Is it worth suing over $1.19?
One Miami-Dade attorney seems to think so, especially when you can bill about $400 an hour in legal fees.
Attorney George David of George A. David, P.A., Coral Gables, is asking a panel of appeals court judges in Miami-Dade Circuit Court for $1.19 — plus his fees, of course — in payment related to an auto accident injuries claim. At issue is not whether his client got paid, it did, but whether the client was shortchanged. David says “yes” in his appeal, but legal precedents say he should not be wasting the court’s time and the taxpayer’s money.
Miami-Dade County Court Judge Lawrence King had awarded David’s client, Stand-Up MRI of Miami, $16.38 in interest on a bill payment. United Automobile Insurance Co. sent a check for $20. The response? Not that the judge erred in calculating the interest owed; that was never contested. The amount billed was also not contested.
Rather than asking the county court to correct its judgment, David appealed to circuit court, claiming a little more interest and a lot more in legal fee.
The law has a term for minuscule differences that waste court and professional time: De minimis no curat lex, which translates to “the law does not care about small things.” Disputes over a dollar or two, or even 10, do not deserve the court’s time. And taxpayers should not accommodate attorneys who waste the money spent processing such appeals.
In fact, the Florida Bar has sanctioned attorneys for such behavior. One attorney appealed for an additional 23 cents in 2007. The Florida Bar complained about his behavior to the Florida Supreme Court, which barred the attorney for 91 days. In its opinion, the Court said of the attorney, “The pettiness of his behavior hurt his clients, the opposing party, and ultimately, the profession…”
Sadly, that incident was not an isolated one. And this is not David’s only instance of running the legal meter for matters worth no one’s time.
United Auto is committed to fighting needless and unjustified billing of auto insurance claims in an effort to reduce the financial burden on its policyholders, the general public and the company. The company will expose abuses of the insurance system and the courts in an effort to promote reform of the legal system.
