Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal upheld a $5 million judgment against Continental Motors Inc. in a negligence lawsuit filed by Carly Johnson following the death of her husband in an aircraft crash. While the multimillion-dollar award to Johnson was affirmed, the court reversed a $25,000 sanction previously imposed on the company’s lawyers by the Miami-Dade Circuit Court. The appellate judges ruled that the sanction was improper because the lower court had not made a specific finding that the attorneys’ conduct was willful or deliberate. Johnson’s attorneys, Ricardo M. Martinez-Cid and Lea P. Bucciero of Podhurst Orseck, still considered the ruling a major victory that could impact other pending cases against Continental Motors.
