NO SURPRISE JURY VERDICTS ARE UP. “A REBUTTAL TO NUCLEAR VERDICTS GO BOOM, INCREASE 40.7% IN 2025”.

The article referenced above was written by Chad Hemenway and located at:
Nuclear Verdicts Go Boom, Increase 40.7% in 2025. The article notes that nuclear jury verdicts, those of at least $10 million, increased in 2025 by 40%. But is that surprising? The author states the following:

Florida’s tort reform in 2023 did result in a drop-off in 2024, to 10th in nuclear verdicts. However, the Sunshine State returned to nuclear-verdict prominence in 2025 with a total of $2.5 billion in nuclear verdicts.

What The Author Fails To Note Is:

1. Insurers paid significant political contributions to the Florida legislature’s politicians and the governor to enact and sign into law restrictions which harmed everyday citizens who had claims not paid by their own insurers. F.S. §627.428 is a statute which had stood for decades and kept insurance companies more in line because if an insured proved his case against his insurer, then the insurer under F.S. §627.428 had to not only pay what they should have originally paid but the insurer also had to pay the insured customer’s attorney’s fees. This was a strong incentive for the insurer not to play around with legitimate claims for fear of being hit with substantial attorney’s fees if they gambled in court and lost. That incentive to pay legitimate claims was taken away in the 2023 tort “reform”, the Nuclear Verdicts author noted. (Isn’t it only a “reform” when someone else’s insurance claim is involved.) You may also recall that shortly after these “reforms” came into effect in March 2023 the very next year Florida was hit by three hurricanes– (Debbie, Helene and Milton)—causing millions of dollars of damage all across the state of Florida. When the dust settled, fully 50% of all homeowner insurance claims were paid….. zero. Why? No fear by the insurers of being hit with attorney’s fees of successful homeowner claims. But also consider if a homeowner had a $20,000 loss: good luck finding an attorney who would take that case on contingency, knowing it will involve often lengthy litigation against the insurer—and then at the end the insured person now has to pay their attorney from their recovery.

2. The second thing the author omits in the Nuclear Verdicts article is that at the same time the Florida homeowner’s insurance companies were completely denying 50% of all hurricane claims, many of these insurance companies had created sister-companies known as Managing General Agents (a/k/a “MGAs”). MGAs were set up for pulling policyholder premiums out the back door of the insurance companies to pay salaries and bonuses to executives through these MGAs. In doing so the homeowner’s insurers could show low reserves to the Florida Department of Insurance and then claim they needed rate increases to stay in business. Recent news articles have shown that the Florida Department of Insurance knew of this widespread practice of insurers siphoning money to these MGAs. See that article here: Florida hid insurance industry’s lies — and tried to stop us from revealing them | Column.

First, the state tried to hide all this information from the public — even while approving rate hikes for supposedly struggling companies and while passing laws that make it harder for homeowners to sue insurance companies that stiff them out of benefits.

3. The author of the “Nuclear Verdicts” article does not cite to any of the facts of the jury trials in his reporting of any of the verdicts to which he generally refers. This article is simply a complaint about jury verdicts without any understanding offered as to why these verdicts were determined by a jury. There is no suggestion by the author that the facts were examined and indeed a particular verdict was unwarranted. The article therefore is not particularly helpful except as a potential predicate for insurers to ask for even more restrictive laws. The author also gives no information as to whether the insurers or companies involved made any effort to resolve these cases before allowing them to be decided by a jury. Now more than ever the insurers try to play hardball and offer only a fraction of the worth of an injured person’s claim. (Perhaps emboldened by those “tort reforms” the author mentions in his article.) It is a jury of peers who listen to all of the evidence of both parties, the claimant and the defense, and then makes a decision based upon the evidence. The author appears to suggest that any appreciable verdict must be improper and not warranted, therefore, the moniker “nuclear verdict” as the focal point of the article, but never one fact as to any case referenced.

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