State Farm Hits Skeptical Florida Justices in Kickback Case

A legal theory that could give insurers like State Farm a “silver bullet” to question all payments to some Florida medical clinics received broad pushback from the state Supreme Court Wednesday.

Every justice who spoke appeared skeptical of the insurance giant’s argument that a provision of state law saying a clinician must be “legally responsible” for their operations meant that practices could have license exemptions revoked—and millions of dollars of care bills tossed—if a civil trial judge makes that judgment.

“You’ve asked us to do a lot of assumptions with what the statute does when all you have is this ...