First Care Therapy, LLC v. Congress Ave Boynton, LLC (Commercial Lease Default Damages Reversed)

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Commercial landlords who win a default judgment against a vanished tenant often assume the hard part is over once liability is established. A November 12, 2026 decision from Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal is a reminder that the hard part may just be starting, at least when it comes to collecting unliquidated damages. In First Care Therapy, LLC and Loodjhinssy Lafaille-Paul v. Congress Ave Boynton, LLC, the Fourth DCA affirmed a Palm Beach County circuit court's finding that tenant First Care Therapy, LLC and its guarantor, Loodjhinssy Lafaille-Paul, breached a commercial lease and guaranty covering medical office space in Boynton Beach, Florida, but reversed the $85,782.80 damages award entered against them, holding that the award of unliquidated damages without a properly noticed damages trial violated well-established Florida procedure.

According to the opinion, First Care Therapy originally leased the Boynton Beach premises from a predecessor landlord, SNH Medical Office Properties Trust, in September 2021, with Lafaille-Paul personally guaranteeing the tenant's obligations. Congress Ave Boynton, LLC acquired the property in May 2024, and the prior landlord assigned the lease and guaranty to it. Roughly nine months later, on February 21, 2025, Congress Ave Boynton sued First Care Therapy and Lafaille-Paul for breach of the lease and guaranty, alleging nonpayment of rent, without pleading a sum-certain damages figure and attaching a lease ledger showing $34,337.91 in charges already outstanding. Neither defendant answered, and the clerk entered a default against both in March 2025. Congress Ave Boynton then moved for final summary judgment, relying on an affidavit of indebtedness from its managing agent that pegged total damages at $85,782.80, more than double the ledger figure, made up of rent, legal fees to negotiate a new lease, a reletting commission, and tenant-improvement costs for a replacement tenant. At a July 2025 hearing, Lafaille-Paul appeared without counsel and no attorney appeared for the corporate tenant; the trial court heard argument rather than evidence and entered judgment for the exact amount requested.

On appeal, First Care Therapy and Lafaille-Paul argued the judgment was void for lack of standing, lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, and a denial of due process because the corporate tenant appeared without counsel. Writing for the panel, Judge Alan O. Forst rejected all three arguments, holding that the landlord's failure to attach the written assignment documenting the lease transfer did not defeat its standing, because the defaulting defendants had, by defaulting, admitted the well-pled allegation that the assignment occurred, and that the corporate tenant's unrepresented appearance did not create a due-process problem when the corporation simply failed to retain counsel.

The damages award fared differently. Citing its own recent decision in Affinity Health Partners, LLC v. Hayes Locums, LLC, the Fourth DCA held that a default, even an uncontested one, entitles a landlord only to liquidated damages, not unliquidated damages, without a properly noticed evidentiary trial under Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.440(d). The court found the $85,782.80 figure plainly unliquidated, since the complaint pleaded no sum certain, the attached ledger totaled less than half the final award, and the trial court could only reach the final number by crediting a post-default affidavit covering costs that required weighing evidence rather than simple arithmetic. Because the July 2025 hearing was a non-evidentiary summary judgment proceeding rather than a noticed damages trial, the panel reversed the award and remanded for a proper trial on damages alone, leaving the landlord's underlying victory on liability untouched.

The upshot for commercial landlords is that a motion for summary judgment, however well-supported by affidavits, cannot substitute for a properly noticed damages trial once the damages sought go beyond what the lease ledger shows on its face, and treating reletting commissions, negotiation fees, and tenant-improvement costs as liquidated simply because they appear in a sworn affidavit invites exactly the reversal Congress Ave Boynton now faces. Landlords should build in the extra step of noticing an evidentiary hearing under Rule 1.440(d) whenever damages sought exceed what the complaint's own exhibits establish with exactness, even against a defendant who never appears, and should remember that a corporate tenant cannot defend itself without counsel even if its guarantor shows up pro se, so the underlying default itself will typically stand even as the damages calculation gets a second look.

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