Title: Levy v. Levy
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: SC20-1195
State: Florida
Issuer: Florida Supreme Court
Date: October 7, 2021

Supreme Court of Florida 
 
____________ 
 
No. SC20-1195 
____________ 
 
SAMUEL SALOMON LEVY, 
Petitioner,  
 
vs. 
 
EINATH BACH LEVY, 
Respondent. 
 
October 7, 2021 
 
GROSSHANS, J. 
 
 
We have for review Levy v. Levy, 307 So. 3d 71 (Fla. 3d DCA 
2020), which held that section 57.105(7) of the Florida Statutes 
applied to the attorney’s fee provision in the parties’ property 
settlement agreement.  Id. at 73-74.  That holding expressly and 
directly conflicts with Sacket v. Sacket, 115 So. 3d 1069 (Fla. 4th 
DCA 2013)—a decision holding that section 57.105(7) did not apply 
to a comparable attorney’s fee provision.  Id. at 1070, 1072.  We 
have jurisdiction.  See art. V, § 3(b)(3), Fla. Const.  For the reasons 
explained below, we quash Levy and approve the result in Sacket. 
 
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Background 
 
In 2011, a court entered a judgment dissolving the marriage of 
Samuel Levy (former husband) and Einath Levy (former wife).  Levy, 
307 So. 3d at 73.  That judgment incorporated two agreements 
between the parties—a Consent Custody and Visitation Agreement 
and a Property Settlement and Support Agreement (PSA).  Id.  Each 
agreement included an attorney’s fee provision.  Id.  On the subject 
of attorney’s fees, the PSA provides: 
13. ENFORCEMENT.  In the event that either party 
should take legal action against the other by reason of 
the other’s failure to abide by this Agreement, the party 
who is found to be in violation of this Agreement shall 
pay to the other party who prevails in said action, the 
prevailing party’s reasonable expenses incurred in the 
enforcement of this Agreement, said expenses to include, 
but not be limited to, reasonable attorney’s fees . . . . 
 
Id. 
Eventually, the former husband filed a motion to compel the 
former wife to comply with the PSA.  Id.  In that motion, the former 
husband requested attorney’s fees based on the fee provision in the 
PSA.  Id.  In turn, the former wife requested attorney’s fees for 
defending against the motion.  Id.  She relied on the same attorney’s 
fee provision of the PSA as well as section 57.105(7)—a statute 
 
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which converts, by operation of law, unilateral fee provisions into 
reciprocal provisions. 
The trial court referred the motion to compel to a general 
magistrate.  Id.  After holding a lengthy evidentiary hearing, the 
magistrate issued a report and recommendation.  Id.  In that report, 
the magistrate made findings adverse to the former husband’s 
claims; and, as a consequence, it recommended that the trial court 
deny the motion to compel in its entirety—including the former 
husband’s request for attorney’s fees.  Id. 
Having ruled against the former husband, the magistrate next 
considered the former wife’s request for attorney’s fees.  Id.  Though 
acknowledging that the former wife prevailed in defending against 
the motion, the magistrate denied her request for fees under the 
PSA.  The magistrate reasoned: “This type of relief is not 
encompassed in Paragraph 13 of the parties’ PSA as entitlement to 
attorney’s fees and costs is only contemplated against ‘the party 
who is found to be in violation of th[e] Agreement.’ ”  Id.1 
 
1.  The general magistrate reserved ruling on whether the 
former wife was entitled to attorney’s fees under a statute applicable 
to family law matters.  See § 61.16, Fla. Stat. (2017). 
 
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Each party filed exceptions to the general magistrate’s report 
and recommendation.  Id.  Overruling the parties’ exceptions, the 
trial court approved the report and recommendation.  In so doing, 
the trial court effectively denied the former wife’s request for 
prevailing-party attorney’s fees pursuant to section 57.105(7). 
Both parties appealed, challenging various aspects of the trial 
court’s rulings.  Levy, 307 So. 3d at 73-74.  The Third District 
affirmed on all issues except as to the rejection of the former wife’s 
request for attorney’s fees under section 57.105(7).  The district 
court reasoned: 
Section 57.105(7) amends by statute all contracts 
with prevailing party fee provisions to make them 
reciprocal.  Thus, it also applies to those parties, like the 
former wife in this case, who successfully defend against 
a breach of contract action.  The statute applies if the 
contract contains a prevailing party provision, and the 
litigant seeking fees is a party to the contract, Azalea 
Trace, Inc. v. Matos, 249 So. 3d 699, 702 (Fla. 1st DCA 
2018), which is exactly the set of facts before the Court in 
this case.  Thus, we would not be rewriting the parties’ 
contract if the former wife is awarded prevailing party 
attorneys’ fees because section 57.105(7) amends the 
prevailing party attorneys’ fee provision by operation of 
law.  The award is mandatory, once the lower court 
determines a party has prevailed.  Landry v. Countrywide 
Home Loans, Inc., 731 So. 2d 137 (Fla. 1st DCA 1999) 
(discussing section 57.105(2), which later became section 
57.105(7)).  Furthermore, the trial courts do not have 
discretion to decline to award prevailing party fees in a 
 
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case such as this.  Lashkajani v. Lashkajani, 911 So. 2d 
1154, 1158 (Fla. 2005) (“Trial courts do not have the 
discretion to decline to enforce such provisions, even if 
the challenging party brings a meritorious claim in good 
faith.  Such provisions exist to ‘protect and indemnify’ 
the interests of the parties, not to enrich the party.”) 
(internal citations omitted). 
Accordingly, section 57.105(7) requires that the 
former wife be awarded attorney’s fees for successfully 
defending against the former husband’s motion to 
compel.  Therefore, concluding that the trial court erred 
in declining to award the former wife’s motion for 
attorney’s fees pursuant to the prevailing party fee 
provision as modified by section 57.105(7), we reverse the 
order on appeal and remand to the trial court with 
directions to determine the reasonable attorneys’ fees 
and costs to be awarded to the former wife. 
 
