How To File A Civil Remedy Notice In Florida — Step-By-Step, With Cure-Window Timeline

Written by: Yusuf Nurudeen Ayodele (B.Sc., AAT, ACA (ICAN))

Published: July 2026 | Last updated: October 29, 2026

Topic: How to file a Civil Remedy Notice in Florida, including the DFS portal steps and when the 60-day cure period starts.

Sources reviewed: Fla. Stat. §§ 624.155 and 624.1551; Fla. Admin. Code R. 69J-123.002 and DFS Form 10-363; the Florida DFS Civil Remedy portal and FAQs; Julien v. United Property & Casualty, 311 So. 3d 875 (Fla. 4th DCA 2021); Demase v. State Farm, 351 So. 3d 136 (Fla. 5th DCA 2022); Hunt v. State Farm, 112 So. 3d 547 (Fla. 2d DCA 2013); Talat Enterprises v. Aetna, 753 So. 2d 1278 (Fla. 2000); and Woods v. Progressive, No. 23-13407 (11th Cir.).

Editorial note: General information only, not legal advice. The author is a Chartered Accountant, not a licensed U.S. attorney. A defective or late Civil Remedy Notice can bar a later bad faith claim, so have a Florida-licensed attorney review yours before filing.

How To File A Civil Remedy Notice In Florida: What To Expect

 

You've decided your insurer isn't handling your claim fairly. Before you can sue for bad faith in Florida, the law requires one specific document, filed one specific way, through one specific website. Get any part of it wrong, and a judge can throw out your case before it starts — no matter how badly your insurer behaved.

 

This guide covers exactly how to file a Civil Remedy Notice in Florida: what to click, what to type, and what to double-check on the Department of Financial Services (DFS) Civil Remedy Notice (CRN) portal, "plus the statutory math behind the 60-day cure window — which starts running when the department delivers your notice to the insurer, not at the moment you hit submit."

 

 

What Florida Statute §624.155 Requires

 

Under Florida Statute §624.155, an insurer commits bad faith when it fails to settle a claim fairly and honestly, in circumstances where it could and should have. But you can't walk into court and say that. The statute treats the CRN as a condition precedent — a mandatory step you take before a bad faith lawsuit, not alongside one.

 

The Florida DFS explains that the notice must be filed at least 60 days before you bring an action against the insurer, giving the company a chance to fix the problem first. Skip this step, file it late, or file it with missing information, and the insurer gets an easy motion to dismiss.

A CRN is rarely the first thing that goes wrong in a claim, though — it's usually the second or third. Florida law already gives policyholders a defined set of procedures the moment a denial letter lands, and knowing what those rights are before you reach the bad faith stage often determines whether a CRN is even the right next move or a premature one.

 

• Why This Matters to You: The CRN isn't paperwork you file after deciding to sue. It's the thing that has to happen first, and the clock on your eventual lawsuit doesn't start until you get it right.

 

Before You File: What You'll Need

 

Gathering everything below before you open the portal matters more than it sounds. Form DFS-10-363 tells you why in its own acknowledgement: "Once the Notice has been submitted, the text cannot be changed or deleted." There is no revision pass, so arriving prepared is the only edit you get.

 

What You'll Need	Why It Matters	Where to Find It
Your exact policy number	Form DFS-10-363 marks the Policy # with a required-field asterisk, and §624.155(3)(b) requires the notice to be on the department's form and to include 'such other information as the department may require.	Declarations page of your policy.
The specific statute(s) allegedly violated, with exact language	A citation to "624.155" alone isn't enough — you need the actual statutory text.	The statute itself, cited word-for-word.
Names of adjusters or representatives involved	Listing "Unknown" when an adjuster signed your correspondence weakens the notice.	Emails, letters, and claim portal correspondence.
Specific policy sections at issue	"The entire policy" is treated as a fatal defect, not a strong claim.	Your policy's table of contents.
A factual timeline (who, what, when)	Vague allegations don't meet the "state with specificity" standard.	Your own claim file and correspondence log.

 

The "factual timeline" row in that table carries more weight than its one line suggests: documentation that an insurer disregarded — medical records, treating-physician findings, and dated correspondence — is what converts a general complaint about unfair treatment into the kind of dated, attributable narrative the specificity standard is asking for.

Draft your narrative — the facts, the statute language, and your policy citations — in a separate document first. You'll paste it into the portal rather than composing it live, which matters once you see how the filing screen behaves in the next section.

