Preview
16-2024-CA-001402-AXXX-MA Div: CV-G
Filing # 194128836 E-Filed 03/15/2024 02:42:27 PM
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE
FOURTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT IN AND
FOR DUVAL COUNTY, FLORIDA
CASE NO.:
DIVISION:
RICHARD E. EDENFIELD AND
ELIZABETH EDENFIELD,
PLAINTIFFS,
vs.
STATE FARM FLORIDA INSURANCE
COMPANY,
DEFENDANT.
_______________________________/
NOTICE OF SERVICE OF CORRESPONDENCE
Plaintiffs, RICHARD E. EDENFIELD AND ELIZABETH EDENFIELD, hereby file
this Notice of Service of the original of the attached correspondence to the Defendant.
I HEREBY CERTIFY that I have furnished a true and correct copy of the foregoing
correspondence by service of process contemporaneously with the Complaint in this
matter.
Dated this 15th day of March 2024.
MORGAN & MORGAN
/s/ Mark G. Kahley
______________________________________
MARK G. KAHLEY, ESQUIRE
FBN: 0048412
501 Riverside Avenue, 12th Floor
Jacksonville, Florida 32202
Primary email: mkahley@forthepeople.com
Secondary email: bgriffin@forthepeople.com
Telephone: (904) 361-7186
ACCEPTED: DUVAL COUNTY, JODY PHILLIPS, CLERK, 03/18/2024 10:42:26 AM
Facsimile: (904) 361-4484
Attorney for Plaintiffs
March 14, 2024
TO: STATE FARM FLORIDA INSURANCE COMPANY
c/o Chief Financial Officer, State of Florida
Division of Legal Services
200 E. Gaines Street
Tallahassee, FL 32314-6200
RE: RICHARD E. EDENFIELD AND ELIZABETH EDENFIELD vs STATE FARM
FLORIDA INSURANCE COMPANY.
Dear Sir or Madam:
This firm has been retained by the Plaintiffs, regarding severe damage to the
dwelling located at 1605 Sharonhill Drive, Jacksonville, Florida 32211-0501 caused by
water. I am writing to inform you that I will be the attorney handling this matter and all
correspondence should be directed to my attention.
The insured would very much like to repair the dwelling without further delays.
Accordingly, please contact me within 21 days from the date of this letter to schedule a
joint inspection of the loss.
DEMAND FOR PRESERVATION OF EVIDENCE
Demand is also made that you preserve all documents, tangible things, and
electronically stored information potentially relevant to the issues in this insurance loss or
claim. You should anticipate that litigation is imminent and that much of this information
is subject to disclosure or will be responsive to discovery in this matter, even if it is stored
on your current and former computer systems and other media and devices (including
personal digital assistants, voice-messaging systems, online repositories, and cell
phones), collectively referred to hereafter as “ESI”. ESI includes not only electronic,
magnetic, and optical storage media reasonably accessible to you, but also in areas you
April deem not reasonable accessible. You are obligated to preserve potentially relevant
evidence from both these sources of ESI, even if you do not anticipate producing such
ESI.
ESI hidden system files or metadata, presently located on or contained in a free
standing computer or laptop, or on any part of a server, CPU or digital device that April
contain data storage capabilities including, but not limited to hard disk drives, optical disk
drives, removable media, such as floppy disk drives, CD-ROM and DVD drives, Zip
drives, Jaz drives, Maxtor drives, snap drives, or other, similar drives, data processing
cards, computer magnetic tapes, backup tapes, drum and disk storage devices, or any
other similar electronic storage media or system of whatever name or description.
Preserve all digital image evidence that April be stored on any type of hardware
used to store or manipulate electronic images, including but not limited to microfilm,
microfiche, and their repositories and readers, or design or engineering computer
systems and regardless of any digital image's format, including .jpg, .bmp, or some other
advanced or proprietary form of digital image format, such as CAD layered drawings.
Preserve all existing sources of digital evidence that April not presently be in use
by your company or April have been deleted from your active systems, whether the source
is a backup tape or disk, some other data retention system, or some form of disaster
recovery system. Including the imaging of hard drives, please take all reasonable steps
to preserve digital evidence that April have been deleted from your active files and which
April not be readily recoverable from a backup medium, such as metadata.
