A certified conflict among Florida's district courts has created a divided legal landscape around a deceptively simple question: when a party files a document requesting a trial de novo from a court-ordered non-binding arbitration award, does it also have to say — in those words — that it rejects the award? The answer, for now, depends on where in Florida your case is pending.
Florida's court-ordered non-binding arbitration system is a creature distinct from the binding commercial arbitration that most practitioners associate with the term "arbitration." Understanding that distinction is essential to understanding why the decision in Waterfront in Naples Condominium Association, Inc. v. Reynolds Ventures, Inc., Case Nos. 6D2025-0624 and 6D2025-0623 (consolidated) (Fla. 6th DCA Aug. 21, 2026), matters — and why its implications are simultaneously narrow in scope and potentially catastrophic in consequence for any party who navigates the post-award process incorrectly.
Non-Binding Arbitration: What It Is and What It Is Not
Court-ordered non-binding arbitration in Florida is governed by Section 44.103 of the Florida Statutes and Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.820. It is not the same as the binding arbitration that parties agree to contractually, which is governed by Chapter 682 of the Florida Statutes, the Revised Florida Arbitration Code. The two systems share a label but operate on fundamentally different premises.
In binding arbitration under Chapter 682, the parties have contractually surrendered their right to litigate their dispute through the court system in exchange for a private adjudication process of their choosing. The arbitrator's award is final. The grounds for vacating it are narrow, structural, and not a substitute for appellate review of the merits. An erroneous legal conclusion by the arbitrator is not a ground for vacatur. An erroneous factual finding is not a ground for vacatur. The award stands or falls on whether the arbitrator acted within authority, without corruption or misconduct, and pursuant to a valid agreement to arbitrate. When the award is confirmed and reduced to judgment, it is enforceable as any other civil judgment, and the parties have no further recourse on the merits.
Court-ordered non-binding arbitration is different in every material respect. The court refers the case to arbitration not because the parties agreed to it, but because the court has determined that arbitration may facilitate resolution. The arbitration applies equally to cases that would otherwise be tried to a jury and to cases that would be tried to the bench. The arbitrator issues a decision, but that decision does not carry the finality of a binding award unless the parties allow it to become final by failing to act. Either party retains the right to a trial on the merits. The mechanism for preserving that right is the request for trial de novo, which must be filed within twenty days of service of the arbitrator's decision. If timely filed, the arbitration decision is set aside and the case proceeds to trial as though the arbitration had not occurred. If no timely request is filed, the decision is referred to the presiding judge, who enters judgment in conformance with the arbitrator's decision.
The stakes of the twenty-day window, and of what must be contained in the filing made within it, extend well beyond the procedural. Miss the window or file an insufficient document, and a party has permanently forfeited its right to a trial on the merits — whether that trial would have been before a jury or before the court. Where the underlying case would have been tried to a jury, that forfeiture may implicate constitutional dimensions. But the consequence is the same in either event: the arbitration decision becomes the final resolution of the dispute. That is the context in which the Sixth District's decision in Waterfront in Naples must be understood.
The 2024 Amendment to Rule 1.820(h) and the Conflict It Generated
Before July 2024, Rule 1.820(h) required a party to file a motion for trial de novo within twenty days of service of the arbitrator's decision. Courts applying the prior version of the rule had, in various circumstances, found substantial compliance where a party's conduct — filing documents in anticipation of trial, attending pretrial conferences, participating in case management — gave the opposing party notice that the arbitration decision would not be accepted as final. The amendment was designed to close that door.
The Florida Supreme Court retitled subsection (h) as "Notice of Rejection of the Arbitration Decision and Request for Trial" and directed that, to reject the arbitration decision, a party "must file a notice of rejection of the arbitration decision and request for trial in the same document." The amendment added: "No action or inaction by any party, other than the filing of the notice, will be deemed a rejection of the arbitration decision." The intent was to make clear that conduct alone could no longer substitute for a properly filed document. What the amendment did not resolve with equal clarity was what that document needed to contain.
The Fourth District answered that question first, in People's Trust Insurance Co. v. Hernandez, 413 So. 3d 127 (Fla. 4th DCA 2025). A homeowner had filed a notice demanding a trial de novo but had not expressly stated that the filing constituted a rejection of the arbitration decision. The Fourth District found that deficiency fatal. It rejected the argument that a party cannot logically request a trial de novo without necessarily rejecting the arbitration decision, declined to apply any substantial compliance analysis, and held that the amended rule left no room for deviation. One judge, concurring, observed that the amended rule left no room for "legal wiggling."
The Third District reached the same conclusion in Sanchez v. People's Trust Insurance Co., 434 So. 3d 155 (Fla. 3d DCA 2026), applying the supremacy-of-text principle and holding that because the rule required, without exception, both a notice of rejection and a request for trial de novo filed in the same document within twenty days, a filing that requested a trial de novo without expressly rejecting the decision failed to satisfy the rule. The court acknowledged the rule was strict but observed it was "strict for a reason."
The Sixth District considered the same question in Waterfront in Naples and reached a different conclusion. Its reasoning offers a textual basis for the result that practitioners and parties will want to understand, both because the conflict has been certified to the Florida Supreme Court and because the Sixth District's approach may ultimately prove persuasive to the court that resolves it.
The Sixth District's Reasoning and Why It Warrants Attention
The Sixth District applied the same textualist framework as the Third and Fourth Districts but read the rule with greater textual granularity. It identified two features of the amended rule's language that its analysis treated as significant.
