Bad Faith requires more than negligence
Submitted by Jessica Gregory on 21 Oct, 2025
The Eleventh Circuit’s unpublished decision in KATHERINE MARTINEZ, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GEICO CASUALTY INSURANCE COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee. 11th Circuit. Case No. 24-10641. September 23, 2025, is a defense-side win that sharpens the boundary between negligent claim handling and bad-faith claim handling under Florida law. Applying the “totality of the circumstances” test, the court held that no reasonable jury could find bad faith where GEICO:
(1) promptly opened and worked the claim,
(2) investigated an open coverage question about vehicle ownership, and
(3) tendered the full $20,000 per-accident limit within 32 days while pursuing a global settlement among multiple injured claimants.
The panel emphasizes that policy or timing missteps—even violations of an insurer’s internal procedures—may be evidence of negligence, but negligence is not the standard for bad faith. That framing, coupled with Florida’s alignment to the federal Rule 56 summary-judgment standard, makes it harder for plaintiffs to defeat summary judgment with thin delay-based theories alone.
Two other practical holdings come out of this order.
First, global settlement conferences remain a reasonable strategy in multi-claimant, low-limits cases and an insurer has no duty to pay the most-injured claimant immediately where coordinated resolution can better minimize excess-judgment exposure.
Second, once a claimant rejects a within-limits tender and signals unwillingness to give a full release, the insurer has no duty to settle above limits or consent to an excess judgment.
For insured counsel, the opinion is a reminder that successful bad-faith claims typically require proof of willful, causative delay or obstruction where liability is clear and excess exposure is obvious—not just evidence of slow investigation or imperfect file handling. For insurers, the case underscores the value of early documentation, prompt tenders even amid coverage questions, and reasoned multi-party settlement planning.
1Appeal from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida (No. 1:23-cv-20219-KMW)