Opinion ID: 1882186
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Direct and Material Advancement of Substantial Interests

Text: The Central Hudson test requires us to next determine whether the statute at issue advances any one of the State's asserted interests in a direct and material way. Went for It, 515 U.S. at 625, 115 S.Ct. 2371 (quoting Rubin v. Coors Brewing Co., 514 U.S. 476, 487, 115 S.Ct. 1585, 131 L.Ed.2d 532 (1995)). The United States Supreme Court has explained that the State's burden as to this prong is not satisfied by mere speculation or conjecture; rather, a governmental body seeking to sustain a restriction on commercial speech must demonstrate that the harms it recites are real and that its restriction will in fact alleviate them to a material degree. Went For It, 515 U.S. at 626, 115 S.Ct. 2371 (quoting Rubin, 514 U.S. at 487, 115 S.Ct. 1585); see also Zauderer 471 U.S. at 648-49, 105 S.Ct. 2265. The same Court has further explained: [W]e do not read our case law to require that empirical data come to us accompanied by a surfeit of background information. Indeed, in other First Amendment contexts, we have permitted litigants to justify speech restrictions by reference to studies and anecdotes pertaining to different locales altogether, or even, in a case applying strict scrutiny, to justify restrictions based solely on history, consensus and simple common sense. Went for It, 515 U.S. at 628, 115 S.Ct. 2371 (citations omitted). In Edenfield, for instance, the United States Supreme Court invalidated Florida's ban on in-person solicitation by certified public accountants (CPAs), reasoning that the Board of Accountancy had present[ed] no studies that suggest personal solicitation of prospective business clients by CPA's creates the dangers of fraud [and] overreaching. 507 U.S. at 771, 113 S.Ct. 1792. While the record contained a somewhat skeletal and conclusory affidavit authored by a former chairman of the board, the Court noted that [t]he record [did] not disclose any anecdotal evidence, either from Florida or another State, that validate[d] the Board's suppositions. Id. Thus, the Court determined that nothing in the record substantiated the State's allegation of harm. The evidence presented by the Board of Accountancy in Edenfield stands in stark contrast to that which The Florida Bar presented in Went For It, in support of its prohibition on targeted mail soliciting personal injury or wrongful death clients within thirty days of the accident. The Florida Bar, in that case, presented a 106-page summary of its two-year study of lawyer advertising and solicitation, which contained statistical and anecdotal data supporting the Bar's contention that Florida citizens viewed direct-mail solicitation immediately following accidents as an intrusion on victims' privacy that reflected poorly on the legal profession. See Went For It, 515 U.S. at 626, 115 S.Ct. 2371. Noting that the anecdotal record mustered by the Bar is noteworthy for its breadth and detail, id. at 627, 115 S.Ct. 2371, the Court found that the Bar's restriction targeted a concrete, nonspeculative harm. See id. at 629, 115 S.Ct. 2371. As to this second prong of the Central Hudson test, the State correctly contends that it is not required to establish that each of its asserted interests is or will be directly advanced by section 817.234(8). Rather, the State need only establish that its restriction on commercial speech directly and materially advances one of its substantial interests. See Went For It, 515 U.S. at 625 n. 1, 115 S.Ct. 2371. The interest which the State focused on throughout its briefs to this Court and its presentation during oral argument was the prevention of insurance fraud. As such, it relied on the 1975 Report forming part of section 817.234's legislative history. [9] This 1975 Report, entitled Investigation Into False Claims of Lawyers and Doctors, began as follows: The Grand Jury has heard testimony concerning the practice of a small group of lawyers, physicians, osteopaths, chiropractors and hospitals who work together to inflate or outright falsify personal injury claims. 1975 Report at 5. The 1975 Report chronicled a typical fraudulent insurance scheme involving attorneys, doctors, hospitals and runners. As the State asserts, the Report documented fraud in piercing Florida's no-fault threshold. The fraud, or harm feared, was that persons with little or no injuries were solicited for medical treatments that became the basis for making claims of personal injury protection benefits, and when the medicals exceeded that threshold, motor vehicle tort claims. The effect was an increase in both the number of recoveries and dollar value of recoveries for pain and suffering in personal injury actions. These claims were paid by defendant insurance companies and passed on as a cost of doing business to Florida citizens through unnecessary insurance rate increases. Petitioner's Initial Brief at 28. The district court below relied on its earlier decision in Barr which noted: As the report suggests, there was a serious problem in the industry of runners soliciting automobile accident victims with little or no injuries to undergo unnecessary medical treatment so that they could exhaust the victims' PIP benefits before the victim sued in tort for damages. From an objective standpoint, we believe the statute's prohibition against this type of solicitation provides a direct link to the state's interest in preventing harm to such victims and the insurance industry. Barr, 731 So.2d at 129. The State has attempted to rely on a more recent grand jury report which likewise focuses on the fraudulent framework detailed above. See Second Interim Report of the Fifteenth Statewide Grand Jury: Report on Insurance Fraud in Florida in the Area of Personal Injury Protection (on file with Clerk, Fla.Sup.Ct.) (hereinafter 2000 Report). The 2000 Report makes similar observations to those made by the 1975 Report; its import, however, is in the documentation that these unscrupulous practices continue to take place. While these reports certainly indicate that the evil which the State seeks to correct is unacceptable to all professions, real, and pervasive, section 817.234(8) does not directly and materially advance the State's goal of preventing insurance fraud. The statute criminalizes solicitation for the purpose of making motor vehicle tort claims or claims for personal injury protection benefits. The State maintains that [c]ommon sense dictates that criminalizing a particular action deters that action. The State is correct. The Legislature obviously hopes that the criminalization of an activity will lead to its deterrence. However, United States Supreme Court precedent requires that the restriction on commercial speech directly and materially alleviate the evil (i.e., insurance fraud), see Went For It, 515 U.S. at 626, 115 S.Ct. 2371 (quoting Edenfield, 507 U.S. at 770-71, 113 S.Ct. 1792); that this subsection does not accomplish. Section 817.234(8) does not directly and materially prohibit solicitation which results in fraudulent tort and PIP benefits claims. Rather, it prohibits all solicitation for the purpose of making motor vehicle tort claims or claims for personal injury protection benefits, irrespective of whether insurance fraud is involved. Thus, we conclude that the statute does not directly and materially alleviate the problem of insurance fraud and actually condemns totally lawful conduct.