Case Citator › Florida Patient's Compensation Fund v. Rowe

Florida Patient's Compensation Fund v. Rowe

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Overruled in part
Court
Supreme Court of Florida
Citation
472 So. 2d 1145
Decided
Confirmed treatments
2
Flagged citations read
30 of 30
Citing cases (total)
30
Treatment dates
1986–1990
Overruled in part
A reviewed court has overruled part of this case’s holding. Florida Patient's Compensation Fund v. Rowe remains authoritative for the lodestar method of calculating attorney fees, but the Florida Supreme Court later changed its contingency multiplier rule. A Florida appellate court also held that Rowe's cap tying an award to the client's fee agreement does not apply in domestic cases.
More on how this was screened

All 30 flagged citations have been read; these two confirmed treatments are listed below. Rowe's ruling that the medical malpractice fee statute was constitutional was not displaced by either decision.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

30 later cases cite Florida Patient's Compensation Fund v. Rowe; 30 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Florida Patient's Compensation Fund v. Rowe?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Overruled in part

  • The Florida Supreme Court changed Rowe's contingency multiplier range from 1.5–3 to 1–2.5 and made the availability of a multiplier depend on the type of case.

    Standard Guaranty Insurance Co. v. Quanstrom · Supreme Court of Florida · filed

    Accordingly, our Rowe decision is modified to allow a multiplier from 1 to 2.5. We find that this modification should apply to all cases in which the trial court has not set attorney's fees as of the date this opinion is released.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Limited

  • Rowe's cap on an award tied to the client's fee agreement does not govern an award of attorney fees in a domestic case.

    Levy v. Levy · Florida Third District Court of Appeal · filed

    For the very reasons we have outlined, it is apparent that at least this aspect of the Rowe case,[7] which involved statutory fees awarded to the successful party in a malpractice case, can have no application in the domestic context: since fees are awarded just because one party cannot afford them as well as the other, the liability of the wealthy party cannot be limited to the exposure of the impecunious one.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

Does this case still carry your argument?

Describe your facts. Ezel reads Florida Patient's Compensation Fund v. Rowe and the cases that treated it, then tells you whether it still holds for your situation, with citations.

Opens in Ezel Pro.

  • Checks the law as it stands today, not only this page
  • Cites every source it relies on, so you can verify it
  • Chat, drafting and research in one workspace