Does Reversal on Appeal Establish Lack of Probable Cause in Florida?

Every litigator eventually hears some version of the same accusation: you lost on appeal, so you must not have had a leg to stand on when you sued in the first place.

Florida law has rejected that inference for nearly seventy years. And a 2025 Fifth District opinion confirms the rule has lost none of its force.

The short answer is this: under Florida law, reversal of a judgment does not by itself establish that the party who brought the underlying action lacked probable cause. In fact, a judgment obtained after trial may conclusively establish probable cause even when that judgment is later reversed, absent fraud, perjury, or other corrupt means.

The more interesting question is why.

Does Reversal on Appeal Establish Lack of Probable Cause in Florida?

The doctrine traces to Goldstein v. Sabella, 88 So. 2d 910 (Fla. 1956). In Goldstein, a landlord sued to evict her tenant and won a judgment in the trial court. The tenant appealed, and the judgment was reversed. The tenant then turned around and sued the landlord for malicious prosecution, arguing that the eviction action had been brought without probable cause.

The Florida Supreme Court disagreed with the tenant.

The Court held that a judgment obtained after a trial is conclusive evidence that the party who obtained it had probable cause to bring the action, even if that judgment is later reversed. The exception is where the judgment itself was obtained through fraud, perjury, or other corrupt means. Id. at 911–12.

The tenant had alleged that the judgment's reversal was evidence of lack of probable cause. She had not alleged fraud or corruption in procuring the original judgment. Her complaint therefore failed as a matter of law.

The rule makes intuitive sense once probable cause is separated from ultimate correctness. As Goldstein recognized, a litigant need not know with certainty how a proceeding will end to possess probable cause to bring it. Id. at 911.

Appellate reversal proves that the earlier judgment was erroneous. It does not necessarily prove that pursuing the claim that produced it was unreasonable from the beginning.

Why Does the Process Matter?

The logic is sturdier than merely an old rule still on the books. Thirty years later, in Burns v. GCC Beverages, Inc., 502 So. 2d 1217 (Fla. 1986), the Florida Supreme Court confronted a related question involving a magistrate's probable-cause determination supporting an arrest warrant.

The determination there had been made ex parte. The accused had no opportunity to know what evidence was presented to the magistrate, much less challenge it. The Court therefore held that the warrant did not create a presumption of probable cause in the later malicious-prosecution action. Id. at 1219–20.

By contrast, the Court explained, a probable-cause determination following an adversarial hearing—where the accused has an opportunity to participate and present evidence—can create a conclusive presumption, absent fraud or other improper conduct.

That distinction helps explain the architecture behind Goldstein. The doctrine is not simply about deference to whatever a court once said. It reflects the significance Florida law assigns to a judicial determination reached through a process in which the affected party had an opportunity to be heard.

Where an issue has actually passed through that adversarial process, a later reversal does not retroactively erase the reasonableness of having pursued the proceeding in the first place.

What Does Palm Coast Intracoastal Add to the Rule?

The other side of the equation surfaced with unusual clarity in Palm Coast Intracoastal, LLC v. Preserve Flagler Beach & Bulow Creek, Inc., 423 So. 3d 984 (Fla. 5th DCA 2025).

In Palm Coast, a developer sued opponents of one of its projects for malicious prosecution after the opponents challenged a county land-use approval by certiorari petition. The opponents lost before the circuit court and then lost again when they sought second-tier certiorari review in the Fifth District.

The developer argued, in substance, that those losses demonstrated the challenge lacked probable cause. There was an appealing symmetry to the developers argument: the opponents sued; they lost; therefore, they should not have sued.

The Fifth District rejected that framing.

“A civil proceeding's outcome does not automatically indicate the absence of probable cause,” the court explained. Id. at 990 (quoting Endacott v. International Hospital, Inc., 910 So. 2d 915, 924 (Fla. 3d DCA 2005))

The relevant question was not whether the opponents ultimately prevailed. It was whether, based on what the opponents knew when they initiated the proceeding, they reasonably believed their claims had merit. Id. at 989–90.

There is something particularly instructive about which court made the determination. The Fifth District was itself the court that had rejected the underlying second-tier certiorari petition. Yet the court's conclusion that the petition failed did not mean the petition lacked probable cause when it was filed.

“We rejected your argument” and “you had no reasonable basis to make that argument” are two very different propositions.

Appellate lawyers, perhaps more than most, should appreciate the distinction.

Winning and Losing Are Not Mirror Images

Read together, Goldstein and Palm Coast Intracoastal reveal something more interesting than the proposition that appellate outcomes do not matter.

They reveal an asymmetry.

A judgment entered after a sufficiently adversarial adjudication may conclusively establish the existence of probable cause, even if that judgment is later reversed. But losing the underlying proceeding does not correspondingly establish the absence of probable cause.

Winning and losing, in other words, are not mirror images for purposes of the probable-cause element of malicious prosecution.

That distinction also keeps probable cause separate from another element of malicious prosecution: whether the underlying proceeding resulted in a bona fide termination favorable to the party now bringing the malicious-prosecution action. There, appellate history can matter considerably. See Sharaka v. E & A, Inc., 135 So. 3d 428, 431–32 (Fla. 2d DCA 2014).

But favorable termination and lack of probable cause ask different questions. The former looks to how the underlying proceeding ended. The latter looks backward to whether there was a reasonable basis for initiating it.

Conflating the two is the mistake to avoid.

What Should Florida Litigators Take From These Cases?

For the lawyer defending a malicious-prosecution claim rooted in a prior appellate loss, the first instinct should not be to relitigate whether the client ultimately should have won.

Ask instead what the client knew, what the law stated, and what the client reasonably believed when the underlying proceeding began.

And if the client obtained a favorable judgment following an adversarial adjudication before that judgment was reversed, Goldstein may provide considerably more than persuasive evidence of probable cause.

For the lawyer bringing the malicious-prosecution claim, the lesson is equally important: reversal—or even an outright loss—is not a shortcut around the probable-cause element.

The architecture of Florida's rule is more precise than that.

A sufficiently adjudicated win may establish probable cause conclusively. A loss does not establish its absence.

Losing on appeal tells us who was right in the appeal. It does not necessarily tell us who was reasonable enough to bring the case in the first place.