By Steven M. Katzman

A married couple in Winter Park cash out a retirement account, take an SBA loan, and sign a ten-year franchise agreement for a boutique fitness studio. The franchise disclosure document they received has no earnings figures in it. The franchise development representative who sold them the deal, however, told them on two calls that “a mature studio in a market like yours does seventy to eighty thousand a month,” and emailed them a spreadsheet showing break-even in month nine. They open on schedule. Eighteen months later the studio has never cleared $38,000 in a month. The franchisor then sells a second territory whose boundary sits two miles from their front door, announces a mandatory $140,000 remodel to a new “brand standard,” and, when they fall two months behind on royalties, sends a notice of termination. The termination letter demands $410,000 in royalties for the remaining eight years of the term, reminds them of the two-year, ten-mile non-compete, and notes that both spouses signed personal guaranties.

The franchisor’s general counsel sees a different story: an underperforming operator who skipped required local marketing, ignored the training program, and stopped paying. Both views will be presented to a judge or an arbitrator, and the outcome will turn less on whose story is more sympathetic than on what the documents say, what was said outside them, and how early each side understood the rules.

Franchising is a large part of Florida’s economy, and many of the country’s best-known franchise systems are headquartered here. Franchise disputes are commercial cases with features that set them apart: a federal disclosure regime, a state statute aimed specifically at franchise misrepresentation, an agreement drafted entirely by one side, trademarks that keep working after the relationship ends, and covenants and guaranties that follow the owners personally. This article explains how those disputes are fought in Florida, from the sales process through termination and its aftermath, for franchisees and franchisors alike.

What makes a business relationship a franchise

Whether a deal is a franchise is a legal question, not a label. Under the Federal Trade Commission’s Franchise Rule, 16 C.F.R. Part 436, a commercial relationship is generally a franchise if three elements are present:

Trademark association. The buyer operates under, or is associated with, the seller’s trademark or service mark.
Significant control or assistance. The seller exerts significant control over, or provides significant assistance with, the buyer’s method of operation, such as site approval, operating manuals, required training, hours, or design standards.
Required payment. The buyer makes, or commits to make, a payment to the seller or its affiliate as a condition of obtaining or starting the business, above a minimum threshold that the FTC adjusts periodically.

Labels do not control. A “license,” “dealership,” or “distribution agreement” that meets all three elements is a franchise, and a seller that treated it as something else may have sold a franchise without the required disclosure. These accidental franchises come up often in Florida commercial litigation: a manufacturer grants a distributor exclusive use of its brand, requires adherence to its sales and display standards, and charges an “onboarding fee” or requires a minimum opening inventory purchase above the threshold. When the relationship sours, the distributor’s lawyer asks whether it was a franchise all along, and if so, why there was no disclosure document. The Rule contains exemptions, including for fractional franchises, large investments, and large and sophisticated franchisees, and whether one applies is often a contested question.

The disclosure system

The franchise disclosure document

The Franchise Rule requires a franchisor to give a prospective franchisee a franchise disclosure document, or FDD, at least 14 calendar days before the prospect signs a binding agreement or pays any money. The FDD has 23 items, including the franchisor’s litigation and bankruptcy history (Items 3 and 4), initial and ongoing fees (Items 5 and 6), the estimated initial investment (Item 7), restrictions on sources of products and services, including whether the franchisor or its affiliates profit from required purchases (Item 8), the franchisee’s obligations and the franchisor’s (Items 9 and 11), territory (Item 12), renewal, termination, transfer, and dispute resolution provisions (Item 17), any financial performance representations (Item 19), outlet data including the number of units opened, closed, and transferred and contact information for current and recently departed franchisees (Item 20), and audited financial statements (Item 21). The agreement the franchisee will sign must be attached. Material changes the franchisor makes unilaterally to the agreement must be provided at least seven calendar days before signing.

The FDD is the single most important document in most franchise disputes, for both sides. For the franchisor, it is the record of what was disclosed. For the franchisee, it is the baseline against which everything said outside it is measured.

Item 19 and earnings claims

A franchisor is not required to tell prospects what its units earn. If it chooses to, the claim must appear in Item 19, must have a reasonable basis and written substantiation, and must disclose the bases and assumptions behind it. A franchisor that makes no Item 19 representation must say so, and the Rule prohibits it and its sales personnel from making financial performance representations outside the FDD.

That prohibition is where many franchisee claims begin. In practice, prospects ask about revenue and profit, salespeople want to close, and the answers come in calls, discovery days, spreadsheets, “pro forma” models, and introductions to hand-picked franchisees. A statement like “mature studios do seventy to eighty a month,” made by a franchisor that disclaims any Item 19 representation, is exactly what the Rule forbids. A pro forma built by the franchisor’s development team, even one labeled “illustration only,” can be a financial performance representation. And an Item 19 that presents the top quartile of units, or average revenue without disclosing how many units fell short of it, can be challenged as lacking a reasonable basis or as misleading in how it is presented.

