Litigation Costs in Southern Florida: Why You Need An Attorney
Channel: Roy Oppenheim
Date: 2024-03-13

In addressing the question of litigation costs in Broward County and Florida, Roy Oppenheim emphasizes the variability based on factors like contract type and business disputes, highlighting the significance of prevailing attorney fee provisions in contracts, the potential for disputes over legal fees, and strategic considerations in early litigation stages, while offering insight into tactics such as settlement offers for fee shifting.

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Full Transcript:

Hi, I'm Roy Oppenheim, "From The Trenches." This is a broad question that we sometimes get and that is, what are the costs of pursuing litigation in Broward County and in Florida? And the answer is, it all depends of course. And first of all, it depends if it's a contract matter, it depends if it's a business dispute.

And sometimes if it is a contract matter, the good news is that the contract may have a prevailing attorney fee provision, meaning that you're the one bringing the action and you prevail, substantially prevail, not only will your attorney fees be paid, but that you won't have to pay the other guy's attorney fees. But on the flip side, if there is a contract and you're not the prevailing party, you could end up paying your attorney fees and the other guy's attorney's fees. And so a lot of times, medium-sized to small litigation matters in the area of business end up being disputes over legal fees. They may not start that way, but at the end of the day, that's what they end up with because the fees, the combined fees can sometimes be more than the matter which is in controversy or what you're litigating over. So you have to be very careful early on to be strategic in terms of how you're going to litigate.


There are also some tricks in the trade that will allow you to shift legal fees to the other side if in fact you make an offer of settlement early on in the case to the other side. But these are things that you would need to speak to an attorney about so they could explain to you the risks of doing that also. Anyway, we're always here.