SHELDON E. STUNKEL AND SALLY STUNKEL, APPELLANTS,
v.
HANLEY LANDSCAPE, INC., A FLORIDA CORPORATION, AND PEDRICK PLUMBING, INC., A FLORIDA CORPORATION, APPELLEES
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PER CURIAM.
Plaintiff rejected defendant’s offer of judgment under section 768.79, Florida Statutes (Supp.1992), and following a trial the court awarded plaintiff an amount which was little more than one-half the amount in the offer of judgment. The trial court denied attorney’s fees because it found that plaintiff had not unreasonably rejected the offer, and defendant appeals.
The trial court did not have the benefit of Schmidt v. Fortner, 629 So. 2d 1036 (Fla. 4th DCA 1993), in which this court concluded that an award of attorney’s fees is mandatory under section 768.79, where the requirements of the statute are met, unless the trial court determines the offer was not made in good faith. Since there was no finding that the offer was not made in good faith, we reverse on the authority of Schmidt and remand for the court to award attorney’s fees.
GLICKSTEIN, FARMER and KLEIN, JJ., concur.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
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Puleo v. Knealing, 654 So. 2d 148 (Fla. 4th DCA 1995)…award turns only on the difference between the amount of a rejected offer and the amount of a later judgment. It does not depend on whether the offer or the rejection was reasonable.” Id. (Emphasis added.) See also Stunkel v. Hanley Landscape, Inc., 633 So. 2d 117 (Fla. 4th DCA 1994). Section (7)(a) has a provision whereby fees and costs may be denied if the offer is not made in good faith. However, an offer not made in good faith (by the offeror) is not the same as an offer reasonably rejected (by the offere…
Authorities Cited
- Susanne Rae Schmidt v. Fortner, 629 So. 2d 1036 (Fla. 4th DCA 1993)