Rosalba Mora v. Universal Property & Casualty Insurance Company

• Court: District Court of Appeal of Florida
• Decided: September 18, 2024
• Docket: 3D2023-1065
• Status: Published

Opinion

Third District Court of Appeal State of Florida

Opinion filed September 18, 2024. Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

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No. 3D23-1065 Lower Tribunal No. 2022-0190-CA-01 ________________

Rosalba Mora, Appellant,

vs.

Universal Property & Casualty Insurance Company, Appellee.

An Appeal from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Barbara Areces, Judge.

Valiente, Carollo, & McElligott PLLC, and Matthew McElligott, for appellant.

Link & Rockenbach, P.A., Kara Rockenbach Link and David A. Noel (West Palm Beach), for appellee.

Before LOGUE, C.J., and SCALES and GORDO, JJ.

PER CURIAM. Affirmed. See Hartzog v. State, 133 So. 3d 570, 573 (Fla. 1st DCA

2014) (“On appeal from an order granting or denying a motion for new trial

based on manifest weight of the evidence, we review for abuse of

discretion.”); Tidwell v. Toca, 362 So. 2d 85, 86 (Fla. 3d DCA 1978) (“A party

may not complain of a verdict form to which he does not object.”); Plana v.

Sainz, 990 So. 2d 554, 557 (Fla. 3d DCA 2008) (“Because counsel for the

plaintiffs agreed to the wording of the verdict form . . . the plaintiffs are

precluded from asserting that the [verdict] entered by the jury was error.”);

Hernandez v. Gonzalez, 124 So. 3d 988, 992 (Fla. 4th DCA 2013)

(“Appellants' failure to object to the verdict form and jury instructions also

prevents us from revisiting the jury verdict . . . ‘the jury cannot be faulted for

doing exactly what it was instructed to do.’” (quoting Plana, 990 So. 2d at

557)); Alvarez v. Acosta, 324 So. 3d 1033, 1034 (Fla. 3d DCA 2021) (“We

cannot reweigh the evidence or determine that the verdict was against the

manifest weight of the evidence. A trial court does not abuse its discretion

by denying a new trial motion if there was conflicting evidence presented at

trial and the jury's verdict was the product of its weighing that evidence to

resolve the conflicts.”); Weatherly v. Louis, 31 So. 3d 803, 806-07 (Fla. 3d

DCA 2009) (“It is not for this Court to decide which side's evidence is more

persuasive or whether the trial court reached the result this Court would have

2 reached. Our role is limited to determining whether conflicting evidence was

presented at trial—if so, we cannot find an abuse of discretion. Because the

evidence was not clear and obvious but was, in fact, conflicting, we are

compelled to affirm the final judgment.”).