Id. at 74. 
 
The former husband sought discretionary review in this Court, 
asserting conflict between Levy and Sacket regarding the 
applicability of section 57.105(7) to this type of fee provision.  We 
granted review and hold that section 57.105(7) does not apply to the 
attorney’s fee provision in this case. 
Analysis 
 
The issue for our consideration involves statutory 
interpretation and is thus subject to de novo review.  See Ham v. 
Portfolio Recovery Assocs., LLC, 308 So. 3d 942, 946 (Fla. 2020) 
(citing Lopez v. Hall, 233 So. 3d 451, 453 (Fla. 2018)). 
 
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In determining the meaning of a statute, we adhere to the 
supremacy-of-the-text principle—a principle recognizing that “[t]he 
words of a governing text are of paramount concern, and what they 
convey, in their context, is what the text means.”  Page v. Deutsche 
Bank Tr. Co. Americas, 308 So. 3d 953, 958 (Fla. 2020) 
(quoting Advisory Op. to Governor re Implementation of Amendment 
4, the Voting Restoration Amendment, 288 So. 3d 1070, 1078 (Fla. 
2020)).  Consequently, we “strive to determine the text’s objective 
meaning through ‘the application of [the] text to given facts on the 
basis of how a reasonable reader, fully competent in the language, 
would have understood the text at the time it was issued.’ ”  Id. 
(alteration in original) (quoting Antonin Scalia & Bryan A. Garner, 
Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 33 (2012)). 
 
The statute at issue in this case is section 57.105(7), which 
states: “If a contract contains a provision allowing attorney’s fees to 
a party when he or she is required to take any action to enforce the 
contract, the court may also allow reasonable attorney’s fees to the 
other party when that party prevails in any action, whether as 
plaintiff or defendant, with respect to the contract.”  (Emphasis 
added.)  By its terms, the statute only applies to a provision that 
 
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confers on a party the right to attorney’s fees while not affording a 
comparable right to the other party.  Indeed, though addressing a 
different issue, we have recently characterized the type of provision 
to which the statute applies as a “unilateral” attorney’s fee 
provision.  Ham, 308 So. 3d at 948-49.  Where a unilateral 
provision is involved, the statute transforms the one-sided provision 
into a reciprocal provision.  In this way, the statute fulfills its 
purpose, which, we have explained, is “to help level the playing field 
when a contract contains a unilateral attorney’s fee provision.”  Id. 
at 949. 
 
The attorney’s fee provision in this case, however, is not 
unilateral.  The provision does not confer the right to fees on one 
identifiable contracting party to the exclusion of the other party.  
Rather, it entitles “either party” to an award of attorney’s fees upon 
demonstrating that the other party violated the PSA.  Thus, the 
provision grants both parties precisely the same contractual right to 
attorney’s fees.  Put differently, neither party has a greater right to 
attorney’s fees than the other; nor is one party favored over the 
other.  To find that section 57.105(7) applies here would be to 
confer a right on the former wife that neither party had under the 
 
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contract, namely the right to fees absent proof of a violation of the 
PSA.  Section 57.105(7) simply does not go that far: it levels the 
playing field, but does not expand it.  See Fla Hurricane Prot. & 
Awning, Inc. v. Pastina, 43 So. 3d 893, 895 (Fla. 4th DCA 2010). 
 
Inconsistent with this analysis, the Third District held that 
section 57.105(7) applied here.  However, in reaching that holding, 
the court failed to consider the threshold issue of whether the 
attorney’s fee provision was unilateral.  That error led the court to 
improperly expand the scope of section 57.105(7) to apply to the fee 
provision in the PSA.2  In contrast, the Fourth District in Sacket 
properly analyzed the relevant fee provision to determine the 
applicability of the statute and reached the correct result on that 
issue. 
 
2.  In support of the Third District’s holding, the former wife 
cites Holiday Square Owners Ass’n v. Tsetsenis, 820 So. 2d 450 
(Fla. 5th DCA 2002), and CalAtlantic Group., Inc. v. Dau, 268 So. 3d 
265 (Fla. 5th DCA 2019).  Though the rationale in those cases is 
unclear, the results reached appear to conflict with our 
interpretation of section 57.105(7).  Thus, to the extent those cases 
are inconsistent with our holding today, we disapprove of them. 
 
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Conclusion 
Based on our analysis above, we hold that section 57.105(7) 
does not apply to the attorney’s fee provision in the PSA, and the 
Third District erred in holding to the contrary.  Accordingly, we 
quash Levy and approve the result reached in Sacket. 
It is so ordered. 
CANADY, C.J., and POLSTON, LABARGA, LAWSON, MUÑIZ, and 
COURIEL, JJ., concur. 
 
NOT FINAL UNTIL TIME EXPIRES TO FILE REHEARING MOTION 
AND, IF FILED, DETERMINED. 
 
Application for Review of the Decision of the District Court of Appeal 
Constitutional Construction/Direct Conflict of Decisions 
 
Third District – Case Nos. 3D19-73 and 3D19-318 
 
(Miami-Dade County) 
 
Evan L. Abramowitz and Jordan B. Abramowitz of Abramowitz and 
Associates, Coral Gables, Florida, 
 
for Petitioner 
 
Robert F. Kohlman of KohlmanLaw, LLLP, Miami, Florida, 
 
 
for Respondent