Background
This case arose from a first-party property insurance dispute. Silvia Perez (with assignment to Father & Son Carpet Cleaning & Restoration) claimed coverage under a policy issued by Citizens Property Insurance Corporation. The case proceeded through Miami-Dade County Court, which entered a final judgment awarding fees and costs to Citizens.
Father & Son appealed the judgment but narrowed its challenge to the amount of the fee award. Critically, it did not dispute that Citizens was entitled to recover fees at all—only the quantum.
The Court’s Holding
The Third District Court of Appeal affirmed the lower court’s judgment in full. The court held that Father & Son waived its challenge to the fee award by failing to comply with Florida’s procedural requirements for preserving issues on appeal.
Under longstanding Florida law, preservation of an error requires a timely and specific contemporaneous objection at trial. The objection must be sufficiently particular to alert the trial judge to the claimed error and allow intelligent appellate review. Here, Father & Son neither objected to the evidence at trial nor raised the issue in a motion for rehearing challenging the trial court’s factual findings. This failure to preserve the issue forfeited any right to appellate review absent fundamental error—which the appellant did not demonstrate.
Key Takeaways
- Litigants must object at trial to preserve challenges for appeal; raising an issue for the first time on appeal is generally too late.
- Boilerplate or generic objections are insufficient; the objection must be specific enough to put the trial judge on notice and allow correction.
- A motion for rehearing is the proper vehicle for challenging a trial court’s factual findings or failure to make required findings.
- The appellate court cannot conduct “intelligent review” without a record showing the trial judge had notice and opportunity to address the claimed error.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces a critical procedural rule for any litigant in property insurance disputes or similar cases. Even if you believe the fee award is excessive or unsupported, you must object at trial. Waiting until appeal means you forfeit the issue unless you can show fundamental error—a high bar. For practitioners, this underscores the importance of making specific, contemporaneous objections to evidence, findings, and proposed fee awards during trial rather than hoping to preserve the issue for later review.
The decision also reflects the appellate court’s concern with efficiency and the trial judge’s ability to correct errors before they ripen into appellate issues. By requiring contemporaneous objection, the system gives the lower court a chance to fix problems, prevents sandbagging, and ensures the appellate court receives a complete record to evaluate claims intelligently.