Defective 3-day notice to pay rent or vacate in Florida

The judge dismissed the landlord's case because the 3-day notice was incorrectly filled out, but gave the landlord leave to amend the tenant eviction complaint.

Attorney Tom Olsen: Eve, you're on New 96.5, go ahead.

Eve: Yes, sir. I found an eviction for a tenant. The three-day notice as for the dates were filled out incorrectly. The judge dismissed it without prejudice to refiling again. I'm wondering if I can just refile that and just start it over and get a brand new case number and everything?

Attorney Tom Olsen: No. You don't want to do that, Eve, because you've already paid your filing fees, Eve. How much were those filing fees, 200 bucks?

Eve: Three.

Attorney Tom Olsen: $300, okay. Here's a lesson to be learn for you landlords out there, is a three-day notice to pay rent or vacate looks deceptively easy to fill out. There are so many ways you can make a mistake on it. If you do, the judge is going to throw you out of court, just like they did to Eve. Eve, what you need to do is you need to do a new three-day notice and do not pay another $300 filing fee. Just use your existing case number and start again.

Eve: Would it be an amendment?

Attorney Tom Olsen: It would be probably amended complaint attaching your new properly prepared three-day notice.

Eve: Thank you very much.

Attorney Tom Olsen: All right, Eve. By the way, Rob Solomon is our landlord-tenant attorney. He's at our office right now. If you want to talk to him at 407-423-5561. I'm going to give that phone number out again. It's the phone number for the Olsen Law Group in Orlando. Before I do so, I remind you that Monday through Friday, nine to five, all the lawyers at Olsen Law Group, including me, we are always happy to give you a few minutes of free legal advice right over the telephone. Monday through Friday, nine to five. Right now, you can call the Olsen Law Group in Orlando at 407-423-5561. As well, you can always email us your legal questions through our website and that is lawtube.com, like YouTube, but lawtube.com.