For more than sixty years, Florida attorneys on both sides of a dispute operated under a strict common law rule: if you wanted attorney’s fees, you needed an expert witness to tell the court those fees were reasonable. Evidentiary hearings were mandatory in contested cases. Fee experts were a fixture of litigation. And the cost and time required to comply with this practice were simply accepted as the cost of doing business, taxed as costs against the non-prevailing party.
That era is over — at least in ten Central Florida counties.
In Ruffenach v. Deutsche Bank Nat’l. Trust Co., 431 So. 3d 1055 (Fla. 6th DCA 2026), the Florida Sixth District Court of Appeal issued a landmark ruling holding that neither an expert witness nor an evidentiary hearing is required before a trial court can award attorney’s fees. The court was unsparing in its assessment of the old approach, writing that for six decades, “all of our sister courts” had imposed requirements that no Florida statute, no rule of court, and no Florida Supreme Court precedent had ever actually mandated. With characteristic directness, the Sixth DCA stated: “We believe they were wrong.”
The court termed the opinion as “a sea change” — and practitioners need to understand both what it means and why, even under the new framework, retaining a fee expert may still be your smartest strategic move.
What the Sixth DCA Ruling Actually Says
The Sixth DCA’s holding is straightforward: trial courts may award attorney’s fees based on the record before them (time entries, invoices, attorney’s testimony and the court’s own knowledge and experience) without requiring the parties to produce an expert witness or hold an evidentiary hearing. The court pointed out that federal courts have long operated this way, and that Florida’s own statutes and procedural rules never imposed these requirements in the first place. The sixty-two year practice, the court concluded, was a judicially invented burden with no firm legal foundation.
One important caveat: the ruling does not mean a party can skip documentation entirely. In fact, the Sixth DCA reversed the fee award in the very case before it, not because there was no expert, but because the party seeking fees had failed to submit adequate billing records showing the work actually performed. Fees must still be grounded in documented, admissible evidence. The court simply removed the gatekeeping requirement that someone with “expert” credentials must testify to the reasonableness of the hourly rate and the number of hours expended.
The decision applies only within the Sixth DCA’s jurisdiction, the ten counties it serves in central and southwest Florida. All other Florida districts continue to follow the traditional expert-and-hearing requirement unless and until their own courts or the Florida Supreme Court weigh in.
Three Reasons You Should Still Retain a Fee Expert
The elimination of a requirement is not the elimination of wisdom. Several strategic considerations weigh in favor of continuing to use fee experts even where they are no longer obligatory.
- Why Fee Experts Still Win Attorney’s Fee Disputes
A judge’s ability to rule without expert testimony doesn’t mean expert testimony won’t move the needle. Courts are composed of human beings, and a well-credentialed attorney testifying that a billing rate of $650 per hour is consistent with the prevailing market rate for complex commercial litigation carries weight that a billing spreadsheet alone does not. In a contested fee dispute where opposing counsel will challenge almost every line item and argue the rates are inflated, an expert provides an independent, professional voice that validates your position and shifts the burden onto your opponent to respond in kind. Winning a fee award is different from being technically entitled to one. An expert helps you win.
- Protect Your Fee Award: Build an Appeal-Proof Record
The Sixth DCA’s ruling is currently limited to one district, and the Florida Supreme Court has not yet spoken on the issue. Any fee award issued without expert support is a prime target for appeal, particularly outside the Sixth DCA’s jurisdiction. But even within the Sixth DCA, the standard has not been fully tested. Litigants who want their fee awards to survive appellate scrutiny will want a record that is bulletproof, not merely sufficient. An expert witness creates that record: documented opinions on hourly rates, the complexity of the work, the results achieved, and the reasonableness of the time expended. Should the issue ever reach a reviewing court, you want every supporting element in the record. Skipping the expert to save money at the trial level can cost far more if the award is reversed on appeal.
- Don’t Bring a Spreadsheet to an Expert Fight
Even in a world without mandatory fee experts, a well-resourced opposing party will retain one. If your adversary presents an expert testifying that your hours were excessive, your rates above market, and your billing practices sloppy, while you present only a spreadsheet and your affidavit, the asymmetry is glaring. A fee expert on your side allows you to rebut the opposition’s criticism professionally, point by point, with independent support. The elimination of the requirement for a fee expert simply means neither side is required to bring one; it does not mean the side that brings one has no advantage.
The Bottom Line
The Sixth DCA’s decision in Ruffenach represents a genuine shift in Florida fee litigation, a recognition that the long-standing expert requirement was, as the court put it, unsupported by “any statute or rule” and lacking in “strong logic or policy grounds.” Practitioners in the affected counties should update their litigation playbooks accordingly.
But the elimination of a procedural hurdle is not a license to come unprepared. Documentation remains essential. Credibility still matters. And in a hard-fought fee dispute, the attorney who arrives with admissible evidence, interpreted by a credible expert, is still in a far stronger position than the one who relies on the court’s goodwill alone.
The new rule removes the floor. It does not define a ceiling.