SUSPENSION OF ROUTINE DESTRUCTION
Demand is also made that you to immediately preserve and hold potentially
relevant ESI, documents, and tangible things, and to act diligently and in good faith to
secure this ESI. You are further directed to immediately identify and modify or suspend
features of your information systems and devices that, in routine operation, operate to
cause the loss of potentially relevant ESI. Examples of such features and operations
include:
· Purging the contents of email repositories by age, capacity, or other criteria;
· Using data or media wiping, disposal, erasure, or encryption utilities or devices;
· Overwriting, erasing, destroying, or discarding back up media;
· Re-assigning, re-imaging, or disposing of systems, servers, devices, or media;
· Running antivirus or other programs effecting wholesale metadata alteration;
· Releasing or purging online storage repositories;
· Using metadata stripper utilities;
· Disabling server or IM logging; and
· Executing drive or file defragmentation or compression programs.
SYSTEMS, LAPTOPS, ONLINE ACCOUNTS, AND OTHER ESI VENUES
Although we expect you will act swiftly to preserve data on office workstations and
servers, your home or portable systems contain potentially relevant data. To the extent
you have sent or received potentially relevant emails or created or reviewed potentially
relevant documents away from the office, you must preserve the contents of systems,
devices, and media used for these purposes (including not only potentially relevant data
from portable and home computers, but also from portable thumb drives, CD-ROM disks,
and the user's PDA, smart phone, voice mailbox, or other forms of ESI storage). Similarly,
if you used online or browser-based email accounts or services (such as AOL, Gmail,
Yahoo Mail, or the like) to send or receive potentially relevant messages and attachments,
the contents of these account mailboxes (including Sent, Deleted, and Archived Message
folders) should be preserved.
Preserve digital evidence that is subject to your control regardless of where else it
April be located on-site at your main offices, within the network infrastructure of your
company, or on or in one of your other computer support systems including those at your
subsidiaries, predecessors, successors, assigns, joint venturers, partners, parents,
agents, or affiliates (in this country or throughout the world), including but not limited to
the following locations:
a. Your LAN and WAN network systems, regardless of methods of
connectivity (e.g., by T1, T3 or optical lines), domains, including PDCs, network
OS (such as Novell, Microsoft, UNIX, Citrix, or some other similar type) or
protocols, or your backup and disaster recovery hardware and media, regardless
of the physical location of those electronic storage systems.
b. Your email servers and any repository of your email (including within the
inbox, sent box, deleted box, or some similar file of the computers of employees
or management), or in any backup form whatsoever, regardless of whether you
use Microsoft Exchange, Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, or some
combination of email management software or some alternative commercial or
proprietary email management software.
c. Your IS administrative offices, including backup and disaster recovery
restoration repositories, data retention repositories, purge repositories, training
repositories, or libraries of hardcopy materials of any description (regardless of
where located), and online training and operation manuals that have been scanned
to disk.
d. Your offsite technical and service bureau support systems, including but
not limited to ASP (application service provider) support, scanning or data
conversion support, offsite data storage or archive support.
e. Your web hosting and administration services, including intranet and
extranet sites, regardless of whether they are now publicly posted or exist in
English or some other language.
PAPER PRESERVATION OF ESI IS INADEQUATE
As hard copies do not preserve electronic searchability or metadata, they are not
an adequate substitute for, or cumulative of, electronically stored versions. If information
exists in both electronic and paper forms, you should preserve both forms.
AGENTS, ATTORNEYS, VENDORS, AND THIRD PARTIES
Your preservation obligation extends beyond ESI in your care, possession, or
custody and includes ESI in the custody of others that is subject to your direction or
control. Accordingly, you must notify any current or former agent, attorney, employee,
custodian, or contractor in possession of potentially relevant ESI to preserve such ESI to
the full extent of your obligation to do so, and you must take reasonable steps to secure
their compliance.
DO NOT DELAY PRESERVATION
I am available to discuss reasonable preservation steps; however, you should not
defer preservation steps pending such discussions if ESI April be lost or corrupted as a
consequence of delay. Should your failure to preserve potentially relevant evidence result
in the corruption, loss, or delay in production of evidence to which we are entitled, such
failure will constitute spoliation of evidence. If the insurance company is found to have
lost or destroyed documents, records, or ESI, we will not hesitate to seek monetary
sanctions and Orders of issue preclusion and terminating sanctions (dismissal of your
pleadings).
