Opinion ID: 77633
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The Court Properly Dismissed the Insurers' Claims for Equitable Relief

Text: 125 Counts XXIV and XXV of the insurers' amended complaint presented claims for a modification of the receivership order and for an accounting. The district court dismissed both claims, but issued a specific finding solely with respect to count XXIV. The court found that the request to modify the receiver's order through an ancillary complaint represented an improper collateral attack. Thus, the court dismissed the claim for failure to state a cause of action upon which relief could be granted, and we affirm the court's decision for the same reason. 126 With respect to count XXV, we find that the request for an accounting is improper. Under Florida law, a party that seeks an equitable accounting must show that: 1) the parties share a fiduciary relationship or that the questioned transactions are complex, and 2) a remedy at law is inadequate. Kee v. Nat'l Res. Ins. Co., 918 F.2d 1538, 1540 (11th Cir.1990). The insurers have not met any of these preconditions. 127 The receivership entities do not share a fiduciary relationship with the insurers. They are not their brokers. The insurers insist that they do not know how many of their policies were caught up in the web of activity between the receivership entities and some of its affiliated brokers. That argument merely highlights the problem with this claim. The receiver provided the insurers with a list of all the viaticals within the scope of the receivership which pertained to the insurers' policies. The insurers obtained this list, which references 1700 policies, before they filed their Amended Ancillary Complaint. The insurers have the information regarding broker's commissions paid, not the receivership entities. Thus, we affirm the dismissal of this count of the complaint because the insurers have failed to make out a claim for an equitable accounting under Florida law. 128 Although the district court did not discuss its reasons for dismissing this particular claim, that is not an incurable defect. As we noted in Grant v. Seminole County, Florida, 817 F.2d 731, 732 (11th Cir.1987), if a district court fails to discuss the reasons for dismissing a claim, that does not necessarily preclude affirmance where appropriate reasons for dismissal are readily apparent.