Buying an insurance policy should not mean agreeing to whatever additional hurdles the Legislature might create years later. The Florida Supreme Court reinforced that principle in Universal Property & Casualty Insurance Co. v. Hughes, holding that Florida’s property insurance pre-suit notice requirement does not apply to policies issued before July 1, 2021. 1 For policyholders and public adjusters handling disputes under those older policies, this is an important victory.
Rebecca Hughes reported a water damage claim under her 2019 homeowners policy. Universal paid something, but Hughes maintained that it was not enough and obtained three bids supporting her demand for additional payment. When she sued in August 2021, Universal sought dismissal because she had not submitted the notice of intent to initiate litigation required by section 627.70152, which had taken effect the previous month. The trial court dismissed her lawsuit even though the notice requirement did not exist when her policy was issued.
The Florida Supreme Court rejected that result. The court explained that applying the statute to Hughes’s earlier policy required clear legislative direction authorizing retroactive application. The Legislature had supplied no such direction. Referring to “all suits” did not give insurers permission to impose the new requirement on older contracts.
Universal argued that the notice requirement was merely procedural. The court looked at what the statute actually did. It delayed the policyholder’s ability to sue, provided insurers additional opportunities to resolve claims before litigation, required dismissal for noncompliance, and, in its original version, restricted recovery of attorney fees following dismissal. Those are meaningful changes to the parties’ rights. Calling something a procedure does not make its consequences disappear.
Why does this matter? A policyholder with an underpaid claim should not have to spend additional time and money fighting a dismissal based on a statutory hurdle that does not apply to the policy. The decision also resolves conflicting appellate interpretations that had produced different results depending on where a lawsuit was litigated. Access to court should not turn on that kind of geographical lottery.
For public adjusters, the practical lesson is to identify the policy term covering the loss and preserve the policy documents. The relevant policy’s issuance date matters; the date a lawsuit is filed does not independently determine whether this notice requirement applies. Older policy claims facing notice-based dismissal deserve attention from counsel. At the same time, Hughes does not eliminate applicable policy duties, resolve separate bad-faith notice requirements, or automatically revive expired claims.
As Florida continues changing its property insurance laws, the rules governing an insurance contract cannot simply be rewritten after the bargain is made. Hughes does not decide whether Universal underpaid this particular loss. It does ensure that Hughes can pursue that question without a statutory obstacle that never belonged in her case. The opinion remains subject to rehearing.
Thought for the Day
“There are no other Everglades in the world.”
—Marjory Stoneman Douglas, The Everglades: River of Grass (1947)
1 Universal Prop. & Cas. Ins. Co. v. Hughes, No. SC2024-0025 (Fla. Oct. 22, 2026).