 

Step-By-Step: Filing On The DFS Portal

The DFS Civil Remedy system is the only place this notice can be filed. Florida Administrative Code Rule 69J-123.002 requires the CRN to be submitted electronically on Form DFS-10-363, "Civil Remedy Notice of Insurer Violation," through the Bureau of Consumer Assistance website — a paper copy mailed to the department doesn't count as a valid filing. The rule text also settles two questions people commonly ask: no fee is required, and both the insurer's report of disposition and any written communications intended for the department's record must be added electronically to the existing form.

Creating Your Account

 

You'll need a User ID to file, respond to, or comment on a notice (searching existing filings doesn't require an account). Go to the login screen, click Create User Account, and enter your email, first name, and last name. Your email becomes your username, and your temporary password arrives by email.

 

When you set your own password, DFS requires it to be at least six characters, case-sensitive, and to include two of three character types — uppercase, lowercase, number — plus a non-alphanumeric symbol like % or . "CRN999%" is the kind of password that clears the bar; "civilremedy" on its own won't.

 

Completing The Filing

 

Once logged in, click Create Filing, read the affirmation at the top, and check the box confirming the notice is filed under Section 624.155. Every field marked with a red asterisk is required — treat that asterisk as a floor, not a ceiling. The statute's test is whether each item is stated 'with specificity,' and a notice that fills every starred box can still fail: in Julien the Fourth District held that the Department's acceptance of a notice does not establish its legal sufficiency, because a court must interpret the statute itself under Article V, section 21 of the Florida Constitution rather than defer to the agency." Source

 

In the Reason for Notice section, you can select more than one violation type and cite more than one statutory provision, using the Add link next to each. Resist the urge to add every provision that might loosely apply. As explained in the next section, over-citing has its own consequences.

 

Paste your prepared Facts and Circumstances narrative rather than typing it live in the browser — with a claim you can stand behind — "drafting offline means the narrative survives a session timeout or a stray navigation click, and it is the only version you can still revise once the notice is submitted, and there's no upside to testing that risk with your only chance to file this notice correctly the first time.

 

Submitting And Confirming

Click Continue to review. Any incomplete field shows in red at the top — fix those before moving on, since the review screen won't let you submit around them. Click Submit to file, or Edit Filing to make changes. Your filing number appears immediately, and you can save a PDF copy by clicking Print Filing.

Submission is final in both directions. The form's own acknowledgement warns: "Before submitting a Notice using this system, please verify that all text has been entered correctly and completely. Once the Notice has been submitted, the text cannot be changed or deleted." From there the department — not you — delivers the notice to the insurer's designated e-mail under §624.422, and that delivery, not your click, starts the sixty days.

 

• How This Plays Out In A Real Claim for Policyholders: Rule 69J-123.002 (3) provides that any written communications between the parties "intended for inclusion in the Department's electronic record" must be electronically added to the existing Form DFS-10-363 for that notice. Anything you want in the official Civil Remedy record goes through the portal's own filing or comment fields.

 

The Specific-Violation Requirement

 

Florida courts read the phrase "state with specificity" literally, and a growing body of case law shows what that means in practice.

The controlling example is Julien v. United Property Casualty Insurance Co. Junior Julien filed a fire-damage claim; after his insurer discovered unrepaired damage from an earlier fire and requested an examination under oath, Julien filed a CRN alleging claim delay, an unsatisfactory settlement offer, unfair trade practice, failure to properly investigate, and failure to acknowledge communications. The notice cited thirty-five statutory provisions — fourteen statutes followed by twenty-one sections of the Florida Administrative Code — and, under "specific policy language that is relevant to the violation," reproduced what amounted to the whole contract, closing with the line "All policy provisions." The circuit court dismissed his statutory bad faith suit with prejudice and the Fourth District affirmed, strictly construing §624.155 because the statute is in derogation of the common law and holding that Julien's notice was more than a "mere technical defect" — he had not even substantially complied with the specificity standard.

The Fifth District held that even under the more lenient substantial-compliance test some federal courts apply, that kitchen-sink approach failed — the substance of a CRN, the court reasoned, must let the insurer work out from the notice alone both what it allegedly did and what it must do to fix it.

 

Case identification.  Demase v. State Farm Florida Insurance Co., 351 So. 3d 136 (Fla. 5th DCA 2022). Docket No. 5D21-2078. District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida, Fifth District. Decided 2022. Disposition: affirmed in its entirety (summary judgment for State Farm upheld). Parties: Thomas Demase and Joanne Demase, appellants, v. State Farm Florida Insurance Company, appellee. Statute construed: Fla. Stat. §624.155 (2014). Earlier history: Demase v. State Farm Florida Insurance Co., 239 So. 3d 218 (Fla. 5th DCA 2018).

