Key Points

  • The Fourth District held that a trial court could not strike a 45-day fee-motion deadline from a final judgment nearly three months after entering it because it later viewed the provision as legally erroneous.
  • Rule 1.530's 10-day rehearing period had expired, and Rule 1.540(a) did not apply because the change was substantive, not a clerical correction.
  • Rule 1.540(b)(1) does not permit correction of judicial error arising from a mistaken view of the law; such error must be raised by timely rehearing or appeal.
  • Because the landlord filed its fee motion within the 45 days the judgment allowed, the order denying fees as untimely was reversed.
  • On remand the trial court must reinstate paragraph 4 and decide fee entitlement and amount; the panel expressed no view on either.

A Florida appeals court ruled Wednesday that a Broward County judge had no power to strike a fee-filing deadline from a final judgment nearly three months after entering it, reviving a landlord's bid to recover attorney's fees in an uncontested landlord-tenant case.

A three-judge panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal unanimously reversed two orders by Judge Kathleen E. Angione. One deleted a provision of the judgment giving the landlord, Taplin Falls, Ltd., 45 days to seek fees. The other denied the landlord's fee motion as untimely. Judge Klingensmith wrote for the court that "a perceived error of law did not authorize the trial court to revise the final judgment after the time for rehearing had expired."

Under the ruling, a trial judge who later decides a term of a final judgment was legally wrong cannot remove it on that basis once the window for rehearing has closed; such an error must be raised by timely rehearing or appeal. Because Taplin Falls filed within the 45 days the judgment allowed, its fee request now goes back to the trial court to be decided on the merits.

The case began as an uncontested landlord-tenant action against Jason Brown and Genelle Gordon. In August 2025, the trial court entered a final judgment awarding Taplin Falls $10,233 and expressly reserved jurisdiction to award attorney's fees and costs. Paragraph 4 of the judgment provided that Taplin Falls had "forty-five (45) days from the date of this Final Judgment to pursue attorney's fees and costs." The landlord filed its fee motion on the 45th day.

At a November 2025 hearing on that motion, the judge acted sua sponte, meaning on the court's own initiative, and entered an order striking paragraph 4. A separate order then denied the fee motion as untimely, citing Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.525 and Barco v. School Board of Pinellas County, a 2008 Florida Supreme Court decision.

Taplin Falls sought rehearing. It argued that the court lacked authority to substantively modify the judgment months after entering it and that it was entitled to rely on the 45-day period the judgment stated. The trial court denied relief, reasoning that the issue was "very well established black letter law, and all parties to this action should well have been aware of the state of the law on the timing for filing a motion for attorney's fees and costs."

The appeals court framed the dispute narrowly. Klingensmith wrote that the question was "not whether the trial court correctly selected the time period stated in paragraph 4" when the judgment was entered, but "whether the trial court could later strike that substantive provision through the procedure which it used."

The opinion began from the principle that a trial court's jurisdiction over a case ends when it enters a final judgment, apart from its continuing power to enforce that judgment. It quoted the Florida Supreme Court's 1970 decision in Shelby Mutual Insurance Co. v. Pearson: "[e]xcept as provided by Rules 1.530 and 1.540, Florida Rules of Civil Procedure, the trial court has no authority to alter, modify or vacate an order or judgment." The reservation of jurisdiction over fees let the judge resolve that remaining issue, the panel held, but it "did not confer continuing authority to rewrite substantive terms of the final judgment."

Neither rule supported the November order, the court concluded. Rule 1.530 requires motions for correction of error by the trial court within 10 days after the judgment, a deadline that had long passed. That left Rule 1.540.

Rule 1.540(a) lets a trial court fix clerical mistakes and errors arising from oversight or omission, including on its own initiative. But the order did not identify a clerical mistake, and the panel wrote that "the trial court's only stated concern was the provision's legal correctness." Eliminating the 45-day window turned a timely motion into an untimely one. "That change was not ministerial," Klingensmith wrote. "It substantively and materially altered the final judgment's legal effect."

Rule 1.540(b)(1), which allows relief for mistake, inadvertence, surprise or excusable neglect, did not help either. Citing the Florida Supreme Court's 1990 decision in Curbelo v. Ullman, the panel held that the provision does not reach judicial error arising from a court's mistaken view of the law. Such errors must be addressed through timely rehearing or appellate review, the court wrote, not by using Rule 1.540 "as a substitute for those procedures."

The panel did not decide whether the 45-day provision was correct in the first place. "Even if the trial court erred by including the forty-five-day provision in the judgment, the trial court's later acknowledgement about the flawed legal basis for that provision did not supply proper grounds to strike the provision," Klingensmith wrote.

With paragraph 4 restored, the fee ruling fell as well. The denial rested on the deleted provision, and the court noted that "Taplin Falls timely filed its motion within that period." The denial, the panel held, "cannot stand on the premise that the trial court could retroactively remove the provision from the final judgment."

Gerber, C.J., and White, Rebecca, Associate Judge, joined the opinion. Taplin Meadows Development Corporation was also listed as an appellant.

Warren E. Friedman of Friedman Sklar PLLC in Boca Raton represented Taplin Falls. The tenants did not appear in the appeal.

The panel reversed both orders and remanded with instructions. The trial court must reinstate paragraph 4, decide whether Taplin Falls is entitled to fees and costs and, if so, set the amount. "We express no view on either entitlement or amount," the court wrote. The opinion is not final until any timely motion for rehearing is resolved.