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JUNE 28, 2024
I know and have interacted with a lot of small businessmen and women over the years, and it has been a good thing to see that Florida has been removed from the national judicial hellholes list. Florida became a judicial hellhole by having too many legal loopholes with guarantees for legal fees. This created a wide open market for frivolous lawsuits.
For a small business, a lawsuit is one of the most disruptive things it can ever face, and often, the tactics used by plaintiff attorneys to frighten and bully a defendant into settling can be way more destructive than the lawsuit itself.
The legislature and governor did some fantastic things to solve Florida’s litigation issues by closing the loopholes and creating a better environment for small businesses.
However, in my opinion, there’s one more step that we need to take. We need to get rid of third-party financing of lawsuits. Large-scale investment firms are actually lending money to attorneys and plaintiffs to file lawsuits on the bet that they can reap big profits from settlements and verdicts. We need to require these arrangements to be disclosed or make them illegal altogether. Let’s stay off the hellholes list permanently and protect our small businesses from being bullied.
Frank De Varona
Miami, FL