By Dr. Adam Friedman
via Instagram @docadamj
​
As many of you know, I was involved in a life-altering accident when I was struck by a vehicle while cycling. The impact of that incident left me with permanent injuries, changing the course of my life forever. However, it is precisely during such difficult times that one truly realizes the strength of the people closest to you.

To my dedicated attorneys, @justinmberlin & Kelly Hancock of @hancockberlinlaw THANK YOU for tirelessly advocating for my rights, ensuring that justice was served, and for making me whole again. Your expertise, dedication, and commitment to my case gave me the peace of mind I needed to focus on my recovery. It’s just a bonus that I consider the two of you good friends.

To the exceptional team of chiropractors, acupuncturists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, pain management specialists, and orthopedic surgeons who tended to my physical and emotional well-being, thank you for your compassionate care.

To my friends, family, patients and co-workers, your unwavering support has been the light that guided me through some pretty dark times.

In the wake of this life-changing event, I have become acutely aware of the dangers of distracted driving. My accident serves as a poignant reminder of how a moment’s distraction behind the wheel can irrevocably alter someone’s life.

I implore each one of you to take this warning seriously and make a personal commitment to prioritize safe driving practices. It’s crucial to remain focused on the road, free from distractions that can lead to devastating consequences for both drivers and vulnerable road users like cyclists and pedestrians.

Let us make distracted driving a thing of the past and create an environment where empathy, support, and love help us overcome any obstacle life throws our way.

Despite the ongoing challenges I face, I want to ASSURE everyone that I am unwavering in my determination to continue leading an active, healthy lifestyle.

My passion for chiropractic care and helping others remains undiminished. My injuries may have altered my path slightly, but they have not extinguished the fire within me.

LETS GO!!

#chiropractor #cycling #biking #florida

Article By:
Kevin B. Dreher
Caroline Upton
Haley A. Hinton

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian and the great devastation it caused, Florida policyholders will face new and substantial hurdles when seeking to obtain any insurance coverage in 2023, particularly insurance for losses sustained by future hurricanes. On Dec. 16, 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis approved a bill, SB 2A (identical to HB 1A, hereinafter referred to as the “Legislation”), which will completely reform and overhaul how policyholders in the state of Florida are able to obtain, or rather not obtain, property insurance coverage in the aftermath of losses such as those sustained from Hurricane Ian. House sponsor of the Legislation, Tom Leek (Republican from Ormond Beach), proudly stated that this new Legislation represents the “biggest, meatiest, beefiest property insurance reform legislation that the state has ever seen.” While the Legislation originally was touted to other members of the House and the public as a means of reducing litigation costs, speeding up the claims process, and preventing “fraudulent claims,” the reality is that this Legislation will harm individual and corporate policyholders in the state of Florida by reducing the availability of insurance, increasing the cost of insurance, and making it much more challenging for a policyholder to enforce and collect on their valid claims against their insurers in the aftermath of losses such as those sustained by Hurricane Ian. 


Here are a few salient points about this new Legislation that Florida policyholders should be aware of going forward:
1. The Legislation will not bring any immediate or short term financial relief to policyholders in the form of reduction to the high cost of insurance in the state of Florida. Lawmakers, including Leek, have been clear in taking the position that they do not expect the law to “provide immediate relief to homeowners” in the near future with respect to any reduction to the cost of insurance. However, lawmakers remain hopeful that policyholders may see rates begin to decrease in a year or two. 
2. Under the new Legislation, policyholders who are forced to bring a lawsuit against their property insurer who wrongly refuses to pay a claim are no longer able to recover the attorney fees they are forced to spend to obtain their insurance. Insurers lobbied for the passage of the Legislation based on the false position that Florida’s mandate requiring insurers to pay the attorney fees of policyholders forced to bring suit to obtain their insurance has led to an increase in litigation and costs. However, the Legislation will only further encourage insurers to deny valid claims in order to make it even more costly for policyholders to seek and obtain the insurance they were promised. The result is not likely to lessen Litigation; rather, it is more likely to encourage it by providing insurers with incentive to create insurance disputes over claims they should pay. Unfortunately, the Legislation shifts the cost of this Litigation squarely onto policyholders even when they successfully litigate their claims against an insurer who should have paid the claim in the first instance. 
3. Policyholders can no longer “assign their insurance benefits” from their claims to contractors or other third parties. Prior to this Legislation, policyholders enjoyed the right to assign their insurance claims (i.e. to use their claims as compensation) to contractors and third parties who could then stand in the shoes of the policyholder to pursue and obtain insurance coverage directly from the insurer. Now, with the passage of this new Legislation, policyholders in Florida have been stripped of this right. Not only has this Legislation encouraged insurers to deny more claims and made litigation more costly for policyholders, but policyholders can no longer assign these claims to third parties as a means of providing compensation to that party for work they perform to assist a policyholder with recovering from an insurable loss. Although insurers (once again) falsely claimed that this practice of assigning claims increased litigation and costs, in reality an assignment provided policyholders with immediate financial support from third parties in exchange for the right to pursue the insurance claim in place of the policyholder. As insurers know, when a policyholder suffers a significant loss, such as from a hurricane, most policyholders do not have the resources to pursue a contested insurance claim, particularly in litigation and particularly where the policyholder cannot recover their litigation costs. In the end, the only party who benefits from taking away a policyholder’s right to assign its claim is the insurer.
4. This new Legislation will shrink the insurance market for policyholders, reduce the time period for policyholders to pursue claims and create a policyholder funded pool of money to bail out financially insolvent insurance companies. Under the new Legislation, Florida property insurers will be financially supported by the state of Florida to provide funding for failing insurers while making it more difficult for policyholders to obtain insurance or collect on their claims. Surprisingly, this Legislation puts into effect several additional onerous measures likely to harm policyholders while financially supporting insurers, such as: 
(a) Homeowners/policyholders can only obtain insurance from private carriers and will eliminate state-backed insurance (e.g., Citizens Property Insurance Corp.); 
(b) The window of time for policyholders to pursue their insurance prior to bringing a lawsuit will be reduced from two years to one year; and 
(c) The state of Florida will create a reinsurance program funded by the state, entitled the Florida Optional Reinsurance Assistance Program, to provide insurers with additional reinsurance (insurance for any claims they pay to policyholders) at a reduced cost. 
Although the Legislation includes some measures that may be beneficial to some policyholders—such as shortening the time period for an insurer to deny or cover claims from 90 days to 60 days—the Legislation completely alters the rights of policyholders in Florida and provides insurers with significant leverage to drive up the cost for policyholders to obtain insurance coverage and recovery for their valid claims. 

