A Florida appeals court has wiped out a 2.5 fee multiplier, cutting a near-million-dollar award against insurer Universal Property & Casualty.
On June 24, 2026, Florida's Third District Court of Appeal handed Universal Property & Casualty Insurance Company a partial win in a fight over how much it owed opposing counsel after settling with its insured, Orlando Cisneros Dameras.
The math is where it gets steep. The trial court started with a base fee - the lodestar - of $389,362.50, then applied a 2.5 contingency risk multiplier, an add-on meant to offset the risk lawyers take when payment is not guaranteed. That lifted the total to $973,406.25, with another $138,658.25 tacked on for expert fees.
Universal appealed, saying the trial court had no evidence to support the rates, the hours, the multiplier, or several of the costs.
The appeals court split the difference. It kept the base lodestar, finding the trial court had weighed the right factors and backed up the numbers. But it threw out the multiplier entirely - and that is the part carriers will note.
The rules here come from two Florida Supreme Court cases. The first, Rowe, set the basic formula: count the hours reasonably spent, set a reasonable hourly rate, multiply the two, and adjust where appropriate. The second, Quanstrom, added the test for when a multiplier is justified - chiefly, whether the market requires one to attract competent counsel, and whether the lawyer could have reduced the risk of not being paid. Evidence has to back all of it.
That evidence is what was missing. The trial court had praised the insured's lawyers, finding that "few lawyers possess the skill, competency, and temerity to prepare and argue a case such as this through trial and appeal." Not enough, the appeals court said. The skill of the lawyers who took the case does not answer whether other able lawyers would have taken it without a multiplier. The insured's fee expert argued the case was risky - the insured had been late giving notice of the claim - and that "nobody" would take it without a multiplier. But the expert never showed that other competent lawyers would have passed. The trial court itself acknowledged there were plenty of other firms practicing property insurance law in south Florida that could have secured at least some recovery. On that record, the court said, the highest possible 2.5 multiplier - indeed, any multiplier - could not stand.
The court also reversed $42,658.25 in costs for two experts who were hired to prepare the case for trial but never testified. It pointed to section 92.231(2), Florida Statutes, which allows costs only for an expert "who shall have testified in any cause." As the court put it, "Costs are taxable only where authorized by statute or rule."
A separate $96,000 award for a testifying fee expert survived - not on the merits, but because Universal had not raised the challenge below or in its rehearing motion, leaving it unpreserved.
The case now returns to the trial court to enter the fee with no multiplier and to take a fresh look at the disputed expert costs, omitting any fees for non-testifying experts not reasonably necessary for trial.
