Filed: Sep. 02, 2016
Latest Update: Mar. 03, 2020
Summary: Case: 15-13012 Date Filed: 09/02/2016 Page: 1 of 10 [DO NOT PUBLISH] IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT _ No. 15-13012 _ D.C. Docket No. 1:07-cv-22988-RWG BUCKLEY TOWERS CONDOMINIUM, INC., Plaintiff-Appellee Cross-Appellant, versus ROSENBAUM MOLLENGARDEN PLLC, Interested Party-Appellant Cross-Appellee. _ Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida _ (September 2, 2016) Before WILLIAM PRYOR and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges, and STOR
Summary: Case: 15-13012 Date Filed: 09/02/2016 Page: 1 of 10 [DO NOT PUBLISH] IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT _ No. 15-13012 _ D.C. Docket No. 1:07-cv-22988-RWG BUCKLEY TOWERS CONDOMINIUM, INC., Plaintiff-Appellee Cross-Appellant, versus ROSENBAUM MOLLENGARDEN PLLC, Interested Party-Appellant Cross-Appellee. _ Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida _ (September 2, 2016) Before WILLIAM PRYOR and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges, and STORY..
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Case: 15-13012 Date Filed: 09/02/2016 Page: 1 of 10
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 15-13012
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 1:07-cv-22988-RWG
BUCKLEY TOWERS CONDOMINIUM, INC.,
Plaintiff-Appellee
Cross-Appellant,
versus
ROSENBAUM MOLLENGARDEN PLLC,
Interested Party-Appellant
Cross-Appellee.
________________________
Appeals from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
_______________________
(September 2, 2016)
Before WILLIAM PRYOR and JILL PRYOR, Circuit Judges, and STORY, *
District Judge.
STORY, District Judge:
* Honorable Richard W. Story, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia,
sitting by designation.
Case: 15-13012 Date Filed: 09/02/2016 Page: 2 of 10
This appeal involves a dispute over attorneys’ fees between a client and one
of the three law firms that represented it in the underlying insurance litigation.
This is the second appeal taken from that litigation that relates to attorneys’ fees.
The question here is whether the district court properly interpreted and applied the
mandate that this Court issued in the first appeal. The client and the law firm each
appeal separate orders that the district court issued in the wake of the mandate, and
both argue that they were in contravention of this Court’s instructions. We find
that the district court properly interpreted and applied this Court’s mandate in both
instances.
I. BACKGROUND
The underlying litigation began in 2007 when Appellee/Cross-Appellant
Buckley Towers Condominium, Inc. (“Buckley”) filed a complaint against its
insurer to recover on a claim for damage suffered during Hurricane Wilma. This
litigation lasted for several years, and during that time Buckley was represented by
three separate law firms: Becker & Poliakoff, P.A. (“B&P”), Katzman, Garfinkel
& Rosenbaum, LLP (“KGR”), and Appellant/Cross-Appellee Rosenbaum
Mollengarden PLLC (“RM”).1 After a trial and an unrelated appeal, Buckley
ultimately won a judgment against its insurer for $12,035,449.00.
1
RM began as Rosenbaum Mollengarden Janssen Siracusa, PLLC, but is now just Rosenbaum
Mollengarden PLLC.
2
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After the district court entered judgment in favor of Buckley, the magistrate
judge entered a report and recommendation (“R&R”) that recommended the
disbursement from the court’s registry of $4,633,646.86 of the judgment among
B&P, KGR, and RM as their fees. Specifically, the R&R recommended that RM
receive its contingency fee minus the quantum meruit amounts due to B&P and
KGR, which would have resulted in the following distribution:
RM: $3,057,686.86
KGR: $894,897.00
B&P: $681,063.00
B&P and KGR objected to their quantum meruit awards, but the district court
adopted the R&R in full. B&P and KGR appealed (“KGR Appeal”). While the
KGR Appeal was pending, B&P and RM entered into a settlement agreement that
resolved B&P’s portion of the KGR Appeal. Through that settlement, RM agreed
to pay B&P an additional $618,937.00 from its contingency fee in exchange for a
dismissal of B&P’s appeal. This brought B&P’s fee to a total of $1.3 million.
After this settlement, the magistrate judge held a hearing on several motions
relating to the disbursement of Buckley’s judgment. The result of this hearing was
the entry of an order (“Disbursement Order”) that called for the immediate
disbursement of attorneys’ fees to the three law firms from the funds in the court’s
registry. The Disbursement Order also called for $1,000,000 to remain in the
court’s registry as bond for the KGR appeal. This $1,000,000 consisted of
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$900,000 provided by RM and $100,000 provided by B&P. The Disbursement
Order specified that if the district court was reversed in the KGR Appeal, the
$1,000,000 would be allocated among B&P, RM, and KGR by direction of the
Eleventh Circuit’s mandate. Aside from the $1,000,000 bond, the Disbursement
Order called for the disbursement of the remaining registry funds as follows:
RM: $1,538,750.86
KGR: $894,897.00
B&P: $1,200,000.00
No party appealed the Disbursement Order.
On July 30, 2013, this Court issued its mandate in the KGR Appeal. See
Buckley Towers Condo., Inc. v. Katzman Garfinkel Rosenbaum, LLP, 519 F. App’x
657 (11th Cir. 2013) (opinion issued May 20, 2013); see also Buckley Towers
Condo., Inc. v. QBE Ins. Corp., No. 1:07-cv-22988-RWG (S.D. Fla. July 30, 2013)
(mandate entered at docket number 663). We reversed the district court and
remanded, finding that the district court failed to properly apply Florida case law
when determining how to distribute fees among the three law firms. Instead, we
directed the distribution of fees as follows: (1) to B&P, its contingency fee less the
amounts owed to the other two firms; (2) to KGR, its quantum meruit; and (3) to
RM, “20/855—or approximately 2.34%—of the fee award remaining after KGR
[was] compensated.” We also said that the district court had abused its discretion
when it previously calculated KGR’s quantum meruit award. After providing
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instructions on how to properly calculate that award, we noted that “there is only
one issue to be decided on remand—KGR’s proper quantum meruit award.” Then,
in footnote 12, we provided an illustration of how the district court was to divide
the funds among the law firms once it determined the amount to which KGR was
entitled. Footnote 12 says:
We note that because B&P settled its claim for $1.3
million, it is entitled to no greater award than that amount
to which it agreed. See Rosenberg, 409 So. 2d at 1022
(limiting an attorney’s fee recovery to the contract fee
agreed to by the attorney). Consequently, any award that
B&P would be entitled to above the $1.3 million agreed-
upon amount should be returned to Buckley. For
example, if the magistrate determines KGR’s quantum
meruit award to equal the $894,897 awarded plus the
$75,232.50 sought in appellate fees, for a total of
$970,129.50, then (a) RM[ ] would be entitled to
$85,696.31 (approximately 2.34% of the remaining
$3,663,517.36); (b) B&P would be entitled to its $1.3
million; and (c) the remaining $2,277,821.05 set aside in
the court registry for the charging liens would be returned
to Buckley. This example is used entirely for
demonstrative purposes and is not intended to dissuade
the district court from using its sound discretion to
determine a proper value for KGR’s charging lien.
Following the mandate, Buckley filed a motion to compel RM to return its
$1,538,750.86 disbursement to the court’s registry, arguing that such action was
necessary to comply with the mandate. The magistrate judge entered an order
denying this motion, which the district court affirmed. That decision is the subject
of Buckley’s cross-appeal.
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On May 19, 2014, the magistrate judge entered an R&R ruling on KGR’s fee
application. There, in applying the mandate, the magistrate judge increased KGR’s
quantum meruit award to $1,198,725.00, which called for an additional
disbursement of $303,828.00. The magistrate judge then ordered that all money
remaining in the court’s registry after this disbursement be returned to Buckley.
RM objected, arguing that this order improperly distributed the bond funds that
RM had posted to Buckley instead of returning them to RM as outlined in the
Disbursement Order. Nonetheless, the district court adopted the R&R, forming the
basis for RM’s appeal.
This background gives rise to the two issues that we must decide, both
relating to the district court’s application of the mandate from the KGR appeal.
Buckley raises the first issue: whether the district court violated the mandate when
it denied Buckley’s motion to compel RM to return to the court’s registry the
portion of its $1,538,750.86 disbursement that was in excess of 2.34% of the
amount that B&P would have received had it not settled with RM. RM raises the
second issue: whether the district court exceeded the scope of the mandate when it
ordered that Buckley receive the funds remaining in the court’s registry after KGR
received its recalculated quantum meruit award.
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II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
We review a district court’s interpretation of this Court’s mandate in a prior
case de novo. Cox Enters., Inc. v. News-Journal Corp., 794 F.3d 1259, 1272 (11th
Cir. 2015). The mandate rule is a “specific application of the ‘law of the case’
doctrine” requiring that “[a] trial court, upon receiving the mandate of an appellate
court, may not alter, amend, or examine the mandate, or give any further relief or
review, but must enter an order in strict compliance with the mandate.” Piambino
v. Bailey,
757 F.2d 1112, 1119-20 (11th Cir. 1985). The trial court must
implement “both the letter and the spirit of the mandate taking into account the
appellate court’s opinion and the circumstances it embraces.”
Id. at 1119 (citations
omitted). “Although the trial court is free to address, as a matter of first
impression, those issues not disposed of on appeal, it is bound to follow the
appellate court’s holdings, both expressed and implied.” Transamerica Leasing,
Inc. v. Inst. of London Underwriters,
430 F.3d 1326, 1331 (11th Cir. 2005)
(quoting
Piambino, 757 F.2d at 1120 (citations omitted)).
III. DISCUSSION
We will address the district court’s decisions chronologically. Thus, we
begin with its decision denying Buckley’s motion to compel. Buckley argues that,
to comply with the mandate, the district court should have ordered RM to return
$1,458,401.82 to the court’s registry. That amount represents the sum that RM
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received under the Disbursement Order less 2.34% of what B&P would have
recovered had it not settled. In other words, it is the amount distributed to RM in
excess of what Buckley claims RM was entitled to under the mandate.
The magistrate judge identified the core difficulty with Buckley’s argument:
the mandate did not reverse the Disbursement Order. Nor could it have—the
Disbursement Order was never appealed. Ordering RM to disgorge a portion of
the funds it had already received would have required the district court to reopen
the Disbursement Order. But because the Disbursement Order was not the subject
of the KGR appeal, the mandate from that appeal left the Disbursement Order
untouched. Reopening it, therefore, would have been beyond what the mandate
required on remand.
It is true that footnote 12 of the mandate provides that “any award that B&P
would be entitled to above the $1.3 million agreed-upon amount should be returned
to Buckley.” At first blush, this seems to call for the return of funds previously
distributed to RM. But other language in the footnote makes clear that while
Buckley might recover some of the money originally set aside for attorneys’ fees,
that recovery would only come from money remaining in the court’s registry.
Footnote 12 later says, in the context of the hypothetical, that “the remaining
$2,277,821.05 set aside in the court registry for the charging liens would be
returned to Buckley.” So while footnote 12 does contemplate that Buckley might
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receive some of the money set aside for attorneys’ fees, it does not contemplate the
disgorgement of funds already distributed under a separate, un-appealed order. For
this reason, we find that disgorgement of the distribution RM had already received
under the Disbursement Order was beyond the scope of the mandate. The district
court did not, therefore, err in adopting the magistrate judge’s order denying
Buckley’s motion to compel.
We next turn to the district court’s decision that Buckley—rather than RM—
was entitled to the funds left over in the court’s registry after KGR received its
recalculated quantum meruit award. This ties in closely with the disgorgement
issue. As we said above, while the mandate does not contemplate disgorgement, it
does contemplate that Buckley would receive any money remaining in the court’s
registry that B&P would have been entitled to had it not settled. There was money
remaining in the court’s registry after the magistrate judge recalculated KGR’s
quantum meruit award and determined that KGR was entitled to an additional
$303,828.00. Under the plain language of footnote 12, Buckley was entitled to that
money. Thus, the district court did not err in adopting the magistrate judge’s R&R
awarding Buckley the remaining funds.
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IV. CONCLUSION
We AFFIRM both the district court’s denial of Buckley’s motion to compel
and its order that the funds remaining in the court’s registry after KGR received its
full quantum meruit be returned to Buckley.
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