Alex P. Rosenthal

Meet Alex P. Rosenthal

Most people meet Alex under circumstances they had hoped to avoid. A deal has come apart. A partner has done something imaginative with the money. A tenant has stopped paying and started explaining. Alex founded Rosenthal Law Group in July 2012 to handle that category of problem, and he has been at it long enough that very little of it surprises him, which is worth more to a client than it sounds.

He represents businesses and the people who own them, in trial courts and on appeal, throughout Florida.

What Keeps Businesses Up at Night, and Alex Employed

Contract disputes and fraud claims. Real estate litigation. Non-competes and the departing employees who test them. Insurance coverage. Complex commercial landlord-tenant litigation, an area most lawyers avoid and Alex sought out, which tells you something about him or about leases. And when a judgment turns out to be the beginning of the argument rather than the end of it, the enforcement and fraudulent transfer work that follows.

A substantial part of the practice is appellate. Alex has argued in all six of Florida's District Courts of Appeal, appeared before the Florida Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit, and is admitted to the Bar of the United States Supreme Court. He will tell you the appellate courts have the better acoustics and the worse coffee, and that briefs are where cases are actually won, a position that irritates trial lawyers and is nonetheless correct.

Before founding the firm he practiced at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan and then at Britton, Weissman, Lichtman & Dervishi, P.A.

The Other Chair

Alex is a Florida Supreme Court Certified Circuit Civil Mediator, Certification No. 43550CR, and a Certified Circuit Court Arbitrator for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in and for Broward County. He serves on the panel of National Arbitration and Mediation and takes mediations and arbitrations through Rosenthal Resolutions.

Three decades of watching commercial disputes go sideways in every direction available turns out to be ideal preparation for keeping other people's disputes pointed forward. He has a particular talent for the moment when both sides are equally dissatisfied, which anyone who has settled a case will recognize as the destination.

Credentials

B.A., University of Virginia, 1986. J.D., with honors, University of Florida College of Law, 1989. Admitted in Florida and the District of Columbia, and to the United States District Courts for the Southern, Middle, and Northern Districts of Florida, the Eleventh Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.

AV Preeminent rated by Martindale-Hubbell. Recognized by The Best Lawyers in America in Commercial Litigation and in Litigation-Construction. Selected to Florida Super Lawyers and to Florida Trend's Legal Elite. Senior Fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America. Barrister, Order of Veritas. Fellow of the Trial Law Institute and the Diversity Law Institute.

There are more. Several arrived by email from magazines delighted to inform Alex he had been selected and equally delighted to discuss framing options. Those live in a drawer. The ones above are here because somebody who was not selling anything decided them.

A Few of Alex's Greatest Hits

Alex has a habit of taking cases that end up in the reporters, occasionally against his better judgment and usually to his client's advantage.

United States v. Stein, 881 F.3d 853 (11th Cir. 2018). The Eleventh Circuit sat en banc and overruled more than thirty years of its own precedent, holding that a sworn affidavit can defeat summary judgment even when it is self-serving and uncorroborated. Thirty years of circuit law is a great deal of law to ask a court to reconsider. The court reconsidered it.

Off the Wall & Gameroom LLC v. Gabbai, 301 So. 3d 281 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020). A case of first impression holding that a minor who obtains a contract by fraud is bound by it and cannot invoke the infancy defense to escape the consequences. The court also confirmed that reasonable reliance is not an element of fraud. The infancy defense has been available since roughly the reign of Edward I. It was not available here.

GFA International, Inc. v. Trillas, 327 So. 3d 872 (Fla. 3d DCA 2021). The Third District reversed the denial of a temporary injunction and directed the trial court to enter it, rejecting both the departing employee's claim that he personally owned the line of business he had been hired to develop and his argument that the non-compete should yield because he had found agreeable work elsewhere during the pandemic. Section 542.335 instructs courts not to weigh individualized hardship. The court read the statute and did what it said.

Taylor v. Studygate, Inc., 2025 WL 1658205 (S.D. Fla. June 3, 2025). Representing nonresident defendants in litigation arising from a six hundred seventy-five thousand dollar asset purchase agreement, the firm secured dismissal of all claims for lack of personal jurisdiction following an evidentiary hearing, on the ground that the defendants' contacts satisfied neither Florida's long-arm statute nor due process. Suing in Florida requires a defendant who belongs in Florida.

Venture Investment Group II, LLC v. Nurish.me, Inc., Case No. 2020-010773-CA-01 (Fla. 11th Cir. Ct., Miami-Dade Cty.). Summary judgment for the firm's client in the amount of $7,889,660.79 on claims for breach of two promissory notes. Promissory notes are among the few instruments in commercial life that mean precisely what they say.

Liberty Mutual Insurance Company v. Wolfson, 299 So. 3d 28 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020). The firm obtained a $1.6 million verdict for its client in an underinsured motorist case and then defended it on appeal, where the insurer sought reversal of the entire verdict. The verdict was affirmed, with the setoffs the insurer requested.

