Case ID: so2d_592/html/0781-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM. FARMER, Judge,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Ruth DEAN, Appellant, v. Roger DEAN, Appellee.
    No. 91-1334.
    District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.
    Jan. 29, 1992.
    Rehearing Denied Feb. 20, 1992.
    
      Joel M. Weissman, Joel M. Weissman, P.A., West Palm Beach, for appellant.
    Joseph D. Farish, Jr., Farish, Farish & Romani, West Palm Beach, for appellee.
   PER CURIAM.

We affirm the trial judge’s award of temporary alimony and other relief. However, we do not rule on the wife’s assertion that the trial court erred in failing to enforce the husband’s stipulation to reimburse her for approximately $90,000 of expenses. The wife provided the court with a list of these expenses at the beginning of the hearing below. Included as a line item was $20,000 of spending money for the period January 1991 to June 1991, four months of which ended up being covered by the temporary alimony order. At the hearing, the husband expressly disputed his wife’s entitlement to this $20,000. During cross examination, the wife admitted that she did not know if she had already spent the $20,000. In fact, it appears from her description that this $20,000 was really an advance. Near the end of the hearing when the wife’s attorney was requesting an award of the reimbursable expenses, the transcript reflects the husband’s comment “I’ll take care of them.” Given the above, it is unclear whether the husband was agreeing to pay the full $90,000, especially when it is apparent that at least some of it was “future spending money” which would now be covered by the temporary support award. The trial court cut off further discussion and simply deferred ruling on any reimbursement. Therefore, without a ruling no appealable issue is raised. This of course is without prejudice to the wife’s right to request further proceedings on this issue in the trial court.

STONE and WARNER, JJ., concur.

FARMER, J., concurs in part, dissents in part with opinion.

FARMER, Judge,

concurring and dissenting.

When is an oral, substantive stipulation announced clearly and unambiguously in open court and on the record not enforceable? The answer, apparently, is only when enforcement is sought within the Fourth District, for that seems to be the import of today’s decision.

The court says that “it is unclear whether the husband was agreeing to pay the full $90,000 * * I have no doubts that the Husband knew exactly what he agreed to pay. Nor is there any ambiguity in what he said he would pay. We should not assume that when he said “I’ll pay them”, he meant something less than all the items listed on Wife’s list of expenses. On the contrary, we should assume that if he meant something less than the whole, he would have said so with additional limiting language.

I fear that the court is suggesting as a general principle of universal application that stipulations made during a contested hearing are not later enforceable where the stipulating party had previously taken a position contrary to the stipulation. If so, few concessions on discrete issues during a trial or contested hearing would stand, and we should thereby needlessly require litigants to continue to fight issues that they wish to concede.

As a practical matter, when the adverse party concedes an issue under these circumstances, the other side typically stops arguing on the conceded subject at that point and turns immediately to another. By not enforcing the concession against the conceding party, we are depriving his adversary of that occasion to finish their case on that issue and thereby causing duplica-tive proceedings. That policy seems to me to be very unpalatable jurisprudentially.

We should not be placing barriers to stipulations, we should be encouraging them. We should not labor to find reasons not to enforce them, we should rather seek grounds to affirm them. We should not ignore spontaneous concessions vocalized by the party instead of his lawyer. It is his money, not the lawyer’s; he should make the “business decision” to pay or fight.

When the trial court cut off further discussion on this issue, it was understandable. The husband had just agreed to pay it! The court’s failure to include a provision in the temporary relief order is thus simply indefensible. We should not send this case back so that Wife can request “further proceedings” on the issue. There is only one reason to send this issue back to the trial court and that is the entry of an order enforcing Husband’s concession to pay the expenses he so obviously agreed to Pay.

In all other respects, I agree with the court’s decision. 
      
      . Thus we disagree with the dissent that there was a clear and unambiguous substantive stipulation entered in open court.
     
      
      . To search for an ambiguity in the husband’s words is to torture provocation out of harmony, confrontation from repose, contention from agreement. Then to find it is to justify the effort. Such an enterprise comes uncomfortably close to judicial advocacy. That is not the business of this court.