No federal private right of action, but Florida fills the gap

The FTC enforces the Franchise Rule, and the FTC Act does not give franchisees a private right of action. Florida law supplies one in two ways.

The Florida Franchise Act, Fla. Stat. § 817.416, prohibits a franchisor or its agents from intentionally misrepresenting the prospects or chances for success of a proposed or existing franchise, intentionally misrepresenting the known required total investment, and intentionally misrepresenting or failing to disclose efforts to sell or establish more franchises than is reasonable to expect the market can sustain. A franchisee injured by a violation has a civil remedy that includes damages and attorney’s fees. The statute requires an intentional misrepresentation, so the claim is built on evidence of what the franchisor knew: internal unit-level data that contradicted the pitch, closures it did not mention, or sales quotas that rewarded overselling a market.

The Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act defines a violation to include a violation of any rule promulgated under the FTC Act, and the Franchise Rule is such a rule. A franchisor’s failure to deliver an FDD on time, or a salesperson’s earnings claim outside Item 19, can therefore support a FDUTPA claim, with actual damages and a prevailing-party fee provision that cuts both ways. Our guide to FDUTPA claims in Florida explains how those claims work and the fee exposure a plaintiff takes on by filing one.

Florida’s business opportunity statute. Florida does not require franchisors to register their FDDs the way states such as California, New York, and Maryland do. Instead, franchisors that comply with the federal Rule claim an exemption from Florida’s Sale of Business Opportunities Act, Fla. Stat. §§ 559.80–559.815, by filing an annual notice with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services under § 559.802. Sellers of opportunities that are not franchises and do not qualify for an exemption face that Act’s own disclosure requirements and remedies. Whether the filing was made is a public-record question worth checking early in any dispute.

Fraud, disclaimers, and the acknowledgment problem

Franchisees also bring common-law fraudulent inducement and negligent misrepresentation claims. The franchisor’s main defenses are written: integration clauses stating that the agreement is the entire deal, disclaimers stating that the franchisee did not rely on any representation outside the FDD, and closing “acknowledgments” or “compliance questionnaires” in which the franchisee checks a box confirming that no one made any earnings claim.

Florida courts generally hold that a standard integration clause does not by itself bar a claim that the contract was procured by fraud. A specific, signed statement that the buyer did not rely on any representation about earnings is a harder obstacle, because a party generally cannot claim to have justifiably relied on a statement it disclaimed in writing. How much weight the disclaimer carries depends on its specificity, on the parties’ sophistication, and on whether the franchisor’s own conduct, such as coaching prospects to answer “no” or a salesperson telling them the questionnaire is a formality, undercuts it. Several franchise registration states have restricted the use of these questionnaires, and while those rules do not apply in Florida, the evidence about how the questionnaire was presented often decides whether it holds up.

In July 2024, the FTC issued a policy statement warning franchisors that contract clauses or practices that prevent franchisees from reporting possible violations of law to government agencies, including some non-disparagement and confidentiality clauses, may be unfair practices, and staff guidance cautioning that fees not disclosed in the FDD may violate the Rule. Neither creates a private claim, but both shape how courts and regulators view the conduct.

Disputes during the relationship

Territory and encroachment

A franchisee has only the territorial rights its agreement grants. Many agreements grant a protected territory defined by radius, ZIP code, or population, and reserve to the franchisor broad rights within it: selling through other channels, such as online, grocery, or delivery platforms; operating at “non-traditional” sites such as airports, stadiums, and universities; and acquiring or being acquired by a competing brand. Some grant no protection at all, which Item 12 must disclose.

Encroachment claims arise when the franchisor places a new unit, or sells through a new channel, close enough to divert the franchisee’s customers. If the new location is inside the protected territory, the claim is a straightforward breach of contract. If it is outside the territory, or in a channel the franchisor reserved, the franchisee usually has to rely on the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing. Florida law recognizes that covenant in every contract but does not allow it to override express terms. Where the agreement expressly reserves the franchisor’s right to do what it did, an implied covenant claim will usually fail. Where the agreement gives the franchisor discretion, such as approval of new sites, the covenant requires that discretion to be exercised in good faith and not arbitrarily or to deprive the franchisee of the benefit of its bargain. Unit-level sales data from before and after the new location opened, and the franchisor’s own site-selection analysis, are the evidence that decides these claims.

Remodels, technology fees, and supplier requirements

Franchise agreements commonly require the franchisee to comply with an operations manual that the franchisor may change, and to remodel or upgrade on the franchisor’s schedule. Disputes arise when a mandatory remodel, a new point-of-sale system, or a new technology fee arrives mid-term at a cost the franchisee did not anticipate. The questions are whether the agreement caps the frequency or cost of required upgrades, whether the new requirement is reasonably within the scope of “system standards” the franchisee agreed to follow, whether the fee was disclosed in Item 6, and whether the franchisor is applying the requirement uniformly.

