THESE ARE NOT ALL OF THE CASES RELEASED BY THE COURTS FOR THE WEEK.
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Attorney's fees -- Partition of property -- Apportionment of fees -- Trial court did not abuse its discretion by finding that plaintiff's attorney rendered services of benefit to partition and was therefore entitled to attorney's fees -- Trial court lacked discretion to assign liability for those fees only to defendant -- Final judgment for attorney's fees and costs reversed -- Remand with directions to apportion fees and costs between parties, in accordance with each party's proportional interest in partitioned property
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Churches -- Jurisdiction -- Intra-church property dispute -- Ecclesiastical abstention -- Constitutional law -- Establishment Clause -- Action brought by group of local churches seeking to disaffiliate from hierarchical denomination challenging amendments to trust documents on ground that allegedly created onerous and cost-prohibitive restraints on disaffiliation -- Trial court properly concluded that, because Florida has adopted deference approach to property disputes within hierarchical churches, it could not consider plaintiffs' property dispute claims -- Discussion of hierarchical deference and “neutral principles of law” approaches to resolution of church property matters -- Constitutionality -- Court rejects as-applied constitutional challenge alleging that hierarchical deference doctrine violates Establishment Clause because it favors hierarchically structured churches over congregational denominations -- Dismissal of complaint affirmed -- Question certified: When asked to adjudicate state-law claims to resolve intra-church property disputes involving hierarchical churches, are Florida courts still governed by the hierarchical deference approach or may such disputes be resolved under the neutral principles of law approach?
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Contracts -- Municipal corporations -- Public utilities -- Action filed against regional utility alleging that its failure to pay plaintiff developer rebate fees upon occurrence of certain conditions precedent was a breach of the parties' contract -- Trial court correctly found that initial language at start of contract was prefatory, not operative, and could not be used to create an ambiguity where none existed in body of contract -- Appeals -- Rehearing -- Rehearing of original panel opinion is authorized and appropriate where opinion misapprehended a determinative legal issue
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Contracts -- Noncompete agreement -- Arbitration -- Waiver -- Action inconsistent with arbitration -- Action alleging that defendant aided and abetted co-defendant's breach of its noncompetition agreement with plaintiff -- Trial court did not err by denying defendant's motion to compel arbitration based on determination that defendant had waived its right to arbitrate by serving merits-based discovery on codefendant, despite fact that defendant filed motion to compel arbitration before serving discovery -- Defendant's act of propounding merits-based discovery was an action inconsistent with its right to arbitration -- Although section 682.03(6) requires the trial court to stay any judicial proceeding that involves a claim alleged to be subject to arbitration until the court renders a final decision, defendant never requested such a stay either in its motion to compel arbitration or in any separate filing
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Creditors' rights -- Garnishment -- Attorney's fees -- Sanctions -- Bad faith conduct -- Garnishee's answer to writ of garnishment asserting that debtor's account with garnishee was not subject to garnishment in Florida because it was located in another state -- Trial court erred by assessing attorney's fees against garnishee as a sanction for bad faith, vexatious litigation based on determination that garnishee's jurisdictional assertion was “contrary to existing facts and legal precedent,” and that garnishee had engaged in “ongoing, frivolous motion practice” by seeking to vacate final judgment on due process grounds -- Trial court's findings are not supported by record where trial court failed to conduct an evidentiary hearing to resolve factual dispute regarding garnishee's jurisdictional assertions as required by section 77.083 -- Furthermore, garnishee's motion to vacate final judgment of garnishment correctly recognized that judgment was void because it was entered without garnishee being given notice and a reasonable opportunity to be heard on its subject matter jurisdiction defense
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Guardianships -- Intervention -- Post-judgment motion -- Denial -- Motion to intervene in long-since closed guardianship proceeding filed by deceased ward's brother and advocacy group seeking to unseal records that had been deemed confidential pursuant to section 744.3701 -- Trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying motion to intervene -- Third-party intervention in postjudgment context is rare and disfavored unless intervention is in “the interests of justice” -- Exception only applies to situations where there is a clear and adverse impact against a readily discernible interest belonging to the movant -- Movants' professed justification for seeking to unseal records, which was to use whatever they may find in their public advocacy, was an insufficient basis to permit intervention in a case that ended more than twenty years prior -- Confidential records -- Unsealing -- With regards to movants' accompanying motion to unseal records, trial court erred in finding that motion was moot where ward's mother, who was a party to the original guardianship proceedings, had joined the motion -- Despite incorrectly determining that motion to unseal was moot, trial court correctly denied motion where ward's mother failed to show good cause for unsealing records -- While policy issues movants wish to advocate are important to movants and some portion of the general public, that kind of inchoate, generalized public interest does not constitute the kind of good cause that would satisfy section 744.3701(1) or justify disturbing the circuit court's discretionary decision -- Fact that ward passed away many years ago does not diminish importance of confidentiality afforded to ward's guardianship records
