Case Name: Art SILVESTRONE, Appellant, v. Marc Z. EDELL, Budd, Lardner, et al., Appellees
Court: Florida District Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1997-09-12
Citations: 701 So. 2d 90
Docket Number: No. 96-2236
Parties: Art SILVESTRONE, Appellant, v. Marc Z. EDELL, Budd, Lardner, et al., Appellees.
Judges: GRIFFIN, C.J., concurs.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 701
Pages: 90–94

Head Matter:
Art SILVESTRONE, Appellant, v. Marc Z. EDELL, Budd, Lardner, et al., Appellees.
No. 96-2236.
District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fifth District.
Sept. 12, 1997.
Rehearing Denied Nov. 5, 1997.
William Summers and Edwin Vargas of Summers, Anthony & Vargas, Cleveland, OH, and Victor L. Chapman and R. Steven Ruta of Barrett, Chapman & Ruta, P.A., Orlando, for Appellant.
Darryl M. Bloodworth and Nichole M. Mooney, of Dean, Mead, Egerton, Blood-worth, Caponano, & Bozarth, P.A., Orlando, for Appellees.

Opinion:
HARRIS, Judge.
The issue in this ease is whether the cause of action for legal malpractice begins to run from the date the client obtains knowledge of his cause of action for legal malpractice (the jury verdict) or from a subsequently entered final judgment which does not and, based on the client's directions, cannot change the result of the jury verdict. Art Silvestrone urges that his attorney was negligent in his federal antitrust action by not calling an expert witness and by suggesting to the jury that the case "wasn't about money." There is no question that Mr. Silvestrone knew about the alleged malpractice when the jury returned an unsatisfactory verdict. In fact, Mr. Silvestrone immediately thereafter consulted a lawyer about bringing a malpractice action against his trial attorney. Further, after considering his trial attorney's recommendation, he instructed his attorney not to seek an additur, not to seek a new trial, and not to appeal. Because of various post-verdict motions by other parties and because Mr. Silvestrone's attorney was seeking an award of attorney's fees in his antitrust action, the final judgment was not entered until almost two years after the jury verdict. When Silvestrone finally got around to filing his malpractice action, the defendant moved for, and the court granted, summary judgment on the basis of the two year statute of limitations. Silvestrone appeals; we affirm.
Silvestrone 'urges that "until the final judgment is entered, the Appellant did not possess a matured cause of action which commenced the running of the statute of limitations." But Silvestrone is not suing on the final judgment; he is suing on specific acts of alleged malpractice which, to his knowledge, occurred long before the entry of the final judgment. Edwards v. Ford, 279 So.2d 851 (Fla.1978), relied on by Silves-trone, merely holds that the cause of action begins to run from the date the injured party has knowledge that he has a cause of action and not from the date of the negligent act. And his reliance on Willoughby v. Dowda and Fields, 643 So.2d 1098 (Fla. 5th DGA 1994), is misplaced. Although the Willough-by court acknowledged that "[ojther circumstances may start the statute running earlier," generally the statute of limitations does not begin to run until the underlying action has been lost on appeal. But Silvestrone's problem is that he elected not to appeal and so instructed his lawyer. Even though Sil-vestrone could have changed his mind and elected to appeal up until thirty days after the final judgment was finally entered, that does not toll the running of the statute. The fact is that he did not change his mind and no appeal was ever filed. The only reason for delaying the action until after the appeal is that the offending judgment might be reversed on appeal and the client would, therefore, suffer no damages. But Silvestrone assured his continuing injury in this case by directing his attorney not to seek an additur, not to request a new trial, and not to appeal.
In Employers' Fire Ins. Co. v. Continental Ins. Co., 326 So.2d 177, 181 (Fla.1976), the supreme court held:
To allow that time period to be expanded by the interval between a final adjudication of liability containing all the information necessary to establish the enforceable right, and the court's execution of a formal piece of paper called final judgment, would be to extend the statutes unnecessarily by nonuniform lengths of time.
We believe that when the jury returned its verdict and when Silvestrone directed his attorney not to seek additur, not to seek a new trial, and not to appeal, he had all the information necessary to establish his cause of action, if indeed he had one, against his attorney and the statute of limitations started running at that time.
Silvestrone's alternative argument, and one with some appeal, is that his cause of action should be tolled under the continuing representation doctrine. That is, it would have been prejudicial to him to sue his attorney while his attorney was seeking an award of attorney's fees in the same action that produced the malpractice. The problem with this argument is that it was not presented below. We will not consider it on appeal for the first time.
AFFIRMED.
GRIFFIN, C.J., concurs.
W. SHARP, J., dissents with opinion.