I enclose the following proposed legislative changes listed below. Please let me have any comments within the next week. Thanks.
SB Bill 2430/HB 1341 regarding Contingency Fee Contracts
SB Bill 2568 regarding Appellate Procedure/Summary Judgment
HB Bill 1219 regarding the Florida Arbitration Code
SB Bill 2076 regarding Florida Arbitration Code
The attached Bill has been proposed which would modify the law regarding the use of expert testimony in Florida state court. If you have comments or suggestions please send them to Peter Valori so that he may forward them to our lobbyist.
You can download the agenda for this week’s meeting as well as the minutes from the past two meetings on the Business Litigation Committee’s webpage.
Thank you to all who attended the Business Litigation Committee Meeting in Naples, Florida on September 1, 2007. The Business Litigation Committee will meet again during the Midyear Meeting of the Florida Bar on Thursday, January 17, 2008, at the downtown Hyatt in Miami in the Foster I/II room from 9am to noon.
We expect to have a presentation/question and answer session from and with Judges Streitfeld and Rosenberg from the new Complex Litigation Court in Broward County as well as a presentation from our student volunteers from the University of Florida regarding new business law decisions from 2007. We will also take up the Committee’s other business which includes CLE presentation review and planning, an update from the sub-committee on e-discovery, planning and publication of the Journal of Business Law, as well as other Committee business.
As always, attendance is free and CLE credit will be available for a portion of the meeting. I look forward to seeing you all there.
Peter Valori, Chair
The materials from the “Get Me Out of This Deal” CLE are available here:
There are few reported cases on the topic and many at the trial level now. The Miami Herald reported on Friday that Judge Gerber entered a significant order in one such case holding the individual financial ability to pay determined whether or not a budget change was material and adverse. Has anyone experienced a Judge applying a subjective versus objective analysis?
Judge Gerber also held that the new law signed by Governor Crist in January making condo budget changes based on increased windstorm insurance not material and adverse did not apply because the contracts were signed before the statute was enacted.
Peter
The next meeting of the Business Litigation Committee will be January 18 in Tuttle Center at the Hyatt Regency Miami as part of the Florida Bar Midyear Meeting. The materials you will need to bring with you to the meeting can be downloaded here
http://flabuslaw.org/index.php?//list.calendar=397/1
The CLE will be a Panel Discussion on Business Courts by the
Honorable Gill Freeman, Miami-Dade’s Business
Court Judge effective January 2006, and Rick
Gross of Akerman Senterfeit, President of the
Dade County Bar Association and Chair-Elect
of the Business Law Section, and Michael
Higer of Higher Lichter, both advocates of
the new business court. Moderator Peter Valori
The Florida Bar has derailed a Republican-sponsored bill that would have placed paralegals under the oversight of the state Department of Business and Professional Regulation. State Rep. Juan Zapata, R-Miami, has withdrawn his proposed Paralegal Professional Act, which paralegal groups favored but the Bar strongly opposed. Instead, Zapata has signed on to a Bar proposal to create a voluntary regulatory system controlled by the Bar.
The Bar model would establish two tiers of paralegals, one that would be subject to criteria for training, experience, and credentialing, and one that would not. Law firms could continue to use both types to handle paralegal work and could bill clients hourly for either type of paralegal.
The Bar long has opposed any moves to have the executive branch, rather than the Florida Supreme Court, oversee the legal profession. The Bar proposal was crafted by the Bar’s Special Committee to Study Paralegal Regulation, and approved by the panel last month. The Bar Board of Governors will consider the regulatory proposal at its meeting in Miami on Friday [April 7]. If the board approves it, the proposal will go to the Florida Supreme Court for final approval.
Bill Wiley has notified our committee of several pieces of legislation that may be of interest. I’ve posted those bills to the committee website. Please submit your comments so that we can determine if our committee needs to officially weigh in. Thanks.