Why the combination is the story

Associations have generally faced catastrophic-loss claims one resident at a time. Aggregation changes both the economics and the insurance posture: a single certified class converts a set of individually modest claims into one exposure large enough to exceed limits, and it does so before liability is decided.

Set against that, Catalina West is a reminder that the policy an association actually holds may not be the policy it thinks it holds. Negligent-security claims are among the most common serious liability exposures in a residential community, and a businessowners policy may not respond to them at all.

The questions to put to your broker

These are not general risk-management platitudes; each maps onto something in one of these two cases.

1. Does the general liability policy respond to negligent security and negligent maintenance claims arising from criminal acts by third parties? Ask for the answer against the policy language, not in principle. Catalina West turned on terms the court found plain.
2. Is there an assault-and-battery exclusion, and if not, what does the “physical abuse” language do? The dissent's point cuts both ways: absence of an explicit exclusion did not produce coverage here.
3. Does the policy contemplate claims by non-owners — tenants, occupants, guests? The New World class is composed of exactly those people.
4. What are the limits against a whole-building loss? A fire that destroys a condominium displaces every occupant simultaneously. Per-occurrence limits designed around individual incidents will not scale to that.
5. Is defence inside or outside limits? In a certified class action, defence costs alone can consume a modest limit.

The statutory insurance duty, which is about property rather than liability

Worth separating clearly, because boards conflate the two. Section 718.111(11)(a) requires that “every condominium association shall have adequate property insurance as determined under this paragraph, regardless of any requirement in the declaration of condominium,” with replacement cost determined by independent appraisal “at least once every 3 years, at minimum.”

That is a property mandate. It does not speak to liability coverage, and neither Catalina West nor New World is a property-insurance case. An association can be fully compliant with s. 718.111(11) and uninsured for the exposure that actually arrives.

The statute does preserve one collective option: at least three communities under Chapters 718, 719, 720 or 721 may satisfy the property obligation with coverage equal to the probable maximum loss for a 250-year windstorm event, modelled by a method accepted by the Florida Commission on Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology.

Where the market pressure is coming from

Association insurance is being squeezed from several directions at once this year, and the liability question sits inside that.

The Office of Insurance Regulation approved Citizens' 2026 commercial lines changes with a 14.1 percent increase for commercial residential wind-only condominium business and 7.7 percent for condominium association multiperil, effective for policies on or after 1 July 2026, against a rate collar of minus 5 to plus 15 percent. Citizens separately amended its submission rule so that building safety or milestone inspection reports are required, and now requires five years of prior loss history for new-business risks.

On the mortgage side, a maximum per-unit master-policy deductible of $50,000 took effect on 1 July 2026 for conventional loan eligibility — which constrains the most obvious lever a board has for managing premium.

What a board can do this quarter

Three things, in order of value.

Get the liability answer in writing. A broker's email confirming how the policy responds to a third-party criminal act, and to claims by non-owner occupants, is worth more than any amount of general reassurance.

Look at the security posture as a liability question, not a service question. Gate operation, lighting, camera coverage and access control are the facts a negligent-security claim is built from. Where the association has assumed a security function, it has assumed the duty that goes with it.

Keep the maintenance record. Both of these cases, like the water-damage decisions decided in the same period, ultimately turn on what the association can document about what it knew and what it did.

Status and what to watch

New World affirms a nonfinal class-certification order and carries the standard notation that it is not final until disposition of a timely filed motion for rehearing; the underlying case continues, and the trial court retains authority to modify or vacate certification. Catalina West drew a substantial dissent, which is the kind of split that occasionally attracts further review.

The thing to watch is whether class treatment of displaced occupants spreads. Florida has a large stock of ageing condominiums, an active milestone-inspection regime producing unsafe determinations, and — per the state's own data — buildings being found unsafe while remaining occupied. The conditions for more mass-displacement litigation are present.