We anticipate your prompt response to this letter and I look forward to hearing from
you soon.
Sincerely,
Mark G. Kahley
March 14, 2024
Via Service of Process
Department of Financial Services
c/o Chief Financial Officer, State of Florida
Division of Legal Services
200 E. Gaines Street
Tallahassee, FL 32314-6200
Re: RICHARD E. EDENFIELD AND ELIZABETH EDENFIELD v. STATE
FARM FLORIDA INSURANCE COMPANY
Claim Number: 59-8079-M78
To Whom It April Concern:
Our firm represents the Plaintiffs, RICHARD E. EDENFIELD AND ELIZABETH
EDENFIELD, in the above-referenced matter. Pursuant to Fla.R.Civ.P. 1.310(b)(6), we
are requesting you designate one or more officers, directors, managing agent, or persons
to testify at deposition on Defendant’s behalf regarding the following matters:
1. The investigation process of the claim submitted by Plaintiffs to Defendant
until the time of decision to deny or approve Plaintiffs’ claim.
2. Facts and evidence supporting Defendant’s Answer and Affirmative
Defenses in response to Plaintiffs’ Complaint.
3. Facts and evidence supporting Defendant’s responses to Plaintiffs’
discovery requests.
4. The identity of and Defendant’s financial relationship with any and all
individuals and/or entities involved in the investigation and/or adjustment of
the claim, including, but not limited to (i) the total amount of money
Defendant or its representatives has paid each individual and/or entity; (ii)
the number of times Defendant or its representatives have hired each
individual and/or entity within the last 5 years preceding the date of the
report prepared by each individual and/or entity; (iii) the year in which
Defendant first retained each individual and/or entity; and (iv) the number
of projects/claims each individual and/or entity is currently retained on
behalf of the Defendant or Defendant’s representatives.
5. Any inspections, evaluations, reports and/or appraisals related to the
insured property, located at 1605 Sharonhill Drive, Jacksonville, Florida
32211-0501, in the underwriting file.
6. The underwriting guidelines in effect for the insured property at issue in this
lawsuit at the time of Plaintiffs’ original application for insurance.
7. The names and addresses of the companies who performed inspections for
the underwriting department at the time of Plaintiffs’ original application and
all renewals for insurance on the property at issue in this lawsuit.
Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. We
appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Mark G. Kahley
Preview
16-2024-CA-001402-AXXX-MA Div: CV-G Filing # 194128836 E-Filed 03/15/2024 02:42:27 PM IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE FOURTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT IN AND FOR DUVAL COUNTY, FLORIDA CASE NO.: DIVISION: RICHARD E. EDENFIELD AND ELIZABETH EDENFIELD, PLAINTIFFS, vs. STATE FARM FLORIDA INSURANCE COMPANY, DEFENDANT. _______________________________/ NOTICE OF SERVICE OF CORRESPONDENCE Plaintiffs, RICHARD E. EDENFIELD AND ELIZABETH EDENFIELD, hereby file this Notice of Service of the original of the attached correspondence to the Defendant. I HEREBY CERTIFY that I have furnished a true and correct copy of the foregoing correspondence by service of process contemporaneously with the Complaint in this matter. Dated this 15th day of March 2024. MORGAN & MORGAN /s/ Mark G. Kahley ______________________________________ MARK G. KAHLEY, ESQUIRE FBN: 0048412 501 Riverside Avenue, 12th Floor Jacksonville, Florida 32202 Primary email: mkahley@forthepeople.com Secondary email: bgriffin@forthepeople.com Telephone: (904) 361-7186 ACCEPTED: DUVAL COUNTY, JODY PHILLIPS, CLERK, 03/18/2024 10:42:26 AM Facsimile: (904) 361-4484 Attorney for Plaintiffs March 14, 2024 TO: STATE FARM FLORIDA INSURANCE COMPANY c/o Chief Financial Officer, State of Florida Division of Legal Services 200 E. Gaines Street Tallahassee, FL 32314-6200 RE: RICHARD E. EDENFIELD AND ELIZABETH EDENFIELD vs STATE FARM FLORIDA INSURANCE COMPANY. Dear Sir or Madam: This firm has been retained by the Plaintiffs, regarding severe damage to the dwelling located at 1605 Sharonhill Drive, Jacksonville, Florida 32211-0501 caused by water. I am writing to inform you that I will be the attorney handling this matter and all correspondence should be directed to my attention. The insured would very much like to repair the dwelling without further delays. Accordingly, please contact me within 21 days from the date of this letter to schedule a joint inspection of the loss. DEMAND FOR PRESERVATION OF EVIDENCE Demand is also made that you preserve all documents, tangible things, and electronically stored information potentially relevant to the issues in this insurance loss or claim. You should anticipate that litigation is imminent and that much of this information is subject to disclosure or will be responsive to discovery in this matter, even if it is stored on your current and former computer systems and other media and devices (including personal digital assistants, voice-messaging systems, online repositories, and cell phones), collectively referred to hereafter as “ESI”. ESI includes not only electronic, magnetic, and optical storage media reasonably accessible to you, but also in areas you April deem not reasonable accessible. You are obligated to preserve potentially relevant evidence from both these sources of ESI, even if you do not anticipate producing such ESI. ESI hidden system files or metadata, presently located on or contained in a free standing computer or laptop, or on any part of a server, CPU or digital device that April contain data storage capabilities including, but not limited to hard disk drives, optical disk drives, removable media, such as floppy disk drives, CD-ROM and DVD drives, Zip drives, Jaz drives, Maxtor drives, snap drives, or other, similar drives, data processing cards, computer magnetic tapes, backup tapes, drum and disk storage devices, or any other similar electronic storage media or system of whatever name or description. Preserve all digital image evidence that April be stored on any type of hardware used to store or manipulate electronic images, including but not limited to microfilm, microfiche, and their repositories and readers, or design or engineering computer systems and regardless of any digital image's format, including .jpg, .bmp, or some other advanced or proprietary form of digital image format, such as CAD layered drawings. Preserve all existing sources of digital evidence that April not presently be in use by your company or April have been deleted from your active systems, whether the source is a backup tape or disk, some other data retention system, or some form of disaster recovery system. Including the imaging of hard drives, please take all reasonable steps to preserve digital evidence that April have been deleted from your active files and which April not be readily recoverable from a backup medium, such as metadata. SUSPENSION OF ROUTINE DESTRUCTION Demand is also made that you to immediately preserve and hold potentially relevant ESI, documents, and tangible things, and to act diligently and in good faith to secure this ESI. You are further directed to immediately identify and modify or suspend features of your information systems and devices that, in routine operation, operate to cause the loss of potentially relevant ESI. Examples of such features and operations include: · Purging the contents of email repositories by age, capacity, or other criteria; · Using data or media wiping, disposal, erasure, or encryption utilities or devices; · Overwriting, erasing, destroying, or discarding back up media; · Re-assigning, re-imaging, or disposing of systems, servers, devices, or media; · Running antivirus or other programs effecting wholesale metadata alteration; · Releasing or purging online storage repositories; · Using metadata stripper utilities; · Disabling server or IM logging; and · Executing drive or file defragmentation or compression programs. SYSTEMS, LAPTOPS, ONLINE ACCOUNTS, AND OTHER ESI VENUES Although we expect you will act swiftly to preserve data on office workstations and servers, your home or portable systems contain potentially relevant data. To the extent you have sent or received potentially relevant emails or created or reviewed potentially relevant documents away from the office, you must preserve the contents of systems, devices, and media used for these purposes (including not only potentially relevant data from portable and home computers, but also from portable thumb drives, CD-ROM disks, and the user's PDA, smart phone, voice mailbox, or other forms of ESI storage). Similarly, if you used online or browser-based email accounts or services (such as AOL, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or the like) to send or receive potentially relevant messages and attachments, the contents of these account mailboxes (including Sent, Deleted, and Archived Message folders) should be preserved. Preserve digital evidence that is subject to your control regardless of where else it April be located on-site at your main offices, within the network infrastructure of your company, or on or in one of your other computer support systems including those at your subsidiaries, predecessors, successors, assigns, joint venturers, partners, parents, agents, or affiliates (in this country or throughout the world), including but not limited to the following locations: a. Your LAN and WAN network systems, regardless of methods of connectivity (e.g., by T1, T3 or optical lines), domains, including PDCs, network OS (such as Novell, Microsoft, UNIX, Citrix, or some other similar type) or protocols, or your backup and disaster recovery hardware and media, regardless of the physical location of those electronic storage systems. b. Your email servers and any repository of your email (including within the inbox, sent box, deleted box, or some similar file of the computers of employees