Charles v. Citizens Property Insurance Corp. ( 2016 )


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  •        Third District Court of Appeal
    State of Florida
    Opinion filed August 31, 2016.
    Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.
    ________________
    No. 3D15-2251
    Lower Tribunal No. 14-14893
    ________________
    Leona Charles,
    Appellant,
    vs.
    Citizens Property Insurance Corporation,
    Appellee.
    An Appeal from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Monica Gordo,
    Judge.
    Cudlipp & Cudlipp, P.A., and Kevin E. Cudlipp and Michael P. Cudlipp, for
    appellant.
    Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP, and Maureen G. Pearcy, for appellee.
    Before WELLS, ROTHENBERG, and LAGOA, JJ.
    ROTHENBERG, J.
    Leona Charles (“Charles”) appeals the trial court’s final order entering
    summary judgment1 in favor of Citizens Property Insurance Corporation
    (“Citizens”).   Because we conclude that the instant lawsuit is barred by the
    doctrine of res judicata, we affirm. See ICC Chem. Corp. v. Freeman, 
    640 So. 2d 92
    , 93 (Fla. 3d DCA 1994) (holding that “[r]es judicata applies to all matters
    actually raised and determined as well as to all other matters which could properly
    have been raised and determined in the prior action, whether they were or not.”).
    The record reflects that Charles initially sued Citizens on March 25, 2013
    based upon Citizens’s failure to pay her supplemental request for damages, which
    were incurred due to a plumbing leak in May 2012. In the 2013 lawsuit, Citizens
    moved for summary judgment on its asserted affirmative defense of lack of
    standing based on Charles’s assignment of her insurance benefits to a remediation
    company, Fastech Restoration, Inc., on May 24, 2012.
    At the summary judgment hearing conducted on March 31, 2014, Charles
    claimed that she and Fastech executed an amended assignment in early February
    2013. The trial court, however, declined to accept the document at the hearing
    because Charles had neither replied to Citizens’s standing defense nor provided the
    purported assignment to Citizens and the authenticity of the purported assignment
    was in question. However, the trial court granted Charles leave to amend her
    1The order granting summary judgment was stamped as a final order by the trial
    court and has already been determined by our Court to be a final appealable order.
    2
    response to Citizens’s affirmative defenses to plead the amended assignment and
    instructed Charles that she could seek leave to amend or that she could appeal the
    trial court’s ruling. Rather than amending her pleadings, Charles filed a second
    lawsuit for the same water loss on June 9, 2014, seeking the same recovery and
    alleging the same breach by Citizens as pled in the 2013 law suit.
    Both suits seek to recover the same damages from the May 2012 water loss;
    allege that Citizens breached the contract by failing to pay the entire loss claimed;
    involve the same parties; and sued Citizens in its capacity as the insurer of
    Charles’s homeowner’s policy. Thus, all of the elements of res judicata have been
    met. See ICC 
    Chem., 640 So. 2d at 93
    (listing the four elements as: (1) identity of
    thing sued for; (2) identity of the cause of action; (3) identity of the persons and
    parties to the actions, and (4) identity of the quality or capacity of the person for or
    against whom the claim is made). Because the issue of Charles’s standing was
    raised by Citizens in the prior lawsuit; not defended by Charles despite the trial
    court’s invitation to her to amend her pleadings to assert the purported amended
    assignment; and Charles’s standing was decided adversely to Charles in the prior
    lawsuit, the trial court correctly concluded that the present lawsuit is barred by res
    judicata.
    Affirmed.
    3
    

Document Info

Docket Number: 3D15-2251

Judges: Wells, Rothenberg, Lagoa

Filed Date: 8/31/2016

Precedential Status: Precedential

Modified Date: 10/19/2024