recently, the Florida Supreme Court augmented its decision in Boston Old Colony,

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Bluebook (online)
850 So. 2d 555, 2003 Fla. App. LEXIS 5742, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/farinas-v-florida-farm-bureau-general-insurance-co-fladistctapp-2003.