Court Opinion

ID: 9638389
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:42:53.1286+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:21:33.057023
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I concur in the affirmance of the judgment establishing liability of the insurer. I dissent from its affirmance for attorneys’ fees against the insurer for bringing the declaratory judgment proceeding.
I do not in anywise question the validity of the statute. I simply deny its application here. Our case of Continental Casualty Co. v. Giller, 5 Cir., 116 F.2d 431, while squinting in the direction of, does not support, the judgment for attorneys’ fees in this case.
With all due deference to the inability of the majority “to perceive any distinction between the application of the statute where the suit is brought by the insurer” and where it is “brought by the insured”, I can and do perceive the distinction and. thus state it.
Florida courts have held that while not; strictly a penal statute, the statute author-. *249izing attorneys’ fees is penal or retributive in its nature, and is designed to compel insurers to abide by their contracts without unnecessary, that is wrongful litigation. It, therefore, seems to me that we ought not to construe the statute as authorizing attorneys’ fees except in the precise situation the statute deals with. This is where the insurer has refused to pay and suit has been brought and judgment rendered against it. To extend it to make the insurer liable as for wrongful default where the only thing it has done is to apply to a court for a declaration and directions as to how to proceed, would be, it seems to me, to unduly discourage the wise and beneficial use of the declaratory judgment procedure, and, without any statute permitting it, to penalize the insurrer for taking the opinion of a court, not as a defendant refusing to do what it ought to do, but as a plaintiff wanting to know what it should do.
I do not doubt that Florida could enact a statute giving attorneys’ fees against insurers who, as plaintiffs, sought advice from the court as to what to do, but I do not think it has passed such a statute. Neither do I think that it would want to enact one, penalizing an insurer who, as the insurer did here, while there was still plenty of time for it to assume and discharge its obligations, undertook merely to find out from a court what those obligations were.