What happened: Florida’s Supreme Court ruled the 2021 presuit notice statute does not reach back to property policies issued before it took effect.
Who’s involved: Universal Property & Casualty Insurance Company and a homeowner policyholder.
What’s at stake: Whether insurers can enforce presuit notice requirements on claims arising under policies issued before July 1, 2021.
Why it matters: Property insurers no longer have a procedural tool to dismiss suits on older policies for missing presuit notice.
Where it stands: Decided October 22, 2026; not final until the rehearing window expires.
Six Florida appellate courts spent three years disagreeing, and now the state’s highest court has settled the presuit notice retroactivity question.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled on October 22 that the 2021 law requiring property insurance claimants to notify the state before suing - section 627.70152 - does not reach back to policies issued before it took effect on July 1, 2021.
The case started with a water damage claim. A Collier County homeowner held a policy with Universal Property & Casualty Insurance Company from April 2019 to April 2020. She filed a claim in May 2019. Universal paid, but the homeowner said the amount fell short.
She sued in August 2021, one month after the new law kicked in, without filing the required presuit notice. Universal asked the trial court to throw the case out. It did.
The Sixth District Court of Appeal reversed, finding no clear legislative intent for the law to apply retroactively. But the Fourth District, in Cole v. Universal Property & Casualty Insurance Company, went the other way - reading the statute’s “all suits” language as reaching back to existing policies. The Third District agreed. The First, Second, and Fifth did not.
Writing for a unanimous bench, Chief Justice Couriel approved the Sixth District’s decision. The phrase “all suits” describes which cases the statute covers - residential and commercial property insurance claims. It is not a command to apply the law backward.
The court was direct: “The absence of a statement in the act . . . does not constitute clear evidence of retroactive intent,” it said, quoting its earlier ruling. The statute’s own effective date, the court added, cuts against retroactivity.
Universal argued the notice requirement was a procedural rule, not a substantive one - meaning it could apply to old and new policies alike. The court disagreed. Taken as a whole, the law reshapes an insured’s right to sue and an insurer’s obligations: dismissal for non-compliance, stripped pre-dismissal attorney fees, and extra time for insurers to pay. That is substantive change, not a procedural tweak.
Justice Tanenbaum concurred separately, pointing to an even simpler answer: section 624.21 already says every change to the insurance code applies going forward unless the Legislature says otherwise.
Property insurers can no longer use the presuit notice requirement to dismiss suits on policies issued before July 1, 2021. For claims and coverage teams working through legacy books, that shortcut is gone.
The decision is not final until the rehearing window expires.
