A time-limited demand is sometimes an invitation to settle and sometimes an attempt to create a bad faith claim. The entire exercise is telling one from the other, and it has to happen quickly, because the clock in the letter is usually shorter than the time it would take to develop the information the letter asks the carrier to act on.
What follows is a framework for reading one, oriented to Florida law as it stands after the 2023 amendments.
The first question is whether the response period is sufficient to do what the demand requires. A letter that asks for policy limits within ten days, and that also requires verification of coverage across multiple policies, confirmation from an insured who has not responded to prior contacts, and execution of a release with terms the carrier cannot accept, is a different document than one asking for limits within thirty days on a clear liability rear-end collision with a documented catastrophic injury. The mismatch between what is asked and the time given is usually the most telling feature.
Setup demands typically carry conditions that are easy to miss and difficult to satisfy, such as a specific form of release, an affidavit of no other coverage, delivery by a particular method to a particular person, a requirement that payment be tendered rather than a check issued, or an instruction that any deviation constitutes rejection. Each condition should be identified explicitly and addressed explicitly, because a partial compliance that the carrier believes is substantial is exactly the fact pattern that produces extracontractual litigation.
Florida’s bad faith statute, Section 624.155, was amended in 2023. Among other changes, it now provides that an action for bad faith involving a liability insurance claim, including one brought under the common law, does not lie if the insurer tenders the lesser of the policy limits or the amount demanded by the claimant within ninety days after receiving actual notice of a claim which is accompanied by sufficient evidence to support the amount of the claim.
Two elements in that sentence matter. The period runs from actual notice of a claim, and the notice must be accompanied by sufficient evidence to support the amount claimed. A demand for limits unsupported by medical documentation, wage loss proof, or anything establishing the value asserted may not start the clock the claimant thinks it started. That question is fact-specific and worth evaluating rather than conceding.
A caution on secondary sources is in order. The House staff analysis for the 2023 bill described this period as 120 days. The enacted statutory text says ninety. Some commentary still repeats the longer figure. Work from the statute.
The file created during the claim is the evidence in the bad faith case, and it will be read years later by people looking for delay and indifference. That means dating and preserving every request for information, every attempt to reach the insured, every coverage determination and the reasoning behind it, and every internal evaluation of the demand. A carrier that investigated diligently but documented casually is in a worse position than the record deserves.
Where a condition genuinely cannot be satisfied in the time allowed, silence is the worst option. A written response that accepts what can be accepted, states specifically what cannot be done and why, requests the additional information or time actually needed, and confirms willingness to resolve within limits is both a reasonable settlement posture and a considerably better exhibit than no letter at all.
Separately, a statutory bad faith action requires a civil remedy notice filed with the Department of Financial Services as a condition precedent, and the statute affords a sixty-day period in which paying the damages or correcting the circumstances giving rise to the violation forecloses the action. A CRN should be treated as an opportunity with a deadline rather than as correspondence, and the decision whether to cure should be made deliberately and documented.
Carriers that handle these well tend to have a standing practice rather than a case-by-case reaction. The demand is calendared and evaluated the day it arrives, coverage counsel is brought in on anything with a short fuse or an unusual condition, and a written response goes out within the period whether or not the demand can be met.
This article is general information, not legal advice. The 2023 amendments are recent and their application, including questions of timing and retroactivity, continues to be litigated.