National Law Review, Volume XIII, Number 5
Source URL: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/florida-property-insurance-reforms-to-lead-to-major-hurdles-policyholders

By Alfred Ng of Cnet

US justices say law enforcement needs a warrant to follow your digital footprints. The Supreme Court rules police need warrants to gather phone location data as evidence for trials.

In a 5-4 decision on Friday the justices said that police need warrants to gather phone location data as evidence for trials. That reversed and remanded a decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Carpenter v.
United States is the first case about phone location data that the Supreme Court has ruled on. That makes it a landmark decision regarding how law enforcement agencies can use technology as they build cases. The court heard arguments in the case on Nov. 29.
The dispute dates back to a 2011 robbery in Detroit, after which police gathered months of phone location data from Timothy Carpenter's phone provider. They pulled together 12,898 different locations from Carpenter, over 127 days.

The legal and privacy concern was that police gathered the four months' worth of Carpenter's digital footprints without a warrant. A Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals judge ruled that cellphone location data is not protected by the Fourth Amendment, which forbids unreasonable search and seizure, and therefore didn't require a warrant.
In the Supreme Court's ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the government's searches of Carpenter's phone records were considered a Fourth Amendment search.  

"The Government's position fails to contend with the seismic shifts in digital technology that made possible the tracking of not only Carpenter's location but also everyone else's, not for a short period but for years and years," he wrote. 

Roberts said that allowing government access to historical GPS data infringes on Carpenter's Fourth Amendment protections and expectation of privacy, by providing law enforcement with an "all-encompassing record" of his whereabouts. He added that historical GPS data presents an "even greater privacy risk" than real-time GPS monitoring.

Carpenter's attorneys, including lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, argued before the Supreme Court that cellphone location data constitutes sensitive digital records and should be protected under the Fourth Amendment. 

"This is a groundbreaking victory for Americans' privacy rights in the digital age," ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler, who argued the case, said in a statement. "The Supreme Court has given privacy law an update that it has badly needed for many years, finally bringing it in line with the realities of modern life. The government can no longer claim that the mere act of using technology eliminates the Fourth Amendment's protections."

Phone location data is a hot-button issue for privacy advocates. In May, Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, asked phone service providers why they were giving away location data to Securus Technologies, a service that monitors calls to prison inmates, which police could use to track anybody's phone in the US, without a warrant.

Also in May, the Federal Communications Commission opened an investigation into LocationSmart, a company that boasted that it could find any phone in the US without needing special permission.
The Supreme Court's decision now sets a precedent for every Americans' phone location data being used in criminal investigations, Wessler said.

"It's not just about Carpenter, it's about the rights of Americans who own cellphones, which is in excess of 95 percent of people in the country," Wessler said in a press conference call.
Fighting 'near-perfect surveillance'Wyden said Friday's ruling was a "welcome step" for privacy and fighting against the expanding power of government surveillance.

"The court's recognition that digital devices can generate 'near-perfect surveillance' of a person's private life is a validation of the vital protections against unreasonable search and seizure provided by our Constitution," the senator said.

The losing argument was that phone companies can provide customers' data to law enforcement because they own those records, not the person. During the trial, US Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben told the Supreme Court that people agree to hand over their information to providers for their service.
"It is asking a business to provide information about the business' own transactions with a customer," Dreeben said in November.
Before the trial took place, major tech companies, including Apple, Facebook and Google, filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court, urging the justices to make it harder for law enforcement officials to obtain individuals' data without a warrant.
While the decision sets a ruling for historical GPS data, the Supreme Court said it does not apply to security cameras, business records or real-time location tracking. 

As technology improves, so will surveillance techniques, Ryan Radia, a  Center for Technology and Innovation research fellow, said. For example, cell tower location data is going to become much more accurate once 5G rolls out, Radia said.

He said Friday's decision showed that the Supreme Court is willing to continue to weigh privacy implications that technology continues to change.

"For people who are understandably worried about technological evolution enabling tools and mass surveillance, they can take solace in the fact that the court has willingness to limit the government's abilities to surveill," Radia said.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association's president Ed Black said the decision would have significant impact on how the Fourth Amendment protects your data from government surveillance. 

"This decision will provide users with the confidence that the sensitive location data they share with innovative digital devices and services will only be disclosed to law enforcement with a warrant based on probable cause," he said.

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