The court also rejected the argument that DFS accepting a notice makes it legally sufficient — under Article V, section 21 of the Florida Constitution, a court must interpret the statute itself rather than defer to the agency.

Demase v. State Farm Florida Insurance Co. shows the same defect surviving a second look, this time in the Fifth District. The Demases' sinkhole CRN alleged violations of fifteen statutes and twenty-two administrative regulations, and under "specific policy language that is relevant to the violation" it listed section headings ending with the words "All policy provisions." The court held that even under the more lenient substantial-compliance test some federal courts apply, that kitchen-sink approach failed — the substance of a CRN, the concurrence reasoned, must be stated in a way that lets the insurer ascertain directly from the notice both the alleged violation and the steps it must take to cure it.

 

Case identification. Julien v. United Property & Casualty Insurance Co., 311 So. 3d 875 (Fla. 4th DCA 2021). Docket No. 4D19-2763. 

District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida, Fourth District, on appeal from the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, Broward County (L.T. Case No. CACE-18-017983). Decided March 3, 2021 (opinion substituted on rehearing for the court's September 23, 2020 opinion). 

Disposition: affirmed; dismissal with prejudice upheld. Parties: Junior Julien, appellant, v. United Property & Casualty Insurance Company, appellee. Statute construed: Fla. Stat.§624.155(3)(b).

 

The Fifth District's own summary of why it affirmed is one line long: "Because we conclude the CRN lacked the requisite level of specificity, we reject the Demases' arguments and affirm the trial court in all respects."

Getting the notice right still only buys you a seat at the table, not a verdict. That distinction played out in Woods v. Progressive American Insurance Co., where a Florida driver won $545,760 from a jury on her underinsured motorist claim — nearly double her policy limit — and lost the bad faith case built on top of it.

Note: This is Woods v. Progressive American Insurance Co. (11th Cir. No. 23-13407), a first-party underinsured-motorist bad-faith case. It is unrelated to the similarly named Wood v. Progressive Select Insurance Co. (11th Cir. No. 24-13479), a third-party bad-faith case over a $50,000 policy discussed here.

 

Two practical habits follow from these rulings: name the individual adjuster or representative instead of writing "Unknown" if that person appears anywhere in your correspondence, and cite the exact section of your policy — "Section I, Conditions, Loss Settlement," not "my homeowner's policy" as a whole.

One point worth correcting here, since it circulates in some CRN guidance: Florida courts have not required a specific dollar "cure amount" as part of a valid notice. 

In Hunt v. State Farm Florida Insurance Co., the Second District reversed a summary judgment that had rested on exactly that premise, holding that on its face the statute imposes no such requirement and that the court was "hesitant to impose a requirement beyond that directed by the legislature." The same opinion held that an appraisal award — not only a breach-of-contract judgment — could satisfy the favorable-resolution condition precedent, a point since narrowed for property claims by §624.1551. Many attorneys still include a clear dollar figure as a strategic choice, since it gives the insurer a concrete target, but it isn't a statutory requirement.

 

Case identification. Hunt v. State Farm Florida Insurance Co., 112 So. 3d 547 (Fla. 2d DCA 2013). Docket No. 2D11-6484. District Court of Appeal of the State of Florida, Second District, on appeal from the Circuit Court for Pinellas County (Judge John A. Schaefer). Opinion filed April 5, 2013 (LaROSE, J.; Altenbernd and Morris, JJ., concurring). Disposition: reversed and remanded. Parties: Terry Hunt, appellant, v. State Farm Florida Insurance Company, appellee. Statute construed: Fla. Stat. §624.155(3) (2006).

 

  What A Defective CRN Looks Like

 

A notice doesn't have to be fraudulent or dishonest to fail — most defective CRNs fail on specificity, not intent. Courts have consistently rejected notices that swing too far in either direction: too vague, or so broad they defeat the purpose of narrowing the issue.

