When a person sues the State of Florida, there's a limit on how much they can recover unless the Legislature approves what is known as "Claim Bill." In one case, a law firm worked for years to obtain a large verdict for a brain-damaged man, and spent considerable time and money getting the Legislature to approve the $15 million award through the Claim Bill process. When the Legislature approved the Claim Bill, they limited the amount that could be paid to the attorneys to less than 1% of the recovery ($100,000), even though the family had agreed to pay 25% and wanted to abide by their contract. This meant that the law firm would actually lose hundreds of thousands of dollars due to the significant costs and time they had invested in the case. Creed & Gowdy filed an amicus brief (acting as a "friend of the court") in the Supreme Court of Florida to support the contract rights of the parties. As a practical matter, no person seriously injured by the negligence of a State employee would ever find representation if the Legislature had the unilateral right to void a fee agreement and tell attorneys after-the-fact that their services were rendered pro bono. Consistent with our arguments, the Court held (4-3) that while the Legislature has complete discretion to approve or deny the Claim Bill, it can't impair the preexisting contract rights between an attorney and client.

Read the opinion here.