(1) The department, with the approval of the board, may petition the circuit courts of this state for appointment of a receiver of any licensee or revoked or suspended licensee under this chapter, or person who has without license conducted activities requiring licensure under this chapter. The court shall appoint a receiver if the court shall determine that a receivership is necessary or advisable:

(a) To ensure the orderly and proper conduct of a licensee’s professional business and affairs during or in the aftermath of the administrative proceeding to revoke or suspend the license.

(b) For the protection of the public’s interest and rights in the business, premises, or activities of the person sought to be placed in receivership.

(c) Upon a showing of actual or constructive abandonment of premises or business licensed or which was not but should have been licensed under this chapter.

(d) Upon a showing of serious and repeated violations of this chapter demonstrating an inability or unwillingness of a licensee to comply with the requirements of this chapter.

(e) To prevent loss, wasting, dissipation, theft, or conversion of assets that should be marshaled and held available for the honoring of obligations under this chapter.

(f) Upon proof of other grounds which the court deems good and sufficient for instituting receivership action concerning the respondent sought to be placed in receivership.

(2) A receivership under this section may be temporary, or for the winding up and dissolution of the business, as the department may request and the court determines to be necessary or advisable in the circumstances. Venue of receivership proceedings may be, at the department’s election, in Leon County, or the county where the subject of the receivership is located. The appointed receiver shall be the department or such person as the department may nominate and the court shall approve. The provisions of part I of chapter 631 shall be applicable to receiverships under this section except to the extent the court shall determine the application of particular of such provisions to be impracticable or would produce unfair results in the circumstances. Expenditures by the department from its budgeted funds, the Preneed Funeral Contract Consumer Protection Trust Fund, and other regulatory trust funds derived from this chapter, for implementation and effectuation of such a receivership, shall be authorized; any such funds expended shall be a claim against the estate in the receivership proceedings.

(3) The department may adopt rules for the implementation of this section.

History.—ss. 12, 32, ch. 83-316; s. 16, ch. 88-139; ss. 106, 122, ch. 93-399; s. 30, ch. 2004-301; s. 92, ch. 2005-2.

Note.—Former s. 639.165; s. 497.437.