Commercial Litigation

In an appeal stemming from disputed ownership of a British Virgin Islands corporation that holds Florida real estate worth millions of dollars, the firm obtained reversal of an order compelling arbitration. Before the appeal, the BVI corporation had successfully intervened in the trial court—contending that an arbitration provision in its articles controlled the procedure for deciding who owns its shares. In a victory for the firm’s client, the appellate court held that the corporation had no interest in who owns it and, thus, no dispute with any shareholder over governance of the entity.

The firm recently prevailed for the insured in a residential property insurance appeal when the insurer voluntarily dismissed its appeal, after full briefing and the scheduling of oral argument. The appeal involved policy interpretation—specifically the insurer’s contention that an endorsement to the policy authorized it to pay for all loss, including the insured’s claim for additional living expense—from the mold coverage protection of the policy, thereby exhausting policy limits below the insured’s damages that were recovered at trial.

The firm convinced the appellate court to reverse a $38 million judgment that the trial court had entered against the firm’s client—the former CEO of an international oil company—in post-judgment family-law proceedings. In an appeal that turned on interpreting the parties’ extensive property settlement agreement, the appellate court agreed with the firm that the multimillion dollar judgment had not enforced the terms of the parties’ agreement and, instead, amounted to a stand-alone money judgment that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to enter in post-judgment family-law litigation.