Fields v. Toussie, 295 So. 3d 1191 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020). The firm domesticated a foreign judgment exceeding eight million dollars and obtained a writ of bodily attachment against a debtor who had treated a series of discovery orders as conversation starters. Affirmed on appeal. Court orders are not, in the end, advisory.

Inside the Art of Craftmanship Corp. v. Design Center of the Americas, 237 So. 3d 378 (Fla. 4th DCA 2018). Judgment of possession affirmed against a commercial tenant who failed to deposit rent into the court registry, notwithstanding that the courthouse was closed on the due date. The tenant's position was that a closed courthouse excused the deposit. The Fourth District's position was that the rent was still due.

Acquisition Trust Company, LLC v. Laurel Pinebrook, LLC, 226 So. 3d 325 (Fla. 2d DCA 2017), reh'g denied. Reversal of a dismissal with prejudice entered without leave to amend, in a case concerning the improper exercise of a right of first refusal.

Yellow Cab Co. v. Ewing ex rel. Jones, 225 So. 3d 302 (Fla. 3d DCA 2017). Dismissal of an untimely appeal taken from an amended final judgment that had corrected nothing more than a scrivener's error. Correcting a typographical error does not restart the appellate clock.

Gunter v. Sprintcom, Inc., 2016 WL 1619892 (M.D. Fla. Apr. 15, 2016). Order compelling arbitration and staying the litigation under the arbitration provision contained in the client's terms and conditions of service.

Almany Investors, Ltd. v. Nextel South Corp., 2015 WL 74091 (S.D. Fla. 2015). Summary judgment confirming the client's contractual right to terminate a communications site lease where the agreement permitted termination if the premises were determined to be inappropriate for its operations on economic or technological grounds, a right exercised following the shutdown of the iDEN network.

Design Center of the Americas, LLC v. Mike Bell, Inc., 54 F. Supp. 3d 1339 (S.D. Fla. 2014). The first published opinion in the district confirming that a defendant cannot use its own counterclaim to manufacture the amount in controversy and buy a ticket to federal court. Brief opinion. Considerable mileage since.

In re Turner, 519 B.R. 354 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. 2014). Rule 11 sanctions awarded in favor of a creditor represented by Alex, against a Chapter 13 debtor and his counsel, for filing a petition the debtor was ineligible to file and schedules that did not describe the world as it was.

Harty v. SRA/Palm Trails Plaza, LLC, 755 F. Supp. 2d 1215 (S.D. Fla. 2010). Clarifying that an ADA plaintiff lacks standing to complain of barriers he never encountered, and is not entitled to inspect, after filing, portions of a property he never visited.

Maya v. Omnicare, Inc., 2010 WL 2889569 (S.D. Fla. 2010). Confirming that removal on diversity grounds cannot rest on a speculative amount in controversy.

Martin v. Florida Power & Light Co., 909 So. 2d 555 (Fla. 4th DCA 2005). The first Florida decision establishing the duty of utilities in underground damage cases.

Briceno v. Sprint Spectrum, L.P., 911 So. 2d 176 (Fla. 3d DCA 2005). Addressing when parties are bound by standard contractual terms posted online, a question that has aged into one of the more consequential issues in commercial law.

Watson v. Adecco Employment Services, Inc., 252 F. Supp. 2d 1347 (M.D. Fla. 2003). Among the first decisions to define the limits of a temporary staffing firm's liability for discrimination against a temporary employee.

J & P Transport, Inc. v. Fidelity & Casualty Co. of New York, 750 So. 2d 752 (Fla. 5th DCA 2000). The first Florida decision establishing automatic treble civil damages following a criminal conviction for theft.

Enriquillo Export & Import, Inc. v. M.B.R. Industries, Inc., 733 So. 2d 1124 (Fla. 4th DCA 1999). The first Florida decision clarifying that payment by check is not payment upon mailing. Generations of debtors have been disappointed to learn this.

Every lawyer's website says this, and every lawyer's website is right about it. Past results are not a guarantee or prediction of the outcome of any other matter. Every case turns on its own facts.

When He Is Not Lawyering

Alex moves fast. He is a fitness enthusiast, a serious gardener, an amateur chef with unmistakably professional eating skills, and a persistent traveler. His actual vice is streaming, prestige drama and reality television received with equal gravity, watched with his wife and a running commentary neither of them has ever been asked to provide. Bravo operates as a second law firm in the household and logs comparable hours. He volunteers, spends time with his two daughters, who inherited the wit and have improved on it without permission, and answers to two dogs who are under no illusion about who runs the house.

The newest development is a grandson, who has taken over the schedule with a thoroughness that no opposing counsel has ever managed. He does not care about the reported decisions. He has no view on the amount in controversy. He is unimpressed by thirty-seven years at the bar and entirely uninterested in what the Fourth District held in 2018. What he wants is for someone to hold him and be quiet for a while, and Alex, who has built a career on knowing exactly what to say, has discovered that he is very good at this too.

The Bottom Line

Alex is the lawyer you call when the situation has moved past the point where being reasonable is going to fix it. He takes his clients' problems entirely seriously. Himself, only as seriously as necessary. His grandson, more seriously than either.