Real Property, Title Insurance, & Financial Services Update: Week Ending November 21, 2025

Our Real Property, Title Insurance, & Financial Services Update offers a weekly overview of notable court decisions impacting property rights, title issues, the banking industry, and related litigation. Each edition highlights key rulings and developments from courts across Florida and beyond, giving practitioners and industry professionals a clear view of what’s happening in real time.
 
Over the past week plus, Florida and the Eleventh Circuit have had some interesting decisions on whether an arbitration agreement existed, analyzing estoppel and browsewrap/clickwrap arguments deployed to try to compel arbitration. Additionally, there were some decisions in Florida regarding a homestead rights waiver and efforts to set aside foreclosure sales of note:

• Husband’s homestead rights waiver in warranty deed was sufficiently specific, leaving deceased wife free to unilaterally convey property during her life without restriction (Weaver v. Hatfield).
• By expressly claiming the benefits of master account agreement in her lawsuit, a non-signatory to that agreement was estopped from disclaiming its arbitration provision (UBS Financial Services v. Saunders).
• Former owner wasn’t deprived of opportunity to bid at foreclosure sale due to its attorneys’ failure to notify it of the sale because former owner had constructive notice of sale through its attorneys, one of whom attended the sale (Verzura Construction v. Hotel La Petite Muse). 
• In title agency’s lawsuit alleging that an individual defendant and others duped it into wiring money that wrongfully ended up in individual’s possession, the court lacked personal jurisdiction over a third party that the individual blamed (via a third-party complaint) for the money laundering scheme (Yusuf v. Ilunga). 
• Subrogation is an exception to the collateral source rule, even if the party subrogated doesn’t appear to assert its subrogation rights and defendants don’t timely object to nonjoinder of a necessary party (Gregory v. Landowners Title of Ouachit). 
• No valid agreement to arbitrate where defendant’s website did not create an enforceable browsewrap or clickwrap agreement (Valiente v. Nexgen Global)

Key Takeaway(s): Be aware of the difficulties and heightened burden imposed on a party seeking enforcement under a browsewrap theory in Florida (and California). Take a closer look at the points highlighted in Valiente, which may give you a better chance of enforcing an agreement under that theory: making the hyperlink to your terms and conditions as conspicuous as possible (e.g., contrasting color, larger font, don’t clutter it with other material, etc.); prominently displaying a link to them on your side, not burying that link at the bottom of the page; directing your users to review them; having your website explain that continued use of it constitutes an agreement to be bound by their terms, etc.