Insurance lawyer
25,000 Cases in one week and a Call to Arms: Morgan & Morgan’s Battle with Insurers
April 4 (Reuters) - Litigation is rarely warm and fuzzy, but what’s unfolding in Florida between plaintiffs firm Morgan & Morgan and the insurance industry puts hardball tactics in a new light.
Over six days late last month, the 900-lawyer firm -- with a major assist from its legal technology -- said it filed an eye-popping 25,000 cases against Florida insurers before a new, pro-carrier law took effect on March 24.
The Orlando-founded firm seemed to all but declare war in doing so. “It will be a serious internal offense if we find any courtesies being extended to the insurance industry,” wrote Morgan & Morgan’s chief operating officer in an internal memo (previously reported by the Tampa Bay Times) to all lawyers, which was shared with me by the firm.
Given how often I’ve heard bar leaders and judges decry the erosion of civility in the legal profession, such an aggressive approach seemed potentially troubling.
Indeed, the Florida Defense Lawyers Association in a letter to the Florida Supreme Court chief justice said the drastic increase in lawsuits “will cause defense firms and attorneys undue burden and stress. There are not enough hours in the day to answer all these complaints.”
The association (which declined comment), asked for an emergency administrative order giving defendants additional time to respond to the suits, arguing that the onslaught of cases could result in defaults entered against “numerous” companies.
A Florida Supreme Court spokesman said the chief justice has not taken any action in response to the association's request but that courts around the state “continue to actively monitor caseload management.”
Meanwhile, at Morgan & Morgan, lawyers are pushing ahead.
In the March 24 memo, lawyers were instructed to oppose all requests for continuances or extensions by insurance counsel going forward because their counterparts “work for an enemy who is heartless and ruthless. The enemy who just tried to kill us in FL. They work for the enemy who would like nothing more but for you to be unemployed,” wrote COO Reuven Moskowitz.
On March 31, Moskowitz in a follow-up memo seemed to soften the directive slightly, writing that extensions are “being evaluated and approved where we are confident that the requests are being made in good faith and are not dilatory in nature.”
In an email to me, he added that “our conduct in practice will also always follow the strictest rules of professionalism across the United States.”
Managing partner Matt Morgan in an interview reiterated the point. “We will always be courteous and professional to defense lawyers,” he said.
But he also said that firm lawyers were compelled to act fast to protect their client’s rights. “Let’s recall how we got here and why,” he said, referring to the new law.
Known as HB 837, the statute made major changes to litigation involving Florida insurers.
In a news release, Governor Ron DeSantis touted the bill as a way to “decrease frivolous lawsuits and prevent predatory practices of trial attorneys who prey on hardworking Floridians.”
Key provisions include modifying comparative negligence and premises liability standards and shortening the statute of limitations for bringing negligence suits.
Crucial for plaintiffs' lawyers, the law also repealed several one-way fee-shifting statutes that entitled successful insurance claimants to recover attorneys’ fees. Such provisions may now only be applied in limited situations. The bill also nixed attorney’s fee multipliers.
Without the fee provisions, Morgan said it won’t be economically feasible for most people -- or their lawyers -- to go after carriers for failure to pay a claim, especially in lower-dollar disputes. Instead, claimants will “have to rely on the mercy of their insurance company,” he said.
But Mark Friedlander, a spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, said the new legislation brings Florida in line with much of the U.S. in disallowing one-way fee shifting.
The law took effect when DeSantis signed it on March 24 rather than at the start of the state’s next fiscal year on July 1.
When the plaintiff's lawyers realized the effective date, they rushed to fill last-minute cases -- about 90,000 in total Friedlander said, with Morgan & Morgan leading the way.
“What happened in those five days is an example of litigation abuse,” he said. “It shows the environment here in Florida, with attorneys trying to play the system."
That’s not how Morgan sees it. Even before the bill was signed into law, he said, the insurance industry began trying "to throw another impediment to our client’s cases" by asking for blanket litigation extensions -- delays that would push back any payouts to plaintiffs.
He told me he’s “very confident” that his firm can litigate all the cases they’ve filed to settlement or verdict, aided by technology that allows them to structure, tag and organize data that comes back from the court's other sources.
The insurance industry "created this mess," he said. "We're all in it now together."
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