STATE FARM INSURANCE COMPANY, APPELLANT,
v.
HERMINA AND OSCAR REYES, APPELLEES
AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.
The court held that nominal settlement proposals are not necessarily indicative of bad faith, and absent proof of bad faith, the trial court must award fees and costs.
State Farm obtained a summary judgment and moved for attorney's fees and costs based on its settlement proposals. The trial court denied the motion wi…
The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.
Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.
Explore caselaw by topic → Browse Settlement Proposals cases and more on FLexlaw
State Farm Insurance Company appeals a final order denying its motion for attor*1123ney’s fees and costs. The issue is whether State Farm’s proposals for settlement submitted to each of the insureds (plaintiffs below, appellees here) fulfilled the fee-shifting requirements set forth in section 768.79, Florida Statutes (2010), and in Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.442. After State Farm obtained a final summary judgment in its favor and moved to recover its attorney’s fees and costs, the trial court entered a written order denying the motion without specifying any basis for the denial.
The transcript of the hearing on the motion indicates that the appellees argued that the proposals for settlement were nominal and in bad faith, and that State Farm had made similarly-nominal offers on “late-filed” Hurricane Wilma claims in some sixty-eight other cases. The eighteen-minute hearing on the motion consisted of argument by counsel, and obviously there was no opportunity to assess the particular facts of the other sixty-eight alleged cases.
Finding no proof of bad faith in State Farm’s proposals to the appellees in this case, and no determination of bad faith by the trial court on the record of these particular proposals for settlement, we reverse the order below and remand with directions to grant the motion and to award State Farm its reasonable attorney’s fees and costs in conformance with the cited statute and rule. Nominal offers are not necessarily indicative of bad faith. Downs v. Coastal Sys. Inti, Inc., 972 So.2d 258, 262 (Fla. 3d DCA2008).
Reversed and remanded with directions.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
-
Isaias v. The H.T. Hackney Co., 159 So. 3d 1002 (Fla. 3d DCA 2015)…. H.T. Hackney Co. v. Autumn P’ship, LLP, 138 So. 3d 454 (Fla. 3d DCA 2014). .The fact that a proposal for settlement may be ‘‘nominal" does not automatically disqualify it from characterization as a good faith offer. State Farm Ins., Co. v. Reyes, 137 So. 3d 1122 (Fla. 3d DCA 2014); Downs v. Coastal Sys. Int’l, Inc., 972 So. 2d 258 (Fla. 3d DCA 2008).…
Authorities Cited
- Downs v. Coastal Sys. Int'l, Inc., 972 So. 2d 258 (Fla. 3d DCA 2008)