Florida court rules legal-fees clause cannot automatically bind future owners after $40,000 trespass award

Representative Image (AI-generated) A property agreement can continue to affect land even after the original owners have sold it. But do all the conditions in such an agreement automatically apply to future owners? The Florida Supreme Court has addressed this question in a dispute involving a telecommunications company that installed underground fibre-optic cables beyond an authorised easement. The property owner won $40,000 in trespass damages, but a separate dispute over legal fees eventually reached the state's highest court.In an opinion dated October 29, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that an agreement requiring the losing party to pay the winner's attorney fees does not automatically apply to future property owners. The ruling came in RJ's International Trading, LLC v. Crown Castle South, LLC, case number SC2024-0547, with the opinion available on Justia. The court answered a legal question referred by the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit about when contractual obligations can pass to subsequent owners.How the dispute beganThe dispute dates back more than three decades, when Hidden Valley Corporation owned two neighbouring properties in Miami. It leased one...