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Insurance -- Property insurance -- Residential -- Arbitration -- Mandatory binding arbitration -- Waiver -- Statute explicitly authorizes Citizens Property Insurance Corporation to adopt policy forms providing for resolution of coverage disputes in a proceeding before Division of Administrative Hearings and further provides that any such policies are not subject to §627.70154 -- Citizens properly exercised this right under controlling statutes, terms of policy, and upon proper notice to homeowners -- Right to arbitrate was not waived by act of denying homeowners' claim in its entirety -- Citizens did not participate in litigation or act inconsistently with asserting its right to arbitration, but immediately moved to arbitrate after reiterating its coverage denial in response to insured's presuit notice -- Homeowners' reliance on older cases for premise that denial of coverage alone constitutes affirmative waiver of an insurer's right to seek arbitration does not change result
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Torts -- Premises liability -- Workers' compensation immunity -- Entitlement -- Subcontractors -- Negligence action filed against property manager of apartment complex alleging that workplace injuries plaintiff sustained while servicing apartment complex's pool were the result of property manager's failure to maintain premises in reasonably safe condition and its failure to warn -- Trial court erred by granting summary judgment in favor of property manager based on determination that property manager was a “subcontractor” entitled to horizontal workers' compensation immunity under section 440.10(1)(e) where there was no evidence showing that property owner of the complex had a primary contractual obligation to any third party to maintain the premises or the pool that it then subcontracted to property manager or plaintiff's employer -- Neither the pool maintenance contract between owner and plaintiff's employer, nor the contract between owner and property manager qualifies the owner as a “contractor” or property manager as a “subcontractor” under the statute
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Torts -- Product liability -- Motorcycles -- Design defect -- Warning defects -- Action brought against motorcycle manufacturer alleging that accident involving motorcycle was caused by design and warning defects relating to motorcycle's braking system -- Trial court did not err by denying manufacturer's motion for summary judgment alleging the defense verdict for the strict liability design defect claim in a prior trial barred further litigation of the negligent warning claim because the jury found there was no design defect in the braking system -- While jury's finding on the strict liability claim may have resolved whether braking system was defective in design, it did not preclude consideration as to whether it was defective because of inadequate warnings -- Even if a machine leaves the manufacturer without a design or manufacturing defect, the manufacturer still has a duty to provide a warning of a known danger in a non-defective machine -- Whether warnings given by a manufacturer were adequate is generally a question for the jury where, like here, the adequacy of manufacturer's warnings of the foreseeable risks were not accurate, clear, or unambiguous -- Evidence -- Trial court did not abuse its discretion by admitting manufacturer's safety recall into evidence -- Recall was relevant to whether motorcycle's master cylinder posed foreseeable risks -- Argument that recall was not inadmissable as a subsequent remedial measure was waived where manufacturer failed to adequately challenge the exceptions on which trial court explicitly relied in admitting the evidence -- Manufacturer failed to demonstrate that prejudice outweighed probative value of recall evidence
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Torts -- Sexual assault -- Medical malpractice -- Negligent supervision -- Vicarious liability -- Presuit requirements -- Necessity -- Appeals -- Certiorari -- Action alleging that, despite plaintiff's protests, male physician conducted a vaginal exam in an inappropriate manner and that nurse in exam room was not monitoring the situation or ensuring protocols were followed -- Trial court departed form essential requirements of the law by denying defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to comply with presuit requirements based on determination that claims at issue were not governed by chapter 766 because they were for sexual assault, not medical malpractice -- Claims against physician's supervisor, nurse, and nurse's employer constituted medical malpractice claims where alleged misconduct occurred in emergency department of a hospital during the course of what physician represented to be a legitimate and necessary medical examination, and complaint and corroborating affidavit related to claims against physician detail all the ways in which physician allegedly deviated from the applicable standard of care in conducting the examination -- Court rejects argument that, even if physician's alleged misconduct constitutes medical malpractice, that would not convert claims alleging derivative or vicarious liability against supervisor, nurse, and nurse's employer into malpractice claims -- A claim alleging derivative or vicarious liability based on the improper performance of a medical examination by a physician is still a claim arising out of the rendering of medical care or services -- Furthermore, review of the allegations against defendants reflects that each of those claims hinges on a deviation by physician from the applicable standard of care in his treatment of plaintiff -- Notice of intent served on physician was insufficient as to supervisor because corroborating affidavit did not meet same specialty requirement
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Criminal Law Headnotes (Jump to Civil Law Headnotes)

THESE ARE NOT ALL OF THE CASES RELEASED BY THE COURTS FOR THE WEEK.
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No Criminal Law headnotes selected this week.