A Florida appellate court blaming a "clerical error" issued, and then retracted, a ruling upholding state Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty's order suspending Allstate from writing new business in the state.
According to Jon Wheeler, the clerk of the court for the Florida First District Court of Appeals in Tallahassee, the error "was that the order was released prior to the ten business days provided in the court's internal operating procedures" for hearing an "en banc" motion requiring a quorum of judges.
"The motion for rehearing en banc was filed April 14, 2008, and thus the earliest permissible release date for the decision on the en banc motion would have been the 11th business day after the filing of the motion for rehearing en banc, which would be Tuesday, April 29, 2008," Mr. Wheeler explained.
An en banc hearing involves all 15 members of the court, as opposed to three panel judges who normally render decisions.
"The order was withdrawn in order to give the entire court its full time authorized by court rules to consider the motion for rehearing en banc that was prematurely cut off by the erroneously issued order," he said.
A new order, he said, will be issued once all of the procedural requirements and other court rules have been met.
The court is considering a motion filed by Allstate for a rehearing on whether or not Mr. McCarty and the state Office of Insurance Regulation has the authority to suspend the company. The OIR and Allstate have been battling since last fall over a request for documents by the OIR.
Mr. McCarty has said that state law requires licensed insurers to "make freely available" any documents requested by the state. Allstate has claimed that doing so would violate attorney-client privilege in some cases, but that it has already provided over 400,000 pages of other documents to the OIR.
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