By Jim Maxwell<\/p>\n
In the 2023 legislative session, Florida\u2019s elected leaders took serious steps to curb the crisis in Florida we had come to know as lawsuit abuse.\u00a0 \u00a0It reached a crisis level and even had Florida listed on the annual \u201cJudicial Hellholes\u201d report produced by the American Tort Reform Association.\u00a0 But in 2023, under the leadership of Gov. DeSantis and the legislature, Florida passed new laws that restored sanity to the legal process and stopped some of the frivolous games that came to be associated with \u201cget-rich-quick-schemes\u201d via lawsuit.<\/p>\n
Due to one-way attorney fees, litigation was the all-time heavyweight factor in driving up the cost of Florida\u2019s auto and homeowners insurance.\u00a0 While the number of frivolous lawsuits to consumers and subsequent financial impact have been largely reduced as a result of 2023\u2019s legislative action, there is still much more to do, and as we begin the 2026 hurricane season, legislators missed a great opportunity as to take steps to further reduce the cost of insurance.<\/p>\n
One of the main things that could have been done is to bring some reasonable regulation to the financing of lawsuits by third parties.\u00a0 Third party financing can sound like a good idea because it gives some people who may not have the ability to pay for their own expenses during a lawsuit recovery period an opportunity to receive an unsecured loan to keep the lawsuit going.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This one benefit comes at a high cost however.\u00a0 Third party financiers have engaged in playing the odds by keeping lawsuits going even after a sound decision for the plaintiff would have been to take an offered settlement.\u00a0 Financiers can and have taken over other decisions on the direction of the case, ignoring any considerations for the plaintiff.\u00a0 Financiers can and have charged exorbitant interest rates to the point that the plaintiff receives little to nothing from a final settlement or award.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moreover, financial third-party funds can and have been set up to even receive funding from international investors, including foreign governments.\u00a0 The sole idea that international profiteers could be using our courts system to attack our small businessmen and women in Florida should be enough to question this system.\u00a0 Proposed legislation should require certain public disclosures about the nature of the financing to the court, limitations on the amount of control a financier can have over a lawsuit, and limitations on the amount of interest a financier can charge a plaintiff.\u00a0 These are all reasonable reforms that should protect plaintiffs and bring transparency to a process that is being abused.<\/p>\n
Moving forward with more accountability for third-party lawsuit financing will restore fairness to our courts and eliminate a couple of the remaining cracks in the foundation of Florida\u2019s economy.\u00a0 Long-standing prosperity will result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jim Maxwell In the 2023 legislative session, Florida\u2019s elected leaders took serious steps to curb the crisis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-289998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}