The Daily Business Review named Appellate Practice Group Chair, Ed Guedes, and founding partner, Joseph Serota, as Most Effective Lawyers. Ed and Joe received the award, which honors lawyers in South Florida who have a track record of achieving significant victories for their clients.
The team was honored for their work representing a certified class of homeowners in an appeal related to a class action lawsuit against the Florida Department of Agriculture related to the state’s Citrus Canker Eradication Program.
Two decades of litigation has resulted from the destruction of healthy residential citrus trees by the Department, which sought to remove such trees because they had been “exposed” to citrus canker. The class of more than 97,300 homeowners asked the appellate panel to overturn a 2017 Miami-Dade Circuit Court ruling after that the Department was not liable for inverse condemnation over the destruction of the trees and had no obligation to compensate the homeowners. The Department cross-appealed a 2006 order granting partial summary judgment in favor of the homeowners on a statutory claim for alternative relief.
To read the story on the DBR, click here.
