Informational only. Not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this post. Consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction.
Florida's appraisal mechanism — historically a plaintiff's tool for bypassing coverage defenses and forcing payment on amount-of-loss disputes — has been substantially reordered by two waves of legislative reform: Senate Bill 2-A (December 2022) and House Bill 837 (March 2023). Plaintiffs' counsel who litigate first-party property claims without internalizing both statutes risk dismissal, fee exposure, and forfeiture of remedies that previously operated automatically.
The Pre-Reform Baseline: Licea and the Appraisal Framework
Florida's appraisal jurisprudence rests on State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. v. Licea, 685 So. 2d 1285 (Fla. 1996). The Florida Supreme Court in Licea resolved a conflict among district courts about whether a retained-rights clause destroyed the mutuality of obligation necessary to enforce an appraisal provision. The Court held that a "right to deny" clause merely preserves the insurer's coverage defenses — it does not render the appraisal obligation illusory.
The Licea holding has doctrinal reach well beyond the clause-interpretation question presented. The Court interpreted the appraisal clause to require "an assessment of the amount of a loss," encompassing "determinations as to the cost of repair or replacement and whether or not the requirement for a repair or replacement was caused by a covered peril or a cause not covered, such as normal wear and tear, dry rot, or various other designated, excluded causes." 685 So. 2d at 1288. That language — and the circuit split it spawned on causation — continued to animate Florida appraisal litigation for the next three decades.
Under Licea as subsequently developed, coverage determinations remain exclusively judicial; the insurer can dispute the existence of any coverage obligation even after an appraisal award fixes the amount. But once coverage is conceded or judicially determined, the appraisal award is binding. The conditions precedent to compelling appraisal include completion of the insurer's post-loss obligations (cooperation, examination under oath, proof of loss), creating a set of threshold disputes that defendants reliably exploit.
SB 2-A (December 2022): The Structural Overhaul
Florida's Governor signed Senate Bill 2-A on December 16, 2022, during a special legislative session convened to address insolvencies cascading from Hurricanes Ian and Nicole. The bill made several changes that directly affect appraisal strategy.
Mandatory Pre-Suit Notice. Fla. Stat. § 627.70152, first enacted in 2021 and carried forward by SB 2-A, requires a written notice of intent to initiate litigation at least ten business days before filing suit under any property insurance policy. The notice must identify the alleged acts or omissions, provide a pre-suit settlement demand (itemizing damages, attorney fees, and costs) for disputes not involving a flat denial of coverage, and be submitted to the Department of Financial Services on the prescribed form. Failure to comply is grounds for dismissal without prejudice.
Critically, the pre-suit notice statute interacts with appraisal. If the insurer responds to the notice by electing appraisal or another alternative dispute resolution method, the limitations period is tolled during the process. If appraisal is not concluded within ninety days after the ten-day notice period expires, the claimant may file suit without additional notice. Fla. Stat. § 627.70152(4)(b).
Shortened Claims Deadlines. SB 2-A reduced the insurer's time to acknowledge a claim from fourteen days to seven days, to begin investigation from fourteen to seven days, and to physically inspect from forty-five to thirty days. Fla. Stat. § 627.70131. These tighter timelines create a cleaner record for arguing that an insurer's delay in invoking appraisal constitutes waiver — one of the most litigated issues in Florida appraisal practice.
Assignment of Benefits Prohibition. SB 2-A codified a categorical prohibition on post-loss assignment of residential and commercial property insurance benefits for policies issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2023. Fla. Stat. § 627.7152. This collapses the assignee-based appraisal demand model that had allowed contractors and public adjusters to drive litigation in the policyholder's stead.
OIR Appraisal Abuse Authority. Perhaps most symbolically significant: SB 2-A authorized the Office of Insurance Regulation to withdraw form approval from, and bar for up to two years the appraisal invocation rights of, any insurer exhibiting a pattern of abusing the appraisal process. This is regulatorily unusual — a statute specifically conferring power to punish insurers for weaponizing a contractual remedy.
One-Way Attorney Fees Eliminated. SB 2-A repealed the fee-shifting provisions of Fla. Stat. § 627.428 for most first-party property disputes. Insured attorneys must now navigate the proportionality framework of § 627.70152(8): full fees if the claimant recovers more than 50% of the disputed amount above the pre-suit offer; proportional fees in the 20–50% band; no fees below 20%.
Hurricane Claims Deadline. SB 2-A compressed the deadline to file initial, reopened, or supplemental hurricane claims to one year from landfall or damage, with supplemental claims capped at eighteen months. Fla. Stat. § 627.70132. Reopened claims opened post-SB 2-A are subject to these shorter windows regardless of when the storm occurred.
