REAL ESTATE CORNER
REAL ESTATE CORNER
Florida Real Property and Business Litigation Report
MANUEL FARACH
Deltona Transformer Corp. v. NOCO Co., Case No. 24-13590( 11th Cir. 2026). Federal registration of a trademark clothes it with presumptive validity, and a mark is not rendered generic merely because a competitor ' s employees internally or externally refer to it as a generic term when the mark otherwise retains secondary meaning in the relevant market.
Dish Network L. L. C. v. Fraifer, Case No. 24- 10223( 11th Cir. 2026). A certificate of copyright registration issued within five years of a foreign work ' s first publication entitles the registrant to a statutory presumption of ownership, and a defendant ' s operation of encoders and content delivery networks to retransmit copyrighted broadcast content to United States subscribers without authorization constitutes direct copyright infringement.
Owoc v. Liquidating Trustee, Case No. 24- 14048( 11th Cir. 2026). A corporate debtor ' s Subchapter S election belongs to the shareholder rather than the corporation and therefore does not constitute property of the bankruptcy estate under 11 U. S. C. § 541.
Warner v. Hillsborough County Clerk of
Courts, Case No. 24-10748( 11th Cir. 2026). A statute authorizing forfeiture of unclaimed court registry funds through newspaper publication notice is not facially unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause, but its application to a specific claimant violates due process where there was no notice given which was reasonably calculated to reach that claimant, especially given the government ' s actual knowledge that its chosen means of notice had repeatedly failed.
In Re: Amendments to Florida Rules of Appellate Procedure 9.020 And 9.100, Case No. SC2025-2000( Fla. 2026). Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.020 is amended to define“ lower tribunal” to include any court, judge, agency, officer, official, board, commission, or body whose order, action, or inaction is the subject of a proceeding, and Rule 9.100 is amended requires service of an original-proceeding petition on the order’ s issuer but exempts that issuer from later service absent an election to receive it.
The Grandview Palace Condominium Association, Inc. v. Judge, Case No. 3D25- 0458.( Fla. 3d DCA 2026). A trial court properly directs a verdict for the defendant in a breach-of-contract action when the plaintiff ' s proof of causation would require the jury to stack an unproven initial inference upon further inferences rather than establishing the underlying fact to the exclusion of all other reasonable inferences.
Zorella v. Pathman Schermer Tandy, LLP, Case No. 3D25-1443( Fla. 3d DCA 2026). The lodestar method of Florida Patient ' s Compensation Fund v. Rowe does not govern the assessment of damages for breach of an agreement to pay attorney ' s fees where the disputed fee is to be paid by the client rather than by a non-client payor.
Gleason v. IFP Development, LLC, Case No. 5D2024-2974.( Fla. 5th DCA 2026). Where a settlement agreement expressly contemplates( but does not require consummation of) a contingency such as a possible purchase of real property and the settling party retains other consideration under the agreement ' s plain terms, the agreement is not rendered unenforceable for failure of consideration merely because the contemplated component of the bargain is not consummated.
Northwest Baptist Church of Cocoa, Inc. v. Trustee Corp. of the King Street Baptist Church, Inc., Case No. 5D2025-0272.( Fla. 5th DCA 2026).
A grantor church that conveys property by warranty deed containing a reverter clause naming other specific successor entities without any provision for reversion to the grantor retains no ownership, possessory, or reversionary interest in the property and therefore lacks standing to sue regarding that property.
Atout v. Rozanc, Case No. 6D2023-2302.( Fla. 6th DCA 2026). A property management agreement obligating a manager to " manage, operate and lease " property is breached when the manager instead sells the property without authorization, and a negligence claim against a contracting party or its employee is barred as impermissibly " dependent " on the contract— rather than an " independent " tort— where the source of the duty, the nature of the conduct, the nature of the damages, and public policy all indicate the claim merely recasts the contractual breach with corporate employees who perform the contract on the corporation ' s behalf sharing the same protection from such dependent tort claims as the corporation itself.
Haught v. Eagle Palms Homeowners Ass’ n,
Inc., Case No. 2D2025-1403( Fla. 2d DCA 2026). A homeowners’ association may both foreclose an assessment lien and pursue a money judgment for unpaid assessments against subsequent owners when Florida Statute section 720.3085( 1)( c) authorizes both remedies and the association’ s declaration does not prohibit doing so.
Stein v. Reynolds Ventures, Inc., Case No. 2D2025-2795( Fla. 2d DCA 2026). A lienor must strictly comply with Florida Statute section 713.21( 4) by timely foreclosing its mechanic’ s lien or showing legally sufficient cause why it did not do so, and failure to do either requires discharge of the lien.
PBCBA BAR BULLETIN 21