There are two scenarios that let you try to get back your attorneys’ fees in a lawsuit. The first, if the parties are litigating over a written contract that includes a term clearly providing for the recovery of attorneys’ fees by the prevailing party. The second, if the lawsuit involves a statute that includes a subsection stating that a party has a right to the recovery of its attorneys’ fees. In all other situations, the parties generally assume their owns costs of litigation. There are some events in litigation, though, that do allow for the parties to try and shift the burden to pay for attorneys’ fees on to the other side and we can discuss those once we move ahead.

In Florida, the party that wins is entitled to recover certain costs from the other side. Generally speaking, these include the fee paid to the court to file the lawsuit, the fee paid to the process server, any deposition transcripts you used at trial, documents and exhibits, certain expert witness fees, court reporter fees, and even the cost to produce certain information in electronic format can be recovered. The exact costs and amounts do vary on a case by case basis, but as a general matter, many of your hard expenses can be recovered and are not a source of further loss.

You can, but you might well be defrauding a creditor. Often, business owners rely on the existence of their corporate form as a shield from personal liability. So, it’s a natural logical next step to ask, “If company A gets a judgment and it’s an entity separate from me, can’t we open another company to start up where we left off?”

But a business entity, whether it’s a corporation or a limited liability company or anything else recognized by law, has an existence and is liable to its creditors. It cannot give away its assets or rights if there is a judgment, or even a threatened judgment.

We will be glad to give you a detailed explanation of this but there is a lot of codified law that is meant to prevent this and recover those assets for the benefit of a company’s creditors.

If you are a business entity, like a corporation or a limited liability company, no. The law in Florida has long since required that lawyers appear for and represent business entities.

If your dispute involves your participation as an individual, or group of people, you have the option to represent yourself. If you do, you will still be responsible for participating in the litigation in accordance with the applicable rules of civil procedure, the Florida Evidence Code, the terms of the uniform trial order, and the order of referral to mediation. If that sounds daunting or like you may not get all of your obligations right, you should be ready to hire an attorney.

There it is, “the” question. We’ll get an answer for you when we meet and we’ll even get into the specifics as to how we arrive at that amount. But the reason we can’t tell you now is – we don’t know.Many lawsuits have similarities and a lot of procedures repeat themselves in cases. So, we can predict some things and what they cost. But, if every lawsuit were the same, you would not have a dispute. The problem would have been addressed once and for all a long time ago and you would know what was going to happen to you when it happened. But every dispute is different. Your circumstances are unique to you and, so are your objectives. What you want or need as the end result from a legal matter is as unique as you are. So, we want to hear from you. We want to know where you are today, where you want to be when this is over and then work with you to set up a plan to get you there.