Citizens Insurance seeing fewer lawsuits from South Florida

The share of lawsuits against Citizens Property Insurance Corp. originating from South Florida has declined sharply.

Lawsuits against the so-called insurer of last resort have declined statewide from 6,251 between January and July of 2021 to 3,600 during the same period this year, according to Citizens research.

The percentage of cases filed in state circuit courts against Citizens from Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties declined from 88% in 2020 to 55% during the first seven months of 2025, the research shows.

In addition, the tricounty region was the source of 38% of 1,661 cases sent since 2024 to an arbitration panel that Citizens helps to fund.

And the percentage of notices of intent to litigate against Citizens filed to the Department of Financial Services from the three counties declined from 82% in 2021 to 39% between January and July, Citizens’ figures show.

By comparison, the percentage of lawsuits generated in South Florida remained at about 90% between 2014 and 2022, before the state Legislature enacted reforms in 2022 and 2023 to discourage litigation against insurance companies.

In addition to the reforms, experts attributed the reduction to a number of factors, including a decline in the percentage of South Florida policies in Citizens and a lack of hurricane activity affecting the tricounty region.

The recent declines indicate the legislative reforms are working by lowering insurers’ litigation costs, insurance insiders say.

Lower costs have encouraged 17 new companies to enter the state and have enabled “most Florida-domiciled insurers” to file for rate decreases or to keep rates flat, said Mark Friedlander, senior director of media relations for the industry-funded Insurance Information Institute.

“Citizens was incurring more frivolous lawsuits than other insurers because of its large market share in South Florida,” Friedlander told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “Now, Citizens is experiencing the biggest impacts of tort reform curbing the abusive legal practices that caused Florida’s man-made risk crisis.”

But plaintiffs attorneys say the drop-offs only show that policyholders were disadvantaged by the reforms.

The reforms eliminated what was called the one-way attorney fee statute. It was a law in effect for more than a century that required insurers to pay plaintiffs’ legal fees when their lawsuit resulted in a settlement that paid them any amount, even $1, over their insurer’s original offer.

Insurers complained that the statute was too generous and enticed policyholders, repair contractors and attorneys to file far more lawsuits than their counterparts in other states.

And they said that South Florida attorneys were adept at exploiting the old law and extracting legal fees that far exceeded damage settlements.

Reforms harmed policyholders, attorneys say

But plaintiffs attorneys contend that the reforms hurt policyholders’ ability to find attorneys willing to handle smaller claims.

“Without the statutory entitlement to attorneys fees, plaintiffs attorneys are generally unwilling to accept lower-value cases,” says Robert Gonzalez, managing attorney at the Miami-based law firm Insurance Trial Lawyers. “If a homeowner sustains a loss valued at $25,000 or less, it is now very difficult to secure legal representation on a contingency basis.”

He added, “Before the law changed, attorneys could pursue such claims with the assurance that, if successful, they would be compensated for their time and effort through statutory fees. Now, the maximum recovery for an attorney is limited to roughly 30% of the settlement amount, which in most cases does not justify taking on a $25,000 claim.”

The reforms also prohibited contractors from asking policyholders to sign an affidavit, known as an assignment of benefits, giving them the ability to stand in their shoes and use their names to file lawsuits against insurers.

Chipping away at grounds to sue

As early as 2014, Citizens officials said the assignment-of-benefits provision was getting out of hand in South Florida.

Contractors armed with the affidavit would respond to breaches of water lines feeding dishwashers, washing machines and hot water heaters by tearing out walls, flooring and cabinets and file lawsuits before Citizens received notice of the claims, Citizens officials said.

Citizens responded by capping non-weather-related water damage claims at $10,000 unless policyholders agreed to use contractors managed by Citizens.

More recently, Citizens further quelled lawsuits by convincing the state Legislature to require Citizens policyholders to agree to allow claims disputes to be settled by a panel of arbitrators funded by Citizens, plaintiffs attorneys say.

In lawsuits claiming that the system violates policyholders’ constitutional rights to jury trials, several plaintiffs attorneys charge that the arbitration system is rigged against policyholders because arbitration judges ruled in Citizens’ favor in more than 90% of cases that advanced to hearings.

Policyholders are far more likely to prevail in a jury system, Gonzalez said.

Citizens’ use of the system is on hold following an injunction by a Hillsborough County attorney who agreed, in a challenge by Gonzalez’s law firm, that a jury would likely conclude that it’s unconstitutional. Citizens is appealing the injunction.

As a result of the efforts to reduce litigation, the number of public adjusters and water mitigation companies in South Florida have fallen and attorneys who once represented policyholders are shifting into other practice areas, Gonzalez said.

Joe Ligman, a partner in the Miami-based law firm Ligman Martin PI, concurred that the reforms “are hurting a lot of homeowners, public adjusters, contractors and attorneys.” Ligman, a plaintiffs attorney, added, “I am slowly getting into other fields of law.”

Fewer policyholders and storms from tricounty region

Other reasons for the decline in South Florida-based lawsuits include a reduction in the share of South Florida-based policyholders relying on Citizens.

In 2021, 51.4% of Citizens policies covered property located in South Florida. Today, that percentage has fallen to 40.3%, according to Citizens data.

Greater shares of South Florida policies are likely being removed by private market insurers participating in the company’s depopulation program, Citizens spokesman Michael Peltier said.

With the reforms in place, South Florida homes could be more attractive to insurers who shunned them during the years of heavy litigation before 2022, Peltier said.

And then there’s the fact that the tricounty region has not been severely impacted by a major hurricane since Irma in 2017, Gonzalez said. (Southwest Florida faced heavier damage from Irma than Southeast Florida, where structural damage was deemed minor, according to the National Weather Service.)

Storm claims often lead to lawsuits, and 15 hurricanes or tropical storms have struck Florida’s west coast since Irma, while only four brushed or struck the east coast, according to an online log of hurricane tracks by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The minimal effects we have had in the tricounty area have been less severe and isolated to small areas,” Gonzalez said.

Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071 or by email at rhurtibise@sunsentinel.com.

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