Judge J. Lee Marsh issued an order Monday dismissing a constitutional challenge filed in May by the Restoration Association of Florida and Air Quality Assessors, LLC, an Orlando firm that does work such as mold testing and leak detection.
Marsh’s order did not directly address the constitutionality of the law but dismissed the case because he said Griffin and Shaw were not “proper defendants,” in part because they were not in charge of enforcing the law.The insurance industry has long blamed litigation and attorney fees for driving up costs. The new law took a series of steps to try to address those issues, but the challenge focused on part of the measure that deals with what is known as “assignment of benefits.
Contractors in the past have been able to recover their attorney fees from insurers if they were successful in the lawsuits, a concept known as “prevailing party fees.” But the new law stripped contractors of being able to recover prevailing-party fees when they are assigned benefits. But in seeking dismissal, the state’s attorneys focused on issues such as whether Griffin and Shaw were proper defendants. In the July 13 motion to dismiss, for example, the attorneys wrote that the law “does not charge the secretary or the executive director with enforcing its provisions” and does not implicate their “specific responsibilities.