Property Insurance Litigation Statistics Fabricated By Insurance Industry, and Florida Politicians In Bed With Those Insurers

Investigative journalist Lawrence Mower of the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times exposed made up statistics by the insurance industry and repeated by Florida politicians in bed with them. In, Are Lawsuits Causing Florida’s High Insurance Premiums? A New State Report Has Answers, Mower quoted Republican Senator Erin Grall:

‘It is now clear; the insurance industry fabricated their arguments and data over the past few years to manufacture a crisis and push for various legislative reforms,’ she said in a statement.

‘The industry has defrauded the public and the Legislature in an effort to not have to pay out claims for what homeowners are owed.’

Mower noted the following about the real statistics versus the fabrication from insurance lobbyists and executives

But the report does not match the rhetoric from Gov. Ron DeSantis and insurance companies that frivolous or abusive lawsuits were causing record losses and soaring premiums. Lawmakers in four legislative sessions have made it successively harder to sue insurance companies, which has not resulted in lower premiums. Among the changes brought by legislators: Policyholders now have to pay their own attorney’s fees if suing an insurer

…

The data does shoot down one of the claims by insurers and business groups such as the Florida Chamber of Commerce. Those groups have complained for years that plaintiffs’ lawyers can ask to have their attorneys fees doubled by a judge, known as a “contingency fee multiplier,” which they said incentivizes frivolous cases.

The data shows it’s a non-issue: it was awarded four times in 2022.

The insurance industry, its lobbyists, and Florida politicians in bed with them, implemented a propaganda ploy used by the Nazis often known as “the big lie.” While often attributed to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels with no evidence, a definition is as follows:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

Amy Bach, of United Policyholders, and Doug Quinn, of American Policyholders Association, would call me and ask where the statistics came from. My answer was, “I do not know. I think they made them up. There is no backup they can show to prove what they are saying.”

Quinn complained incessantly that the statistics were being repeated by journalists without fact checking and thus repeating “the big lie.” He commissioned a study on the topic as noted in American Policyholder Association Publishes Study Highlighting Florida Insurance Market Claims Payment Issues. The report, New Analysis of Regulatory Complaint Data Suggests High Rates of

Litigation in Florida Homeowners Insurance Market are Driven by Substantial Claims Payment Issues, not Frivolous Lawsuits, casts doubt on the propaganda spewed by the insurance lobbyists and other Florida politicians.

To be fair, there was a marked increase in property insurance litigation. There were also abuses by some attorneys and roofers more concerned about making as much money as they could regardless of the legitimacy of the claims. But there were a lot of significant reasons for insurance premiums to become higher in Florida other than as reported by the insurance industry. But the insurance industry has your premium money and is spending part of it for those lobbyists and “in bed” politicians to spread it version of reality.

A big shout out goes to Lawrence Mower for his work exposing “the big insurance lobby lie.”

Thought For The Day

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

—Mark Twain