CopyCited 4 times | Published | Florida 2nd District Court of Appeal | 2006 Fla. App. LEXIS 10785, 2006 WL 1791708
...t of medical expenses under PIP coverage was admissible to prove its liability for the injury under the UM coverage contained in the policy. Judge Torpy noted that, in his view, the circuit court had correctly ruled the evidence inadmissible because section 90.409, Florida Statutes (2003), "prohibits the introduction of `[e]vidence of furnishing, or offering, or promising to pay medical or hospital expenses....
CopyCited 1 times | Published | Florida 1st District Court of Appeal
...Appellant’s medical care providers after Appellant filed suit; 2) finding Appellant
lacked standing to assert her waiver and confession of judgment arguments
because she assigned her rights to PIP benefits to her medical care providers;
3) interpreting section 90.409, Florida Statutes, to preclude evidence of the PIP
payments in support of those arguments; and 4) finding that there were no genuine
issues of material fact as to the misrepresentation issue....
...Addressing Appellant’s waiver and confession of judgment arguments, the
court found that Appellant had “no standing to bring suit for [PIP] benefits under
the policy as she assigned those benefits to her treating physicians.” Finally, the
court found that section 90.409, Florida Statutes, “prohibits the introduction of
evidence of furnishing; offering; or promising to pay medical or hospital expense
to prove liability....
...MGA’s assertion, the insurance contract was in fact valid -- or whether there
existed some other reason for MGA’s decision to make the payments. This is a
question for the trial court to resolve.
9
Section 90.409, Florida Statutes
Section 90.409, Florida Statutes, in its entirety, provides:
Evidence of furnishing, or offering or promising to pay, medical or
hospital expenses or other damages occasioned by an injury or
accident is inadmissible to prove liabil...
...The case before us involves a
contract or coverage dispute, which was, as the Shelton court expressly pointed
out, not at issue in that case, whereas Shelton involved a question of the
admissibility of evidence as to damages sounding in tort. 1
Thus, in the context of section 90.409, “liability” clearly refers to an
insured’s (or, in a UM claim, uninsured motorist’s) responsibility for causing
injury or accident, not for an insurer’s obligations to its insured pursuant to an
insurance contract.2 Conflating an insured’s liability for causing injury or accident
with an insurer’s contract obligation disregards the policy behind the rule codified
in section 90.409, as explained by the supreme court in Meyer. Thus, the trial court
erred by ruling the PIP ledger was inadmissible under these circumstances.
Conclusion
1
Although Shelton does not support MGA’s interpretation of section 90.409, the
“unique policy considerations” discussed in the case may bear some relevance on
the issue of why MGA made the PIP payments it did despite rescinding the
contract.
2
The Shelton court cited with approval Judge Torpy’s concu...
CopyCited 1 times | Published | Florida 5th District Court of Appeal | 2004 Fla. App. LEXIS 12614, 2004 WL 1905899
...se of proving USAA's liability for the injury under the uninsured motorist component of its policy. This issue is not addressed in Caruso. In my view, the lower court quite correctly ruled that this evidence could not be introduced for this purpose. Section 90.409 (2003), Florida Statutes, prohibits the introduction of "[e]vidence of furnishing, or offering or promising to pay medical or hospital expenses ......
CopyPublished | District Court of Appeal of Florida | 1993 Fla. App. LEXIS 11188, 1993 WL 437780
...The appellant asserts that this statute is applicable to criminal cases, despite the use of the word “liability,” rather than “guilt” or “culpability.” Although no Florida case has addressed this issue, the Law Revision Council Note — 1976 to section 90.409, Florida Statutes Annotated (1979), states that California Evidence Code section 1152 is a similar provision to which “Florida law is in accord.” Our sister court in California squarely addressed this issue in People v....
...Citations omitted.) Neither of these rationales would support the exclusion of offers to pay medical expenses of crime victims since the decision to prosecute rests with the State, rather than the victim. We therefore conclude that the provisions of section 90.409 are confined to the civil setting and have no application to criminal cases....
