Opinion ID: 202647
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Earned Premiums and Interest34

Text: 105 We already have concluded that the JUA, under Law 253, alleges a property interest in the Earned Premiums and the interest generated by those premiums. Because Law 253 was on the books at the time Flores Galarza withheld the Earned Premiums and interest, we conclude that the JUA's alleged property interest in those funds was clearly established. Flores Galarza essentially acknowledged as much (at least with respect to the Earned Premiums) by returning the Earned Premiums to the JUA pursuant to the 2002 Settlement. 106 The law was not so clear, however, that Flores Galarza's alleged withholding of the Earned Premiums and interest was a taking. Law 253 does not establish when the Secretary must transfer the premiums to the JUA. As noted by Flores Galarza, 107 [t]he compulsory insurance law is completely devoid of a timetable that controls the transfer of the premiums collected by the Secretary of the Treasury to the JUA. The statute simply states that the transfers must be made. However, when these transfers must be made is an entirely different question. The JUA has never pointed to any substantive source that establishes its entitlement to a prompt transfer of the premiums. 108 (Citation omitted.) Under the second prong of the qualified immunity analysis, it is not enough for the JUA to argue that Flores Galarza physically took the Earned Premiums to which the JUA was entitled under Law 253. Here, the JUA must demonstrate that Law 253 entitled the JUA to the Earned Premiums within a specified amount of time, such that the unlawfulness of Flores Galarza's temporary withholding of the premiums was apparent. This it cannot do. Indeed, even if we imported into Law 253 a requirement that the Secretary transfer the premiums to the JUA within a reasonable period of time, that reasonableness requirement would be too indefinite to allow us to conclude that the alleged taking was clearly established. The unlawfulness of Flores Galarza's temporary withholding of the Earned Premiums, therefore, was not apparent under the statute. The right to interest inescapably is tied to the JUA's entitlement to the premiums and therefore also was not clearly established.