The issue was whether our client was entitled to an award of attorney\u2019s fees, under the settlement agreement between the parties and as a prevailing party, after the opposing party failed to honor certain provisions in their settlement agreement.<\/p>\n
After years of litigating a probate matter, our client and the opposing party entered into a settlement agreement. A provision in the settlement agreement stated that the opposing party would provide, within 45 days, possession and access to medical records that were necessary for the treatment and diagnosis of our client\u2019s medical conditions, or pay for the reasonable cost incurred from compelling performance. When the opposing party failed to provide possession and access to the records, our client filed a motion to compel compliance and requested an award of reasonable attorney\u2019s fees. The trial court granted our client\u2019s motion, but held that the breach of the settlement was not material and denied our client\u2019s request for attorney\u2019s fees. The opposing party appealed the trial court\u2019s order arguing for an award of attorney\u2019s fees because our client failed to prove that the breach was material. Our client cross-appealed arguing for attorney\u2019s fees as the true prevailing party.<\/p>\n
The Fourth District Court of Appeal performed a de novo review of the matter and held that the trial court did not err in denying the opposing party\u2019s request for attorney\u2019s fees, but the trial court did err in failing to award our client the reasonable attorney\u2019s fees requested and also erred in determining that the opposing party\u2019s breach, as a whole, was not material. Thus, the Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed the denial of attorney\u2019s fees to the opposing party, but reversed and remanded the denial of attorney\u2019s fees to our client with directions to award our client reasonable attorney\u2019s fees under the settlement agreement and as a prevailing party.<\/p>\n
Editor\u2019s Note: <\/strong>At the time of writing this blog entry, a mandate from the court had not been issued. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The issue was whether our client was entitled to an award of attorney\u2019s fees, under the settlement agreement between the parties and as a prevailing party, after the opposing party failed to honor certain provisions in their settlement agreement. After years of litigating a probate matter, our client and the opposing party entered into a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1811,1812,1807,1813],"tags":[1858,1851,1855,1900,1901,1882,1902,1903,1904],"class_list":["post-2238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4th-dca-rulings","category-attorneys-fees","category-bresky-appellate-cases","category-probate","tag-appeal","tag-appeals","tag-appellate-court","tag-cross-appeal","tag-de-novo","tag-fourth-district-court-of-appeals","tag-litigating","tag-probate","tag-settlement-agreement"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}