First, the rule requires filing "a notice of rejection," using the indefinite article rather than the definite article. The use of "a" signals that no specific, previously identified document is required — only a document that belongs to the class of things the rule describes. A document that constitutes a notice of rejection satisfies the rule; the rule does not, on this reading, require that the document be titled with those exact words or that those words appear verbatim within it. Second, the phrase "notice of rejection" is neither capitalized nor placed in quotation marks within the rule, which would more clearly signal that the Florida Supreme Court intended it as a defined term requiring verbatim replication.
The court then examined the Association's filing under the plain and ordinary meaning of the words the rule uses. "Notice" means a written or printed announcement. "Rejection" means a refusal to accept. The Association's filing stated that it was requesting a trial de novo from the non-binding arbitration award dated September 24, 2024, as to all claims. That language announced, in writing, the Association's refusal to accept the arbitration decision. The court could identify no other reasonable reading of those words.
The Sixth District also grounded its decision in the relationship between the rule and the statute it implements. Section 44.103(5) requires only a timely request for trial de novo to avoid finality. The Association had filed exactly that. A procedural rule, the court observed, should not be construed so strictly as to defeat the substantive statute it is designed to implement. The court declined to adopt what it characterized as a "magic words" test, finding that reasonable construction of the rule's text — to contain all that it fairly means, neither more nor less — was satisfied by a filing that announced, in plain terms, a party's refusal to accept the non-binding arbitration decision and its request for trial.
Whether the Florida Supreme Court finds the Sixth District's textual analysis more persuasive than the Third and Fourth Districts' reading remains to be seen. The competing interpretations reflect a genuine tension in how the rule's language interacts with the interpretive framework the courts themselves have endorsed — a tension that the certified conflict exists precisely to resolve.
What Counsel and Parties Must Do Right Now
The conflict is certified. The Florida Supreme Court will ultimately resolve it. Until it does, parties in court-ordered non-binding arbitration proceedings in Florida face a divided legal environment in which the sufficiency of a post-award filing may depend on which district court sits above the circuit where the case is pending.
In circuits subject to the Third District — Miami-Dade County — and the Fourth District — Broward, Palm Beach, and their surrounding circuits — the Hernandez and Sanchez holdings present a genuine risk that a filing requesting a trial de novo without expressly including a notice of rejection will be found deficient. In circuits subject to the Sixth District, Waterfront in Naples provides a more forgiving standard. Elsewhere, the law is unsettled pending Supreme Court resolution.
The safe practice, in every circuit and regardless of whether the underlying case would be tried to a jury or to the bench, is straightforward: every post-award filing under Rule 1.820(h) should be titled "Notice of Rejection of Non-Binding Arbitration Decision and Request for Trial De Novo" and should state expressly in its opening paragraph that the filing party rejects and refuses to accept the non-binding arbitration decision and requests a trial de novo. There is no strategic advantage to omitting that language, and the consequences of the omission in the circuits that currently require it are the permanent loss of the right to a trial on the merits.
Counsel should also calendar the twenty-day window from the date of service of the arbitrator's decision, not from the date of the award itself, and should not assume that any extension, stay, or case management order affects that window. The twenty-day period is treated as mandatory, and the appellate courts have been consistently unsympathetic to arguments that it was missed for reasons outside a party's control.
The Broader Lesson About Non-Binding Arbitration
Waterfront in Naples is a reminder that court-ordered non-binding arbitration is not a low-stakes preliminary exercise. The arbitration decision, if allowed to become final, is reduced to an enforceable judgment. The process by which finality is either accepted or challenged operates on a compressed timeline with no margin for error and no mechanism for equitable relief once the window has closed. This is equally true whether the underlying case is a contract dispute destined for a bench trial or a tort claim with a jury demand pending.
From the perspective of a neutral who presides over these proceedings, the case also underscores a point that parties sometimes overlook when they approach court-ordered non-binding arbitration as an obligation to be discharged rather than an opportunity to be taken seriously. The arbitration hearing is the proceeding on which the outcome depends. The arbitrator's decision, in the non-binding context, reflects the neutral's assessment of where the evidence points and how the law applies. A party that prepares for and presents at the hearing with the discipline of a trial — with organized evidence, focused argument, and a clear theory of the case — produces a record that either generates a favorable decision or informs the strategic calculus about whether to request a trial de novo. A party that treats the non-binding arbitration as a dress rehearsal produces neither.
The quality of the neutral presiding over the proceeding matters accordingly. An experienced arbitrator who manages the hearing with discipline, evaluates the evidence fairly, and issues a reasoned decision gives the parties what the system is designed to provide: an informed, neutral assessment that either resolves the dispute or clarifies the landscape for whatever proceeding follows. That is the value of the process, properly conducted.
Conclusion
The certified conflict in Waterfront in Naples Condominium Association, Inc. v. Reynolds Ventures, Inc., Case Nos. 6D2025-0624 and 6D2025-0623, will reach the Florida Supreme Court. Each of the district courts that addressed the question applied a recognized interpretive framework to the same statutory and rule text and reached reasoned but different conclusions. The Supreme Court's resolution will clarify the law for the entire state.
In the meantime, the lesson for parties and counsel is clear. In court-ordered non-binding arbitration proceedings — whether the case would be tried to a jury or to the bench — the twenty-day post-award window is everything, the filing made within it should expressly state both the rejection of the arbitration decision and the request for trial de novo regardless of which district governs the appeal, and the arbitration hearing itself is the proceeding that shapes everything that follows. None of those propositions is controversial. All of them are consequential.