Special's Trading v. Intern. Consumer’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

5 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 5 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In 1990, the Legislature rewrote section 768.79(1), Florida Statutes, to state: (1) In any civil action for damages filed in the courts of this state, if a defendant files an offer of judgment which is not accepted by the plaintiff within 30 days, the defendant shall be entitled to recover reasonable costs and attorney's fees incurred by him or on his behalf pursuant to a policy of liability insurance or other contract from the date of filing of the offer if the judgment is one of no liability or the judgment obtained by the plaintiff is at least 25 percent less than such offer, and the court shall set off such costs and attorney's fees against the award. Laws 1990, c. 90-119, § 48 (eff. Oct. 1, 1990). The legislature also added the following subsection: (6) Upon motion made by the offeror within 30 days after the entry of judgment or after voluntary or involuntary dismissal, the court shall determine the following: (a) If a defendant serves an offer which is not accepted by the plaintiff, and if the judgment obtained by the plaintiff is at least 25 percent less than the amount of the offer, the defendant shall be awarded reasonable costs, including investigative expenses, and attorney's fees, calculated in accordance with the guidelines promulgated by the Supreme Court, incurred from the date the offer was served, and the court shall set off such costs [and] attorney's fees against the award. The statute made clear that for purposes of the determination under paragraph (a): ”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 700 So. 2d 640 - MX INVESTMENTS INC. v. Crawford

2. “Under the remainder of the statutory text, entitlement is tied to the amount of the judgment obtained. To deny attorney’s fees, however, to the offeror when the offeree voluntarily dismisses his claim, when no judgment has been entered, would make the adoption of the highlighted text [“after voluntary or involuntary dismissal”] futile. We are not authorized to construe statutes in a way that makes their text meaningless. We reject the notion that the absence of a judgment when there has been a voluntary dismissal precludes any entitlement to fees under this section.”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. 697 So. 2d 1276 - Perkins v. Wilson