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, even if you cannot get back your attorneys’ fees, 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 are two scenarios, generally, that let you try to get back your attorneys’ fees.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.
When we meet, we can explore whether either one of these scenarios is involved in your matter.
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.
There is more than one answer. In litigation, there are rules that control when the big events in a lawsuit take place in relation to each other. They do not, however, lay out a straight timeline of a case from start to finish. So, there is no accurate way to tell you that your case will be done 180 or 296 or 1,000 days from when it started. How long a case last depends on the timeline set by the court presiding over your matter and whether it makes sense at some point in the litigation process to settle the lawsuit. Settlement is controlled by you. You decide what to offer and whether any offer made to you is acceptable. In that sense, you can control when a lawsuit will end.