Hirzel Dreyfuss & Dempsey, PLLC
NEWS AND INFORMATION
The Florida Supreme Court Just Invalidated a Large Number of Outstanding Settlement Proposals
The short answer
On July 2, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court held that a joint proposal for settlement must apportion the amount among the parties, and eliminated the exception some courts had recognized for proposals addressing a single unified claim. Any outstanding unapportioned joint proposal is now unlikely to support a fee award, and this is worth checking against every open file this week.
Why it comes up
The proposal for settlement is the principal fee-shifting device in Florida civil litigation, and it is how most cases get valued. Rule 1.442 requires that a proposal made by or to multiple parties state the amount and terms attributable to each party. Some courts had excused apportionment where the claim was unified and indivisible.
What the court held
The case arose from a residential renovation dispute. The owners sued a design company that had left the job; the company counterclaimed. Before trial the owners served a joint, unapportioned proposal of $10,000. The Fourth District held the proposal valid under the unified claim exception.
The Florida Supreme Court quashed that decision and approved the contrary decision of the Second District, holding that the rule requires apportionment in every joint proposal, whether or not the claim is unified.
Our take: this is a housekeeping emergency, not an academic development
Fee-shifting rules are technical and it is tempting to treat a decision like this as a detail. It is not. A proposal for settlement is often the single most valuable piece of paper in a case, because the prospect of fee exposure is what moves a defendant. A proposal that turns out to be invalid does not merely fail to shift fees. It removes the leverage the case was being litigated on, usually at the moment the case is being valued for settlement or trial.
The joint proposals that are now invalid are common in this firm's practice areas: spouses jointly asserting a construction defect claim, an association together with individual unit owners, affiliated developer entities, a contractor and its surety, business partners suing jointly.
The fix is simple where the proposal can still be reissued: state a dollar amount for each offeror and each offeree. The problem is the proposals already served, where the acceptance period has run and the case is heading to trial on the assumption that fee exposure attaches. Those need to be identified now, and in some cases served again.
What it means practically
Audit every open file for outstanding proposals for settlement involving more than one party on either side. Where the proposal is unapportioned, assume it will not support a fee award and decide whether a new, properly apportioned proposal should be served. Where the deadline has passed, the case may need to be revalued.
When to call a lawyer
Now, if you have a pending case with an outstanding joint proposal. This is a deadline-sensitive problem.
Sources
● Trace Elements, Inc. v. Mackensen, No. SC2024-1274 (Fla. July 2, 2026), via Justia
Disclaimer
This post discusses publicly reported legal developments for general informational purposes. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney client relationship, and it does not reflect the firm's position in any pending matter. Outcomes depend on the specific facts and the governing law of the relevant jurisdiction.
Two Defamation Cases Against Netflix Show Why "We Never Said That" Is Not a Defense
The short answer
Within ten weeks, a South Carolina judge refused to dismiss a defamation claim over a true-crime documentary, and a federal court in California received a motion to strike a defamation claim by the creator of a reality series over a documentary about her own show. Neither case is about a false statement of fact. Both are about editing. That is the point worth understanding, because the same theory reaches ordinary businesses far more often than it reaches celebrities.
Why it comes up
Most people assume defamation requires someone to say something false. The more common claim in practice is defamation by implication: every individual statement is accurate, but the arrangement, juxtaposition and omission create a false impression. A profile that reports a company's true revenue decline, then cuts to an unrelated fraud investigation, may state nothing false and still convey something false.
That theory is why a business sues over a news segment, a trade publication article, a competitor's comparison chart, or a former employee's post. It is also the hardest defamation theory to defend, because the defendant cannot simply point at each sentence and say it was true.
The Murdaugh ruling
On August 27, 2026, a South Carolina judge denied motions to dismiss a defamation suit brought by Buster Murdaugh, the son of Alex Murdaugh, over a Netflix documentary that the plaintiff says connected him to the 2015 death of Stephen Smith, a Hampton County teenager. Smith's death was originally ruled a hit and run and later reclassified as a homicide. Murdaugh has never been named as a suspect.
The defendants argued the First Amendment protected reporting on the true fact that theories and speculation existed, and that the documentary posed questions and invited viewers to draw their own conclusions.