 

Common Defect	Why Courts Reject It	How To Fix It
Citing "the entire policy"	Gives the insurer no way to know which specific policy provision it must cure.	Cite the exact policy section and page number.
Listing 20+ statutory provisions	Reads as a failure to identify a genuine, curable statutory violation.	Cite only the statutory provisions that are genuinely at issue.
Writing "Unknown" for adjuster names	Looks evasive if the adjuster is identified in your own claim records.	Name the specific adjuster or representative involved.
Missing the complainant's email	The complainant's e-mail is a starred field on Form DFS-10-363, and insurers routinely argue in their CRN responses that omitting it — or substituting counsel's address for the insured's — makes the notice facially deficient.	Verify every required field is completed before submitting.
Naming the wrong entity	Parent companies and underwriting carriers are legally distinct entities.	Confirm the exact insurer name shown on your declarations page.

 

Julien v. United Property & Casualty Insurance Co. illustrates the over-citation problem directly: the notice cited nearly all of the applicable statutory provisions, and the court found that approach failed to give the insurer a meaningful opportunity to cure anything specific. Listing more statutes doesn't make a stronger notice — it makes a vaguer one.

There's also a newer wrinkle in how the conduct behind a CRN gets generated in the first place. Insurers are increasingly running claims through predictive software, which matters for a notice that has to name "any individual involved in the violation" — if no human adjuster ever meaningfully touched your file, the question of who to name, and what your correspondence actually proves about who decided what, gets harder before you even open the portal.

 

60-Day Cure Math

 

The 60-day window is the practical heart of the CRN process — it determines when you're actually free to file suit.

Day	What Happens
Filing day	You submit the Civil Remedy Notice through the DFS portal and receive a filing number. Save the Print Filing PDF — it is your proof of the submission date. The cure clock is not running yet.
Day 0 — receipt	DFS delivers the notice to the e-mail address the insurer designated under §624.422. This is the date §624.155(3)(c) measures from, and it may be days after you filed.
Days 1–59	The cure period is underway. The insurer may pay the damages owed under the contract or otherwise correct the alleged violation.
Day 60	Final day for the insurer to cure, counted from the date it received the notice from the department — not from your filing date.
Day 61+	If the violation has not been cured, the §624.155(3) condition precedent is generally satisfied and a bad faith action may proceed, subject to applicable law — including §624.1551 for property claims.

 

If your insurer pays the contractual damages within the 60 days, the bad faith action is barred — a timely cure closes the door on the extra-contractual claim, even if you're unhappy it took a CRN to get the payment. 

The applicable statute of limitations is tolled too, but on the same receipt-based trigger: §624.155 (3) (e) tolls it for sixty days after the insurer receives the notice from the department, and for a further sixty days after the date appraisal is invoked under paragraph (f). 

The gap between your submission and the department's delivery is not covered by that toll, which is one more reason to treat the filing date and the receipt date as two different dates in your own file.

A cure that lands on day 58 is not the same thing as good faith all along, and what a late payment does and doesn't prove under the 60-day rule is the part most policyholders misread — the statute measures whether the insurer paid inside the window, not whether it should have paid months earlier.

 

Residential property claims carry one extra rule. A CRN can't be filed within 60 days of any party invoking appraisal. This exists so the appraisal process — a separate way of resolving a dollar dispute over the loss — isn't rushed or overridden by a simultaneous bad faith clock. If appraisal is already underway on your claim, confirm the invocation date before you file.

 

What Happens After: Cure vs. No Cure

 

• If the insurer cures: Payment of the contractual damages within 60 days bars the bad faith action. You keep your underlying claim payment, but the door to extra-contractual damages — the amounts that can exceed your policy limits — closes for this particular violation.

• A Florida claimant learned the hard way that the payment is only half the transaction, after accepting $10,000 and then reading the release that came with it — the document asked him to indemnify the insurer against anyone else who might later sue over the same accident, a term that had nothing to do with the amount he'd agreed to and everything to do with what he was giving up. Read whatever the insurer sends during the cure window with the same care you gave the CRN.

 

• If the insurer doesn't cure — and you have a property claim: Filing a valid CRN and waiting out the 60 days is necessary, but for property insurance claims, it isn't sufficient on its own anymore. Under Florida Statute §624.1551, enacted as part of the 2022–2023 tort reform package, a property policyholder also needs an "adverse adjudication" — a court ruling that the insurer breached the contract — and a final judgment, before a bad faith action can proceed.

