Awarding Insurer Summary Judgment Before Discovery Completed Reversed

    The Florida Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s awarding of summary judgment to the insurer because discovery was not completed. Sacramento v. Citizens Prop. Ins. Corp., 2022 Fla. App. LEXIS 4292 (Fla. Ct. App. June 22, 2022).

    The insured filed a claim under the all-risk policy for water damage caused by Hurricane Irma. Citizens denied the claim based upon a policy exclusion. The insured filed suit on March 8, 2019.

    On April 24, 2020, Citizens moved for summary judgment. A hearing was set for August 10, 2020. Citizens filed a notice for a deposition of a Mitigation Company representative scheduled to occur on December 1, 2020. On August 14, 2020, the insured filed an opposition to the summary judgment motion arguing that it would be premature to grant the motion because there were still pending depositions. The insured specifically requested that the trial court not enter summary judgment until the mitigation company’s representative was deposed because he was a key witness who would be testifying regarding the cause of loss. 

    On August 18, 2020, the trial court heard the motion. Summary judgment was entered in favor of Citizens. The insured appealed.

    While the insured did not file a motion for continuance of the hearing, he did note the deposition in his opposition and called opposing counsel to ask to reset the hearing while the deposition of a key witness had already been noticed. Citizens itself defeated its own summary judgment motion by filing a notice of deposition of a key witness. 

    The trial court could not simply ignore a pending deposition of a witness whose testimony would most likely raise a genuine issue of material fact. The trial court’s order granting summary judgment was reversed and the case was remanded.