3d DCA -- If You Screw Up, Screw Up Big!

Time to bunker dive:

Tricam Industries v. Coba:

Judge Rothenberg reverses a plaintiff jury verdict in a negligence action and orders the trial court to enter judgment for the defendants, all based on an "inconsistent verdict."

Problem was, the defendants never objected to the inconsistent verdict below, and the jury was discharged.

Problem solved -- if the inconsistent verdict is so fundamentally screwed up, so glaring and so obvious you'd have to be a complete idiot to miss it (my paraphrase), then it's ok you screwed up as a lawyer and completely missed it.

Au contraire, says Judge Schwartz:

While I agree with the rest of the opinion, I disagree in two fundamental respects with the court’s treatment of the “inconsistent verdict” question. In my view:
a) The appellant waived the right to complain of any inconsistent verdict because of its failure to request that the conflict be resolved by the jury after its alleged flawed verdict was returned.
b) Even if this were not so, the appropriate remedy is not, like the majority does, to resolve the conflict in favor of appellant but a new trial so that a jury and not the court may decide the question.

So go big or go home!

Spencer v. EMC Mortgage:

Is it pretty normal for a bank to wait thirteen years to foreclose on a defaulted mortgage?

Not really, and Judge Salter dismisses for lack of prosecution among other procedural deficiencies.

Judge Schwartz has a hold-your-nose special concurrence:

Because of the stumbling, bumbling, and general ineptitude of the mortgagee and its representatives, the appellant has managed to remain in the mortgaged premises without payment for over fifteen years after defaulting in 1997. While it therefore pains me deeply to do so, I concur in the reversal5 of the summary judgment of foreclosure against her.

And here's footnote five:

In the first incarnation, this passage read “I feel that I must dissent from the affirmance. . . .” See De Leon v. Great Am. Assurance Co., 78 So. 3d 585, 586 n.1 (Fla. 3d DCA 2011)

You say dissent from the affirmance, I say concur in the reversal, let's call the whole thing off!