What happened: A Florida appeals court reversed a jury verdict after the trial court forced the case to proceed without the homeowner, who broke his leg in a wheelchair crash at the courthouse
Who's involved: Universal Property & Casualty Insurance Company, defending a homeowner's claim over water damage
What's at stake: Coverage for water and sewage damage from a 2019 plumbing failure, plus the viability of pre-loss neglect as a coverage defense
Why it matters: A concurrence flags that insurers cannot use a neglect exclusion to deny claims based on what a homeowner did before a loss - a question Florida courts had not previously addressed
Where it stands: Reversed and remanded for new trial; opinion subject to revision
A homeowner's wheelchair flew across a courthouse parking lot, hit a bumper, and flipped - breaking his tibia and ankle. The judge made the trial continue without him.
Florida's Second District Court of Appeal reversed the jury verdict on September 25, ordering a new trial. The lower court abused its discretion, the panel found, by denying a mistrial after a medical emergency left the homeowner unable to attend or testify.
The dispute goes back to 2019, when the cast iron plumbing in the homeowner's property failed. Sewage and water covered his floors. He claimed for the cost of tearing out and replacing sections of the home to reach the damaged pipes. Universal partially denied coverage. He sued.
A jury was picked on April 28, 2025, in Pinellas County. The next morning, the homeowner's lawyer reported the wheelchair accident. His client was elderly, had suffered a stroke the year before, and was headed into surgery. He was the only person who could testify about the plumbing before and after the failure. Universal moved for a mistrial too.
The judge denied both motions and pressed ahead.
The jury found the losses excluded under the policy. The appeals court reversed, calling a party's right to attend their own trial "virtually sacrosanct" and the denial of that right fundamental error.
A concurrence went further - and this is the part claims teams should read.
Universal had raised a neglect exclusion, which bars coverage when an insured fails "to use all reasonable means to save and preserve property at and after the time of a loss." Its argument: a plumbing backup in 2016 or 2017 was "a loss," and the homeowner's failure to do more than replace the toilets triggered the exclusion for the 2019 damage.
The concurrence called that reading borderline absurd. The exclusion covers what happens at or after a loss - not before one. The earlier backup caused no evident damage and no claim. Treating it as a trigger would require homeowners to overhaul entire plumbing systems after a minor incident to preserve future coverage - and would collapse the neglect exclusion into the policy's separate maintenance provision.
The opinion is subject to revision before official publication. If the neglect analysis holds, it could limit how Florida property insurers use pre-loss conduct to deny claims.