or management), or in any backup form whatsoever, regardless of whether you use Microsoft Exchange, Outlook, Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, or some combination of email management software or some alternative commercial or proprietary email management software. c. Your IS administrative offices, including backup and disaster recovery restoration repositories, data retention repositories, purge repositories, training repositories, or libraries of hardcopy materials of any description (regardless of where located), and online training and operation manuals that have been scanned to disk. d. Your offsite technical and service bureau support systems, including but not limited to ASP (application service provider) support, scanning or data conversion support, offsite data storage or archive support. e. Your web hosting and administration services, including intranet and extranet sites, regardless of whether they are now publicly posted or exist in English or some other language. PAPER PRESERVATION OF ESI IS INADEQUATE As hard copies do not preserve electronic searchability or metadata, they are not an adequate substitute for, or cumulative of, electronically stored versions. If information exists in both electronic and paper forms, you should preserve both forms. AGENTS, ATTORNEYS, VENDORS, AND THIRD PARTIES Your preservation obligation extends beyond ESI in your care, possession, or custody and includes ESI in the custody of others that is subject to your direction or control. Accordingly, you must notify any current or former agent, attorney, employee, custodian, or contractor in possession of potentially relevant ESI to preserve such ESI to the full extent of your obligation to do so, and you must take reasonable steps to secure their compliance. DO NOT DELAY PRESERVATION I am available to discuss reasonable preservation steps; however, you should not defer preservation steps pending such discussions if ESI April be lost or corrupted as a consequence of delay. Should your failure to preserve potentially relevant evidence result in the corruption, loss, or delay in production of evidence to which we are entitled, such failure will constitute spoliation of evidence. If the insurance company is found to have lost or destroyed documents, records, or ESI, we will not hesitate to seek monetary sanctions and Orders of issue preclusion and terminating sanctions (dismissal of your pleadings). We anticipate your prompt response to this letter and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Sincerely, Mark G. Kahley March 14, 2024 Via Service of Process Department of Financial Services c/o Chief Financial Officer, State of Florida Division of Legal Services 200 E. Gaines Street Tallahassee, FL 32314-6200 Re: RICHARD E. EDENFIELD AND ELIZABETH EDENFIELD v. STATE FARM FLORIDA INSURANCE COMPANY Claim Number: 59-8079-M78 To Whom It April Concern: Our firm represents the Plaintiffs, RICHARD E. EDENFIELD AND ELIZABETH EDENFIELD, in the above-referenced matter. Pursuant to Fla.R.Civ.P. 1.310(b)(6), we are requesting you designate one or more officers, directors, managing agent, or persons to testify at deposition on Defendant’s behalf regarding the following matters: 1. The investigation process of the claim submitted by Plaintiffs to Defendant until the time of decision to deny or approve Plaintiffs’ claim. 2. Facts and evidence supporting Defendant’s Answer and Affirmative Defenses in response to Plaintiffs’ Complaint. 3. Facts and evidence supporting Defendant’s responses to Plaintiffs’ discovery requests. 4. The identity of and Defendant’s financial relationship with any and all individuals and/or entities involved in the investigation and/or adjustment of the claim, including, but not limited to (i) the total amount of money Defendant or its representatives has paid each individual and/or entity; (ii) the number of times Defendant or its representatives have hired each individual and/or entity within the last 5 years preceding the date of the report prepared by each individual and/or entity; (iii) the year in which Defendant first retained each individual and/or entity; and (iv) the number of projects/claims each individual and/or entity is currently retained on behalf of the Defendant or Defendant’s representatives. 5. Any inspections, evaluations, reports and/or appraisals related to the insured property, located at 1605 Sharonhill Drive, Jacksonville, Florida 32211-0501, in the underwriting file. 6. The underwriting guidelines in effect for the insured property at issue in this lawsuit at the time of Plaintiffs’ original application for insurance. 7. The names and addresses of the companies who performed inspections for the underwriting department at the time of Plaintiffs’ original application and all renewals for insurance on the property at issue in this lawsuit. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. We appreciate your prompt attention to this matter. Sincerely, Mark G. Kahley