This opinion is subject to any timely motion for rehearing under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 and will not become final until such motion is disposed of or the time to file it expires. Check current status before relying on it.
On August 19, 2026, the Third District Court of Appeal decided Citizens Property Insurance Corp. v. Suarez, No. 3D24-2256, and clarified two questions that turn up in nearly every first-party property case: what makes a nominal proposal for settlement one made in good faith under section 768.79, Florida Statutes, and how much weight a public adjuster's estimate carries when the insured has not complied with the policy's post-loss conditions precedent. On both, the court reversed the trial court's denial of fees and remanded with instructions to grant the insurer's motion.
What Happened
Hurricane Irma struck Florida in September 2017. The Suarezes did not notify Citizens Property Insurance Corporation of a loss to their property until September 2019, roughly two years after the storm. The policy required prompt notice of any loss and required the insureds to provide documents on request. The Suarezes did neither. Citizens denied coverage.
The insureds sued for breach of contract and attached an estimate from their public adjuster identifying the damages being claimed, totaling $141,580.36. Citizens raised affirmative defenses, including failure to give prompt notice and failure to comply with post-loss obligations, and argued the failures had prejudiced its investigation and precluded coverage.
In March 2021, Citizens served a proposal for settlement offering $100 to each plaintiff. It was not accepted. In June 2021, Citizens moved for summary judgment. After depositions, the trial court granted the motion in Citizens's favor. Citizens then moved for attorney's fees under section 768.79 based on the rejected proposal. The trial court denied the motion, finding the proposal was not made in good faith. Citizens appealed.
What the Court Held
Reviewing for abuse of discretion, the Third DCA reversed. Two holdings do the work.
1. Good faith is measured at the time of service, by the substance of the reason, not by whether the offeror had taken discovery. The trial court had faulted Citizens in part for not requesting discovery before serving the proposal. The Third DCA held that concern was "irrelevant" on this record, because the reasonable basis for the nominal amount was apparent before the Suarezes ever filed suit: they had reported the claim two years late and had failed to comply with Citizens's document requests, and those failures were the basis of the coverage denial from the beginning. In the court's own formulation, "The standard as to whether an offer is made in good faith is whether the insurance company has a reasonable basis for a nominal offer, at the time the offer is made. The focus of the analysis is the substance of the reason given for the nominal offer and not on the timing of the offer itself." Quoting Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Fla. v. Lewis Tein P.L., 277 So. 3d 299, 302 (Fla. 3d DCA 2019), the court reiterated that the obligation of good faith "merely insists that the offeror have some reasonable foundation on which to base an offer."
2. A public adjuster's estimate is not entitled to weight where the insured has not complied with post-loss conditions precedent. The trial court had reasoned that the public adjuster's $141,580.36 estimate demonstrated that Citizens had substantial exposure and therefore that a $100 offer could not have been made in good faith. The Third DCA rejected that reasoning by analogy to its earlier decision in State Farm Florida Insurance Co. v. Laughlin-Alfonso, 118 So. 3d 314 (Fla. 3d DCA 2013), where the same court had declined to credit a public adjuster's report in favor of an insurer whose insured had failed to submit a Sworn Proof of Loss and had failed to respond to discovery. Building on Laughlin-Alfonso, and citing Gonzalez v. State Farm Fla. Ins. Co., 65 So. 3d 608 (Fla. 3d DCA 2011), and Edwards v. State Farm Fla. Ins. Co., 64 So. 3d 730, 732-33 (Fla. 3d DCA 2011), the court noted that "insureds must comply with conditions precedent to filing a lawsuit against their insurer, including submission of a Sworn Proof of Loss." Where the insureds have not complied, the public adjuster's estimate is not the evidentiary counterweight it would otherwise be, and the estimate cannot rescue the plaintiff from the insurer's reasonable basis for offering nominal value.
The panel (Fernandez, J., joined by Logue and Lobree, JJ.) reversed and remanded with instructions to grant Citizens's motion for attorney's fees and to set the amount.
Practice Notes
- Document the reasonable basis at the time of service. If the file already reflects the reason for a nominal offer, on the coverage side or on the merits, note that reason in the file and match it to the proposal's timing. The Third DCA's analysis in Suarez hinged on the fact that the reason for the offer was apparent to the insurer before suit was filed, not on discovery taken later. Preserve that record so a later good-faith challenge fails on its own terms.
- Do not confuse "no discovery yet" with "no reasonable basis." Trial courts that treat pre-discovery timing as a strike against a proposal have it backwards under Suarez. The inquiry is whether the offeror had a reasonable foundation at the time it served the offer, not whether the offeror had already spent months in discovery to prove up the same point. A well-supported affirmative defense at the pleadings stage can, and often should, be enough to support a nominal proposal in an appropriate case.
- Public adjuster estimates are not automatic bad-faith armor. Plaintiffs in first-party property cases have used public adjuster reports to argue that any nominal offer must be in bad faith because the estimate shows real exposure. Suarez, following Laughlin-Alfonso, confirms that an insurer's exposure is not measured against a report the insured cannot use because the insured did not perform the policy's conditions precedent. If the insured did not submit a Sworn Proof of Loss, did not respond to document requests, or otherwise failed to comply post-loss, the adjuster's number does very little work at the good-faith stage.
- Post-loss conditions precedent are the pressure point. The Suarez line, running through Laughlin-Alfonso, Gonzalez, and Edwards, makes compliance with policy conditions precedent an outsized consideration in first-party property litigation. Insurers should build the record on non-compliance early. Insureds and their counsel should treat compliance as a threshold priority, not an afterthought, because a failure at that step compromises much of what follows, including the ability to argue against a nominal proposal.
- Draft to Rule 1.442, then verify. Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.442 was amended effective January 1, 2026, and the rule's technical requirements continue to be the terrain on which many proposal-for-settlement fights are won and lost. Suarez does not address the rule's amended text, but any practitioner drafting a proposal in reliance on the ruling should also confirm compliance with the current version of Rule 1.442 before service.
The larger point of Suarez is that good faith is a substantive inquiry into the reason behind the offer, evaluated as of the moment the offer is served. It is not a procedural inquiry into how much litigation the offeror has invested. For any Florida practitioner who serves or receives nominal proposals in property-insurance matters, and for the practitioners who write on both sides of section 768.79 more broadly, that clarification is worth calendaring.