Judge Heath P. Taylor rejected that framing at the pleading stage. He wrote that the plaintiff alleges the defendants "selectively crafted and interposed interviews from law enforcement, community members and media personnel with those law enforcement reports to create the defamatory implication that Plaintiff is responsible for Stephen Smith's death." He found that the "creative liberties" taken in the production "present the information in a manner that can be reasonably interpreted by a viewer as answering the questions posed, mainly the speculation of Plaintiff's involvement in the death of Stephen Smith."
All motions to dismiss were denied and the case proceeds.
The Tyra Banks complaint
On June 13, 2026, Tyra Banks sued Netflix, the directors of its docuseries about America's Next Top Model, and the production company in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. She pleads defamation by implication, false light, breach of contract and false endorsement.
The core allegation is proportion. She sat for a three and a half hour interview; roughly sixteen minutes appeared. She alleges her comments were "stripped of context and reassembled to support a false and defamatory narrative unrelated to what she actually expressed." The specific example she cites is a sequence in which she is asked whether she remembers a contestant's account of a sexual assault, answers "um," and the screen cuts to black, which she says implies she could not remember it.
Netflix moved to strike and dismiss. Its motion argues the complaint is "about ordinary editorial decisions," that the documentary in fact shows her saying "I do remember her story," and that "a documentary expressly showing Banks remembering does not imply that she forgot." The motion also argues she signed an agreement granting the right to edit her footage, acknowledging she had "no right to review or approve" the finished documentary, and releasing claims including defamation and false light.
Our take: the release is the whole case, and most people sign one without reading it
Set the celebrity names aside and two lessons remain, both of which apply to any business owner or executive who is ever asked to comment on camera or on the record.
First, the editing is the claim. In both matters the publisher's position is that it reported accurately and made editorial choices. In both, the plaintiff's position is that the choices themselves conveyed a falsehood. The South Carolina court held that theory sufficient to survive dismissal. That is a meaningful signal: a defendant cannot reliably win at the pleading stage by parsing each statement in isolation, because the claim is about the whole.
Second, and more practically, the participation agreement decides most of these cases before they start. Netflix's lead argument is not that the documentary was accurate. It is that the plaintiff signed away the claim. That is a contract defense, and it is usually a good one. The standard participant release grants editing rights, disclaims any right of review or approval, and releases defamation and false light claims by name. Anyone who signs one and later dislikes the result is litigating against their own signature.
We should be candid about the tension between these two points. The Murdaugh defendants apparently had no release from the plaintiff, because he did not participate. The Banks defendants did. That difference may matter more than any doctrinal question about implication, and it is the reason the two cases could come out differently on similar theories.
There is also a fault question neither of these sources addresses. A public figure must prove actual malice, meaning knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. A private figure ordinarily need not. Public figure status is a legal question decided on the facts, and general prominence does not by itself make someone an all-purpose or limited-purpose public figure as to a particular controversy. If either plaintiff is held to be one, actual malice becomes a serious obstacle, and that is a point the reporting does not reach.
What it means practically
Before you participate in any documentary, podcast, news feature or trade press profile: read the release. Ask whether you have any right of review, whether the release names defamation and false light, and whether it covers the entity as well as the individual. If the answer is that you have no approval right and have released those claims, understand that you are accepting whatever portrayal results.
If you have been portrayed unfairly and did not sign anything: the claim is about the whole piece, not one sentence. Preserve the publication, note the sequence and the omissions, and move quickly. Florida's limitations period for defamation is short, and a retraction demand under Florida's pre-suit statute may be a prerequisite to certain damages.
If you publish: the exposure is in the juxtaposition and the cut, not in the individual sentences your fact-checker verified.
When to call a lawyer
Before signing a participation agreement, and immediately after a damaging publication rather than after watching to see whether it blows over.
Sources
● WCBD News 2, Judge allows Buster Murdaugh's defamation lawsuit against Netflix to proceed
● The New York Times, Tyra Banks sues Netflix for defamation over Top Model docuseries (June 14, 2026)
● The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix files to dismiss Tyra Banks' ANTM defamation lawsuit
Disclaimer
This post discusses publicly reported legal developments for general informational purposes. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney client relationship, and it does not reflect the firm's position in any pending matter. Outcomes depend on the specific facts and the governing law of the relevant jurisdiction.