According to a new report from Weiss Ratings, following the passing of legislation aimed at curbing frivolous lawsuits against insurance companies and businesses in 2023, insurance companies are now denying home damage claims more aggressively, and their policyholders are suing at a higher rate.

The new laws made it more difficult for homeowners to sue their property insurance companies for acting in “bad faith” and removed the right of homeowners to recover attorney’s fees, even in lawsuits they win.

According to Weiss Ratings, in 2022, the last year before the new laws, insurers closed about 40% of homeowner claims without payment. In 2024, the first full year after reforms, that number jumped to nearly 47%. When insurers denied claims, more homeowners went to court. Overall, lawsuits as a share of all closed claims increased 24% from 2022 to 2024.

“No one on the outside seems to know what’s really going on inside the insurance companies,” said Dr. Martin Weiss. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if many insurers in the state pursued a deliberate strategy to deny claims more aggressively, thinking that tort reform would protect them and expecting it would sharply reduce the number of policyholder lawsuits. It looks like they were wrong. Tort reform failed, and their strategy backfired.”

Compared to home insurance data from the rest of the country, Florida policyholders are going to court 12 times more often.

On average insurance companies in Florida made no payments whatsoever to homeowners on 46.7% of the claims they closed, compared to 40.0% in 2022.

“All the facts reveal a classic example of failure,” Weiss concluded. “Insurers abuse their own customers, blame their own customers and then get legislatures to protect them from their own customers’ ire. In the end, it only makes things worse for both sides.”