SDG Dadeland Associates v. Arias, 49 Fla. L. Weekly D186 (Fla. 3rd DCA Jan. 17, 2024):
The defendant in a slip and fall case served the plaintiff with a proposal for settlement for five-thousand dollars. The proposal named two defendants, stating that one defendant would pay the five thousand dollars, and the other would pay nothing. The proposal did not provide a time frame for payment.
The trial court concluded that the proposal was ambiguous.
In reversing, the appellate court noted that nothing in the statute or rule expressly requires that a settlement proposal contain a provision indicating the date for payment. Additionally, it found the proposal had been properly apportioned, even though it indicated that one defendant would pay nothing. The court refused to adopt the plaintiff’s argument that as a matter of law, a joint offer accurately reflecting the indemnification agreement among the defendants, somehow invalidated the joint settlement offer.
Finally, the court did say that the trial court could consider the issue of whether the offer was made in bad faith on remand, because the trial court had not reached that issue based on its other rulings