Valente v. Raissi

• Decision Date: 15 July 2022
• Docket Number: 2D21-1019
• Citation: 343 So.3d 640
• Parties: Gail VALENTE, Appellant, v. Joseph RAISSI, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

343 So.3d 640

Gail VALENTE, Appellant,
v.
Joseph RAISSI, Appellee.

No. 2D21-1019

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Second District.

July 15, 2022

Thomas John Dandar of Dandar Law Group, P.A., Tampa, for Appellant.

Benjamin E. Hillard and Amy Cuykendall Jones of Castle Law Group, P.A., Largo, for Appellee.

LUCAS, Judge.

For a decade, Gail Valente and Joseph Raissi have been in litigation over a condominium investment in West Virginia. In a prior opinion stemming from this litigation, we laid out the pertinent facts. See Raissi v. Valente (Raissi I ), 247 So. 3d 629 (Fla. 2d DCA 2018).¹ We need not recount them again here because Ms. Valente's appeal only concerns the tail-end of this dispute: entitlement to attorney's fees following the bench trial on Mr. Raissi's negligence counterclaim. Unfortunately, although we would like to provide some measure of finality to these litigants, we are without jurisdiction to do so. We will briefly explain why.

Following remand from our decision in Raissi I , the presiding circuit judge, Judge Minkoff, convened a trial on Mr. Raissi's counterclaim. At the conclusion of the trial, Judge Minkoff ruled from the bench in favor of Ms. Valente. A final judgment was entered, and Mr. Raissi filed an appeal, which he later dismissed. Ms. Valente then sought recovery of her attorney's fees.

On March 17, 2020, following a hearing, Judge Minkoff entered an "Order Granting Entitlement to Attorney [sic] Fees and Costs and Order Setting Evidentiary Hearing on Attorney's Fees" (hereafter,

343 So.3d 642

the First Entitlement Order). The First Entitlement Order awarded costs to Ms. Valente² and concluded that she was entitled to recover her attorney's fees on three separate bases: (1) because Ms. Valente had prevailed "on all issues in this lawsuit, including the claim for accounting against Raissi"; (2) because Mr. Raissi had improperly denied multiple requests for admissions Ms. Valente had served under Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.380(c) during the litigation; and (3) because

Raissi and his counsel knew or should have known that the [c]ounterclaim when initially presented to the court, or at any time before trial, would not [be], and was not, supported by the material facts necessary to establish the claim, and would not [be], and was not, supported by the application of then-existing law to those material facts,

which, the court concluded, warranted an award of attorney's fees under section 57.105, Florida Statutes (2020). The First Entitlement Order did not award any...