HB 837 (March 2023): Bad Faith's New Architecture
Governor DeSantis signed House Bill 837 on March 24, 2023. For appraisal practitioners, two provisions command attention.
Bad Faith Standard Elevated. HB 837 codifies that negligence alone is insufficient to establish insurance bad faith. Fla. Stat. § 624.155. The statute now expressly imposes a duty of good faith on insureds as well, requiring them to furnish accurate information, make reasonable demands, and set non-coercive deadlines when attempting to settle. The factfinder may consider the insured's own bad-faith conduct in assessing damages. This is a structural departure from prior law, which located virtually all good-faith obligations on the insurer.
Ninety-Day Safe Harbor. HB 837 creates a safe harbor from bad-faith liability for liability insurers that tender the lesser of policy limits or the claimant's demand within ninety days of receiving actual notice accompanied by sufficient supporting evidence. For property insurers, the pre-suit notice statute under § 627.70152 already structures a similar opportunity: an insurer that pays or resolves the dispute during the ten-day notice window faces substantially reduced fee exposure and no bad-faith exposure.
Lodestar Presumption for Attorney Fees. HB 837 added a statutory presumption that the lodestar fee is sufficient and reasonable in any civil action where fees are court-determined. The contingency-fee multiplier is now available only in "rare and exceptional" circumstances. This narrows one of the traditional paths plaintiffs' counsel used to recover meaningful fees from property insurance litigation.
Practice Notes for Plaintiffs' Counsel Post-Reform
Sequencing Matters. The threshold question post-SB 2-A is whether your client's policy pre-dates or post-dates January 1, 2023. For pre-2023 policies, § 627.428's one-way fee provision may still apply. Courts have divided on the retroactivity question; the Sixth District Court of Appeal held in early 2024 that § 627.70152 could not be applied retroactively to policies that pre-dated the statute's enactment without clear legislative expression of retroactive intent. Confirm your circuit's current rule before structuring the pre-suit demand.
Craft the Demand with Precision. The pre-suit notice is not a formality — it is the document that sets the "disputed amount" driving the fee-recovery calculation under § 627.70152(8). Undersell the claim in the demand and you reduce your fee ceiling even if you win at trial. Oversell and you invite bad-faith counterclaims under HB 837's insured-duty provisions.
Appraisal Before or After Coverage Determination. Post-Licea, Florida courts have discretion to order simultaneous or sequenced proceedings. The Florida Supreme Court reaffirmed in 2024 that appraisal can be compelled even where coverage disputes remain pending, with the retained-rights clause preserving the insurer's ability to raise coverage defenses after the award. Build into your case strategy the possibility that a large appraisal award may be followed by coverage litigation — and that you will need to fund that second battle.
Waiver Arguments Remain Viable. An insurer that litigates for months before invoking appraisal may have waived that right. The tighter post-SB 2-A deadlines (seven-day acknowledgment, thirty-day inspection) make it harder for insurers to run out the clock — but also provide a cleaner record of each delay. Document every missed deadline and reservation of rights.
OIR Pattern Evidence. The SB 2-A provision authorizing OIR to sanction appraisal abusers creates a public record that plaintiffs' counsel should routinely consult. An insurer with a documented pattern of invoking appraisal to avoid paying facially valid claims faces an argument that its invocation in your case is itself evidence of bad faith.
Where the Law Is Moving
The structural transformation accomplished by SB 2-A and HB 837 is the most significant reordering of Florida property insurance litigation in decades. The elimination of one-way fees alone will reduce the volume of small-dollar disputes, as contingency-fee economics become untenable when fee recovery is proportionality-capped. Expect more early appraisal invocations by insurers trying to lock in a low award and extinguish fee liability before suit is filed.
Policyholders with legitimate large-loss claims retain meaningful leverage: the pre-suit notice requirement allows carriers to see the demand before suit, incentivizing rational settlement by carriers who miscalculated reserves. And the OIR's new anti-abuse authority, if aggressively deployed, may curtail the most egregious tactical appraisal invocations. The reform era is new enough that its full behavioral effects — on insurer claims-handling, on plaintiff case selection, on settlement dynamics — remain to be worked out in the courts.
Talk to Yates Anderson
If you are litigating a matter in this area — or weighing whether to — the working analysis above only goes so far. Request a case evaluation and a Yates Anderson attorney will respond within one business day.
Informational only. Not legal advice. No attorney-client relationship is created by reading this post. Consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction.