SALTER, J.
LB Judgment Holdings, LLC ("LB Judgment"),
We have consolidated the three cases seeking review of related non-final orders:
For the reasons which follow, we reverse and vacate the order discharging the notices of lis pendens (Case No. 3D18-1190); we affirm the order sought to be appealed by several of the impleaded entities (Case No. 3D18-1323); and we affirm the bond order as to the seventeen properties owned by impleaded parties as well as the "Attorneys' Fees Bond," in the appeal and cross-appeal in Case No. 3D18-1726. As each of the three appeals has been taken from a non-final order, we vacate our temporary stay of the bond order, allowing full pretrial discovery and trial to ensue.
This appeal turns on a legal issue, and thus our review is de novo. Section 48.23, Florida Statutes (2018), governs notices of lis pendens and the prerequisites for filing them. Section 48.23(3) specifies that when, as here, the underlying lawsuit is not founded on a "duly recorded instrument" or a lien claimed under part I of chapter 713, Florida Statutes (governing construction
Florida's courts have carefully prescribed the procedures to be followed by the trial courts in controlling and discharging a lis pendens in the cases that are not founded on a recorded instrument or construction lien. Trial courts and reviewing courts alike must balance (a) the lis pendens proponent's need to place non-parties on notice of the proponent's claims affecting the owner's real property, and (b) the damages that may be suffered by the owner (as third parties may turn away from the property because of the cloud of litigation) should the proponent's claims fail to prevail.
The balancing is achieved through two considerations: (1) is there a "fair nexus between the apparent legal or equitable ownership of the property and the dispute embodied in the lawsuit"?
"Fair nexus" is the issue we address in Case No. 3D18-1190, while lis pendens bond amounts are addressed here as part of Case No. 3D18-1726. Importantly, at the preliminary procedural point of a motion to dismiss the lis pendens before trial, the evaluation of "fair nexus" is not a trial or mini-trial on the merits of all elements of the lis pendens proponent's claims. Rather, "[t]he relevant question is whether alienation of the property or the imposition of intervening liens ... conceivably could disserve the purposes for which lis pendens exists. Where the answer is yes, fair nexus must be found."
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With these authorities in mind, we turn to the case at hand. LB Judgment's
But those efforts and diligent investigation did ascertain that certain assets of Boschetti had been transferred to the control of his wife, his brother, and his brother's wife and daughter, through single-purpose entities controlled by them. At least some of the alleged transfers were pursuant to conveyances signed by Boschetti between the commencement of the underlying lawsuit and the entry of the final judgment sought to be collected, with multi-million dollar closing proceeds paid into a family-controlled entity. The supplemental complaint filed against the alleged alter ego entities claims that Boschetti transferred ownership in many of the entities to his wife, sister-in-law, and daughter-in-law "without receiving reasonably equivalent value, if any, in exchange," and that he transferred cash and capital to his spouse and the entities for the operation of the entities' real estate development business, concealing proceeds of the real estate activities from LB Judgment.
The supplemental complaint alleged two primary theories for direct claims against impleaded persons and entities. First, LB Judgment contended that certain entities were "alter ego entities"; that is, that Boschetti and his brother were "de facto owners" of those entities and controlled the disposition of assets that were, in whole or in part, Boschetti's property otherwise amenable to execution in connection with LB Judgment's unsatisfied judgment.
Second, LB Judgment alleged that Boschetti had engaged in fraudulent transfers of assets in order to avoid collection of LB Judgment's judgment, subject to avoidance under sections 726.105 and 726.106, Florida Statutes (2017).
LB Judgment's commencement of proceedings supplementary is authorized by section 56.29, Florida Statutes (2017). In
LB Judgment filed over 1,000 pages of corporate and property records, a spreadsheet of "ties to Luis Boschetti" for the impleaded single-purpose entities,
Answering the question framed in Chiusolo, we conclude that the record demonstrates a fair nexus between the apparent legal or equitable ownership of the property described in the notices of lis pendens and the dispute embodied in the supplementary proceeding. Simply stated, if LB Judgment proves its allegations, it may recover the judgment debt through an execution and sale of the property or other assets transferred to Boschetti, or controlled by him, to the extent of that debt and the extent of Boschetti's interest in a particular property or asset.
Subject to the requirements of sections 56.29 and chapter 726, Florida Statutes, LB Judgment may avail itself of the remedies provided by those statutes and need not stand by as a judgment debtor transfers or controls assets in a scheme to avoid the application of the assets to the judgment debt. The proceedings supplementary statute allows a judgment creditor "to ferret out what assets the judgment debtor may have or what property of his others may be holding for him, or may have received from him to defeat the collection of the lien or claim, that might be subject to the execution."
This Court has held that when the jurisdictional requirements of section 56.29 have been met (as here), the statute is to be given a liberal construction to provide the judgment creditor the most complete relief possible.
The trial court carefully considered the impleaded defendants' emergency motion to quash service and to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction at a specially set ninety-minute hearing in May 2018. The court concluded that the requirements of section 56.29 for the issuance of notices to appear were satisfied and denied the emergency motion, citing
We find no error in the trial court's order denying the impleaded defendants' emergency motion to quash service and to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction.
The impleaded defendants owning the properties subject to the notices of lis pendens
Under the terms of that order, all eighteen bonds (totaling over $ 18 million) were required to be posted within three calendar days from the date of the order, failing which the notices of lis pendens would be discharged automatically. No provision was made to allow LB Judgment to post individual bonds on some properties, and to decline to post such bonds on others.
The impleaded parties appealed that order, maintaining that the attorneys' fee bond of $ 1,088,900 impermissibly excluded "attorneys' fees to be foreseeably incurred in prevailing on the merits of [LB Judgment's] underlying claims." LB Judgment cross-appealed the order, contending here that only the fees incurred in obtaining a discharge of the notices of lis pendens could be recoverable and included as a component of the attorneys' fee bond. As already noted, LB Judgment also challenged the seventeen property-specific bond amounts in the motion for review in Case No. 3D18-1190.
We repeat the text of section 48.23(3) as it relates to notices of lis pendens for which the underlying claim is not founded on a duly recorded instrument or statutory construction lien: "the court shall control and discharge the recorded notice of lis pendens as the court would grant and dissolve injunctions." Injunction bonds are addressed by Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.610, and subparagraph (b) of that rule specifies that such bonds are "conditioned for the payment of costs and damages sustained by the adverse party if the adverse party is wrongfully enjoined."
As to the attorneys' fees component of a bond, we reject the impleaded parties' argument that such fees include not only those incurred in obtaining a discharge of the lis pendens, but also those fees incurred during the entire litigation in the trial court.
The trial court's computation of the incurred fees and costs to date, with an additional allowance for "estimated prospective fees of $ 541,400," was supported by competent, substantial evidence and will not be disturbed here. The trial court ably followed the methodology for "anticipated attorney's fees incurred by the [property owner] in the event the lis pendens filed by [a lien claimant] was unjustified."
Further, section 48.23(2) limits the notices of lis pendens in the present case to a term of one year, as LB Judgment's pleadings are not founded on a duly recorded instrument or construction lien. In order to keep the notices in place beyond that yearlong term, LB Judgment will be required to give reasonable notice, file a motion, and show good cause for the extension. If that occurs, the statute authorizes the trial court to "impose such terms for the extension of time as justice requires." "Such terms" could, of course, include an
LB Judgment also contends that the trial court erred in its determination of the amount of the seventeen property-specific lis pendens bonds in the order of July 17, 2018. The amount of each bond was set following a full-day evidentiary hearing. Our review focuses on the legal issues inherent in setting such bonds rather than the dollar amounts of the "unsecured loans" and "capital contributions" placed in evidence by the impleaded parties and apparently relied upon by the trial court as the measure of prospective damages and thus the bond amounts.
As noted at the outset of this opinion, the Supreme Court of Florida held that the amount of a lis pendens bond "should bear a reasonable relationship to the amount of damages which the property-holder defendant demonstrates will likely result if it is later determined that the notice of lis pendens was unjustified."
In the present case, LB Judgment stipulated that it would not maintain a particular notice of lis pendens in the face of a proposed bona fide, arms'-length sale of a property by an impleaded party. The net proceeds of such a sale would be escrowed to abide the outcome of the proceedings supplementary relating to that party. In theory, this provision of the recorded notices would mitigate damages relating to a lost opportunity for sale.
LB Judgment's expert witness computed, for each of the seventeen properties owned by an impleaded defendant, a fair market value sales price and deductions for brokerage, mortgage debt,
LB Judgment's expert then applied a percentage
The impleaded parties proffered a different model for prospective damages—a model neither supported nor rejected by any Florida case on prospective lis pendens damages or bonds. The impleaded parties argued that the notices of lis pendens and cloud of litigation might cause loan defaults or bankruptcies, such that all of the capital contributions and unsecured loans might be lost and the properties foreclosed upon or sold for unpaid taxes. Under this theory, counsel for the impleaded property owners argued that the notices of lis pendens could cut off all sources of investment for the carrying costs and construction of residences on the affected properties, "essentially, game over for every single one of these companies because they will not be able to meet their obligations," (as counsel characterized it).
The impleaded parties provided accounting records titled "Loans & Capital Contributions" for each entity dated two days before the evidentiary hearing. The trial court ultimately accepted a prospective damages model which assumed for each property: (1) mortgage debt would not exceed the value of the encumbered property, so that the lender would take back the property and the debt would be extinguished; and (2) the damages would flow from the loss of all unsecured loans and capital contributions in the title holding entity. Using the authenticated accounting statements and the amounts of the unsecured loans and capital contributions provided by the impleaded parties, the trial court accepted a total of $ 16,993,632.07 (broken out individually for each property) for the seventeen affected properties.
We labor under the same limitations as LB Judgment and the trial court: pretrial discovery on the fraudulent transfer and alter ego allegations was far from complete on the supplemental complaint. LB Judgment may or may not be able to prove that the judgment debtors concealed their interests in some of the investments (unsecured loans and capital contributions) in the impleaded parties—if those allegations were proven, the bond amount could be unfairly high. But the trial court properly did not engage in conjecture on those issues; nor can we. And to reiterate the point, when and if the emergent facts support a higher or lower bond, the trial court has the discretion (upon motion and further hearing) to reconsider the amount.
We thus affirm the trial court's order setting seventeen separate bond amounts for the properties. We interpret the order to authorize each notice of lis pendens to remain in force or be subject to discharge according to its associated and separate bond requirement, although the separate (and unitary) attorneys' fees bond applicable to all seventeen notices must also be posted as a condition of the existing order—even if only a single property-related bond is posted.
We reverse that provision of the order requiring that any such bonds be posted within three calendar days (presently stayed by this Court); LB Judgment shall have ten days from the date of this Court's mandate in these cases within which to
The trial court's non-final order discharging the notices of lis pendens is reversed and vacated. The trial court's order denying certain impleaded parties' motions to quash service and to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction is affirmed. The trial court's non-final order establishing the amount of seventeen property-specific lis pendens bonds and a separate "Attorneys' Fee Bond" is affirmed, subject to a modification in the time period allotted for LB Judgment to post the bonds in the requisite form and amounts. The seventeen property-related bonds are separate, such that LB Judgment may post any one or more of them, but if any such bond is posted, then the Attorneys' Fee Bond must also be posted for the specified lis pendens to remain in force. Non-compliance with these bond requirements shall entitle the applicable impleaded property owner to the immediate discharge of the notice of lis pendens relating to that property.
Paragraph 6 of this Court's order or October 9, 2018, temporarily staying the trial court's lis pendens bond order, is hereby vacated and is superseded by the provisions of this opinion pertaining to the eighteen bonds in question.
Non-final orders affirmed in part and reversed in part; temporary stay vacated.