Key to the District court’s ruling, which rationale was affirmed on appeal, was the fact that the plaintiff did not provide a medical opinion supporting permanency in any of the medical records she submitted to GEICO in support of her demand for the limits of the GEICO policy prior to the date of expiration of the second Civil Remedy Notice. During the bad faith trial, plaintiff’s expert testified that he agreed the records provided prior to the expiration of the last civil remedy notice did not indicate or even imply a permanent injury.Īlthough initially denying the motion for directed verdict and submitting the claim to the jury, the District Court entered judgment as a matter of law post-trial, and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed. Without such proof, plaintiff could only recover her out-of-pocket expenses attributable to the accident, which was indisputably less than the policy limits.

Plaintiff filed several Civil Remedy Notices demanding the policy limits ($75,000), which GEICO declined.Īt the close of plaintiff’s case in chief, GEICO moved for a directed verdict on the ground that plaintiff failed to submit any evidence that she suffered a permanent injury within the meaning of Florida’s “permanency threshold” statute, which prohibits recovery of non-economic damages in the absence of proof of a permanent injury. Plaintiff then filed a bad faith action in federal court after satisfying the procedural requirements of section 624.155, Florida Statutes. Co., the federal appeals court held that the plaintiff’s failure to provide evidence that she suffered a permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability within the statutory cure period was fatal to her bad faith claim against GEICO.Īdhering to recent developments in this area, the parties tried the UIM case in state court, resulting in a verdict of $900,000, which GEICO did not appeal. On Friday, September 30, 2016, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal affirmed a renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law that had been granted by the Middle District Court of Florida in an uninsured/underinsured motorist (“UIM”) bad faith case. Partner | First-Party Coverage, Third-Party Coverage, October 5, 2016

Judgment notwithstanding the verdict