Recent Win in Legal Malpractice Case Involving $5.3 Million Loan Closing

I am pleased to share the press release below for a legal malpractice case that Alfonso Perez and I tried in Federal Court which produced a million + jury verdict in favor of our client, the FDIC. 

MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Yesterday, the Law Firm of Rasco Klock Perez & Nieto, P.L., based in Coral Gables, FL, had a major victory in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in a legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty case.

The FDIC, represented by attorneys Alfonso Perez and Daniel T. Pascale of RKPN, filed the legal malpractice case against Bob Messick and his law firm, Icard Merrill, for failing to close a $5.3 million real estate development loan in accordance with the Bank’s written instructions. The FDIC asserted that the Bank’s written instructions expressly required Bob Messick to secure an option contract on a critical piece of loan collateral, a 25-acre riverfront property. After seven days of testimony the jury rendered a verdict for the FDIC, finding that Mr. Messick had an irreconcilable conflict of interest in the transaction because he was simultaneously serving as legal counsel for the Bank, the borrower, a third-party lender being paid off with the Bank’s loan, and the principal of the borrower. As a result of that irreconcilable conflict of interest, Mr. Messick failed to advise the Bank that the borrower did not actually have an option contract in the 25-acre riverfront property and closed the Loan without it. Despite soliciting favorable testimony from 3 former Bank executives, all of whom had previously paid the FDIC almost $2 million to settle claims that they mismanaged at the Bank, the Defense failed to convince the jury that the Bank’s official records had been verbally altered, as claimed by the defense.

This is the first case in the country since the last wave of bank failures in the 1980s where the FDIC, acting as a receiver of a failed bank, successfully prosecuted an attorney and his law firm for legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty.

"We are excited that our law firm had the opportunity to represent the FDIC on this important case," stated Alfonso J. Perez, Esq.