Howden, the international brokerage that made a much-talked-about entrance into Florida last year with the alleged poaching of more than 200 Brown & Brown employees, now plans to make the state its headquarters for the Western Hemisphere.
“Miami is one of the world’s most connected business communities and an increasingly important location for companies operating across the Americas,” Mike Parrish, CEO of Howden Americas, said in a statement Monday. “We’re thrilled to be the only global broker based here.”
The rapidly growing brokerage did not say where in Miami the office will be. But news reports from last fall indicated that Howden had leased almost 24,000 square feet in Miami’s 600 Brickell World Plaza, in the heart of the city’s highly touted financial hub. Google this month announced it was expanding its offices in Miami, just down the street.
Howden has long been based in London. But since announcing its U.S. brokerage operations a year ago, the firm has launched more than 20 broking teams in the United States, the company said. It has some 1,300 colleagues and 3,000 clients across the country.
Howden Latin America now boasts more than 1,000 employees in 12 offices.
The brokerage has won the ire of other brokers around the country by expanding rapidly, mostly through luring away hundreds of employees from established firms, according to lawsuits.
The large brokerage Brown & Brown Insurance, headquartered in Daytona Beach, filed suit last December, alleging that Howden had violated multiple laws by hiring 200 or more of Brown’s workers. Howden responded in court papers, contending that the exodus was caused “entirely by Brown’s mistreatment of people.”
That lawsuit continues in Massachusetts Superior Court.
But even the policy limit amount was not supported by evidence introduced in the trial, the 1st District Court of Appeals panel decided.
“On remand … the court must determine whether RCV or ACV is the proper measure of damages under the policy and order remittitur in an amount consistent with that determination and the evidence,” the appellate judges wrote.
Remittitur, when a judge reduces a jury award to be in keeping with statutes and evidence, is not that unusual in large jury verdicts in Florida, attorneys have said. And in this case, it was clearly called for, when the jury seemed to depart from estimates produced by restoration companies, the appeals court noted.
“The record supports a finding that Universal owed additional covered benefits. It does not support the amounts the jury awarded,” 1DCA Judge Stephanie Ray wrote in the opinion. “The verdict was several times higher than the only admitted valuation evidence, so it does not bear a reasonable relation to the damages proved. And because the amounts awarded cannot be logically derived from the evidence, the verdict is not supported by it. The trial court therefore abused its discretion in denying post-trial relief as to damages.”