• That means for property claims, accepting an appraisal award or a settlement offer doesn't get you there. Section 624.1551 states directly that "[a]cceptance of an offer of judgment under s. 768.79 or the payment of an appraisal award does not constitute an adverse adjudication under this section." The statute does leave one door ajar: the difference between an insurer's appraiser's final estimate and the appraisal award "may be evidence of bad faith," though it is not itself an adverse adjudication and does not on its own create a cause of action. The provision came in through SB 2-A during the December 2022 special session; the Florida Senate's own bill summary describes the change plainly — bad faith litigation over a property claim "may not be filed until after the insured has established, through adverse adjudication by a court, that the insurer breached the insurance contract and a final judgment or decree has been rendered." Statutory history: ch. 2022-268, §6; ch. 2022-271, §2.

• Extra-contractual damages — the amount a bad faith judgment can reach beyond the policy's stated limit — are the entire reason the CRN process exists, and the gap is not theoretical: one $50,000 policy dispute ended in a $267,608.50 bad-faith verdict against Progressive Select — $217,608.50 of it above the policy limit — upheld by the Eleventh Circuit in November 2025. That number is what a defective notice forfeits.

 

• Why This Matters to You: A properly filed CRN protects your right to eventually pursue a bad faith claim — it doesn't, by itself, guarantee you can file that claim immediately after the 60 days run. Confirm which track applies to your claim type before assuming the door is open.

 

Sample Language For The Facts And Circumstances Field

 

Example (illustrative only — replace every detail with your own facts, dates, and policy language before using anything like this in a real filing):

 

 On [date], I reported water damage to my property under Policy No. [XXXXXXX]. On [date], adjuster [Name] inspected the property and estimated the loss at $[amount], omitting damage to [specific area] documented in the attached photographs dated [date]. Despite providing a supplemental estimate on [date], no revised payment has been issued as of [date], a period of [X] days. This conduct violates Section [X], Loss Settlement, which requires [quote the exact policy language], and Florida Statute §624.155(1)(b)1, which prohibits failing to attempt in good faith to settle claims when the insurer could and should have done so. 

 

Notice what this example does: it names a person, cites a dated timeline, quotes specific policy language instead of referencing "the policy" generally, and ties the facts to the statute — the same elements the case law above treats as the difference between a valid and a defective notice.

Before You File

 

Knowing how to file a Civil Remedy Notice in Florida comes down to preparation: review your prepared statute citations, adjuster names, and policy sections one more time against the checklist in Before You File: What You'll Need.

Confirm your policy number matches your declarations page exactly, and confirm you're naming the specific underwriting carrier, not a parent company. A properly filed CRN doesn't guarantee your eventual bad faith claim succeeds, but a defective one can close that door before you get the chance to find out. 

For advice tailored to your specific claim and timeline, a Florida attorney familiar with first-party bad faith practice can review your draft before you submit it.

Editorial Disclaimer

 

This article explains the procedural steps, statutory requirements, and cure-window timeline for filing a Civil Remedy Notice (CRN) under Florida Statute §624.155. It is for general educational purposes only and is not legal advice.

 

The case summaries referenced — including Demase, Julien, Hunt, and Woods — illustrate how Florida courts have applied the specificity standard, but case law and statutes (including §624.155 and §624.1551) can change after publication. DFS portal requirements, forms, and account rules may also be updated over time. Verify current details on the DFS Civil Remedy Notice site before filing.

 

The sample "Facts and Circumstances" language is illustrative only — it must be fully replaced with your own facts, dates, and exact policy language before use in a real filing.

 

Because a defective or untimely CRN can permanently bar a future bad faith claim, readers should have their specific facts and draft notice reviewed by a Florida-licensed attorney before submitting, especially for property claims subject to §624.1551.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How Do I Search Existing Florida CRN Filings?

Use the Search Filings menu on the DFS Civil Remedy site. You can search by DFS file number or by date range without needing an account — anyone can view CRN records, since they're public.

2. How Long Does The Florida CRN Process Take?

After that, the insurer has a full 60 days to cure — counted from the day DFS delivers the notice to it, not the day you filed — so plan on at least two months, plus the transmission gap, between filing and your next step.

3. Can I File A CRN Myself Without An Attorney?

Yes — nothing in the statute requires an attorney to file. The specificity standards discussed above apply equally either way, so a self-filed notice needs the same precision as an attorney-drafted one to hold up if challenged.

4. What Happens If My Insurer Doesn't Respond To The CRN?

The insurer isn't required to respond to you directly, but it is required to report the disposition of the alleged violation to DFS. If the 60 days pass without a cure, that silence itself satisfies the condition precedent for moving forward.

5. How Much Does It Cost To File A Florida CRN?

There's no DFS filing fee to submit a Civil Remedy Notice. Costs come later, if you hire an attorney or pursue litigation — the CRN itself is a free filing.