Background
Wolfgang and Nadja Mackensen hired Trace Elements, Inc., a professional design company, to oversee renovations of their Vero Beach vacation rental property. After Trace Elements prematurely terminated its performance, the Mackensens sued for breach of contract and unjust enrichment. Trace Elements countersued for breach of contract and tortious interference with a business relationship.
Before trial, the Mackensens jointly served a proposal for settlement on Trace Elements offering to accept a lump sum of $10,000 to resolve all claims and counterclaims. The proposal did not allocate any specific amount between Wolfgang and Nadja individually. Trace Elements rejected the offer. A jury ultimately awarded the Mackensens $41,273.70 on their breach of contract claim, while Trace Elements recovered nothing on its claims.
The Mackensens then moved for attorney’s fees and costs under Florida’s offer-of-judgment statute, section 768.79, having obtained a verdict more than 25% greater than their settlement offer. The trial court denied the motion, finding the proposal invalid for failing to apportion the settlement amount between the two plaintiffs as required by Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.442(c)(3). The Fourth District Court of Appeal reversed, holding the apportionment rule did not apply to a “joint proposal regarding a unified, single claim.” That decision conflicted with the Second District’s decision in Cobb v. Durando, 111 So. 3d 277 (Fla. 2d DCA 2013), which had invalidated an unapportioned joint proposal under materially similar circumstances. The Florida Supreme Court accepted jurisdiction to resolve the conflict.
The Court’s Holding
The Florida Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision authored by Justice Muñiz, quashed the Fourth District’s decision and approved the Second District’s approach in Cobb. The Court held that Rule 1.442(c)(3)’s apportionment requirement — that “[a] joint proposal must state the amount and terms attributable to each party” — applies to all joint proposals, including those involving a unified, single claim. Because the Mackensens’ proposal was made by two plaintiffs and did not allocate the $10,000 between Wolfgang and Nadja individually, it was invalid and could not support an attorney’s fees award under section 768.79.
The majority emphasized that its precedents have consistently mandated strict enforcement of the apportionment rule without regard to the parties’ relationships, theories of liability, or the number and nature of the underlying claims. Citing Willis Shaw Express, Inc. v. Hilyer Sod, Inc., 849 So. 2d 276 (Fla. 2003), Lamb v. Matetzschk, 906 So. 2d 1037 (Fla. 2005), and Pratt v. Weiss, 161 So. 3d 1268 (Fla. 2015), the Court reiterated that even where no logical apportionment can be made, apportionment is still required whenever more than one offeror or offeree is involved. The Court rejected the Mackensens’ argument that the Fourth District’s “unified single claim” exception was warranted as a matter of common sense or that strict compliance elevates form over substance.
The majority also declined the Mackensens’ invitation to excuse noncompliance on the ground that section 768.79 is a penalty statute that should be construed to further settlement. The Court acknowledged the practical tension but concluded that the benefits of predictable, consistent rule enforcement outweigh gains from ad hoc exceptions. It suggested that if Rule 1.442(c)(3) produces unfair results in cases like this one, the remedy is to amend the rule — as the Court previously did following Lamb — not to contort existing text through case-by-case exceptions.
Key Takeaways
- Florida Rule 1.442(c)(3)’s apportionment requirement applies to all joint proposals for settlement, including those made by co-plaintiffs asserting a single, unified claim for undifferentiated damages — no “unified claim” exception exists.
- A joint proposal by multiple parties that offers only a lump sum without allocating specific amounts to each party is invalid and will not support an attorney’s fees award under section 768.79, regardless of whether the failure to apportion creates any practical ambiguity for the offeree.
- Strict compliance — not mere absence of ambiguity — is the governing standard under Rule 1.442(c)(3); courts will not excuse noncompliance based on the underlying purposes of section 768.79 or the impracticality of apportioning a particular claim.
- The dissent (Sasso, J., joined by Francis and Tanenbaum, JJ.) argued that prior precedents arose on materially different facts and that extending them here ignores the statute’s purpose and the impossibility of meaningful apportionment where spouses hold a claim as tenants by the entireties.
Why It Matters
This decision resolves a direct conflict between Florida’s district courts and reaffirms that joint proposals for settlement carry strict formal requirements with no judicial safety valve for unusual circumstances. Florida practitioners representing co-plaintiffs — including married couples asserting common property claims — must now apportion every joint settlement offer between the individual parties, even when the underlying claim and damages are legally indistinguishable. Failure to do so will forfeit the right to attorney’s fees under section 768.79 no matter how favorable the trial outcome.
The ruling also highlights an ongoing tension in Florida civil procedure between rule-based certainty and purpose-driven flexibility. The 4-3 split, the dissent’s pointed criticism of the “strict compliance” doctrine as resting on faulty statutory analysis, and the majority’s own acknowledgment that the rule may warrant amendment all signal that Rule 1.442(c)(3) could be revisited by the Court’s Rules of Civil Procedure Committee in the near term. Until any amendment occurs, joint offerors should treat the apportionment requirement as absolute.