Required suppliers raise similar questions. Item 8 must disclose whether the franchisor or its affiliates receive revenue, rebates, or other payments from required suppliers. A franchisee that discovers undisclosed rebates, or prices well above market from a supplier affiliated with the franchisor, may have contract, disclosure, and FDUTPA claims. Antitrust claims based on required purchasing are rarely successful when the requirements were disclosed before the franchisee signed.

Transfers, renewals, and the right to sell

Most franchise agreements require the franchisor’s consent to a sale of the franchise and give the franchisor a right of first refusal. Many require the buyer to sign the then-current form of agreement, pay a transfer fee, and complete training, and require the seller to sign a general release. Disputes arise when the franchisor withholds consent, conditions it on terms not in the agreement, or exercises its right of first refusal in a way that discourages buyers. Many agreements state that consent may not be unreasonably withheld, and even where they do not, the implied covenant applies to the franchisor’s exercise of discretion.

Renewal disputes follow a similar pattern. Renewal rights are usually conditional on the franchisee not being in default, remodeling to current standards, and signing the then-current agreement, which may carry higher royalties and a smaller territory.

Default and termination

Florida has no general franchise relationship statute. Unlike states such as New Jersey, Illinois, and Wisconsin, which restrict a franchisor’s right to terminate or refuse renewal without good cause, Florida leaves most franchise terminations to the contract. Specific industries are different: Florida regulates the relationship between motor vehicle manufacturers and dealers in detail under Fla. Stat. §§ 320.60–320.70, and other statutes cover particular distribution relationships. For a restaurant, fitness, service, or retail franchise, the agreement governs.

That makes the termination provisions the most important pages of the agreement once a relationship breaks down. Most agreements distinguish between:

Curable defaults, such as late royalties or missed reporting, which allow termination only after written notice and a cure period, often 10 to 30 days.
Non-curable defaults, such as abandonment, criminal convictions, unauthorized transfers, health and safety violations, or repeated defaults within a period, which allow immediate termination.
Cross-defaults, under which a default under one agreement, such as a lease, a supply agreement, or another franchise agreement held by the same owners, is a default under all of them.

Franchisor terminations are challenged on procedure as often as on substance. Was the notice sent to the address and in the manner the agreement requires? Did it identify the default and the cure period? Did the franchisee cure within the period? Did the franchisor waive the default by accepting late payments for months without objection? Did the franchisor’s own breach, such as failing to provide promised support, excuse the franchisee’s performance? A termination that does not follow the agreement is itself a breach, and a franchisee who keeps operating after a defective termination is in a very different position from one who has been properly terminated.

A franchisee who believes termination is wrongful has to decide quickly whether to seek an injunction preserving the franchise while the dispute is resolved. Courts are reluctant to force parties to continue a relationship, and a franchisee seeking that relief must show irreparable harm and a substantial likelihood of success, among other things. Our guide to emergency injunctions in Florida business litigation explains the standard.

After termination: royalties, trademarks, and covenants

Lost future royalties

Franchise agreements often entitle the franchisor to “liquidated damages” or lost future royalties when the franchisee’s default leads to termination, sometimes calculated as the average monthly royalty multiplied by the months remaining in the term, or a fixed number of years. Franchisees challenge these claims on several grounds.

Causation. A widely cited California decision, Postal Instant Press v. Sealy (Cal. Ct. App. 1996), held that a franchisor that chose to terminate for nonpayment could not recover royalties for the rest of the term, because the franchisor’s own termination, not the franchisee’s missed payments, ended the royalty stream. Courts across the country are divided on that reasoning, and results often turn on whether the franchisee abandoned the business, which looks more like repudiation, or was terminated by the franchisor for a curable payment default.

Penalty. A liquidated damages clause is enforceable in Florida only if the damages were not readily ascertainable when the contract was made and the stipulated sum is not grossly disproportionate to the damages reasonably expected to follow from a breach. A formula that awards the full gross royalty for eight years, without accounting for the franchisor’s saved costs, its ability to re-franchise the territory, or the unit’s actual performance, is vulnerable to challenge as a penalty.

Mitigation. A franchisor that re-sells the territory has replaced at least part of the lost income.

Our guide to proving business damages in Florida explains the reasonable-certainty standard that applies to lost-profit claims on either side.

Holdover use of the trademarks

The franchisor’s strongest post-termination remedy is usually trademark law. A franchisee who keeps operating under the franchisor’s marks after a valid termination is an infringer under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1114 and § 1125(a), because the public will assume the business is still part of the system and still subject to its quality controls. Federal courts in Florida routinely grant preliminary injunctions against holdover franchisees once the franchisor shows that the termination was proper, and the trademark injunction often decides the entire dispute. Under the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020, a trademark owner who shows likely success is entitled to a rebuttable presumption of irreparable harm.

The franchisee’s best defense is the validity of the termination itself. If the termination was wrongful, the franchisee’s continued use was authorized, and the trademark claim fails with it. This is why the procedural questions about notice and cure discussed above matter so much.

Termination also triggers de-identification obligations: removing signage and trade dress, turning over manuals, transferring telephone numbers and social media accounts, and sometimes selling equipment or assigning the lease to the franchisor under an option in the agreement.

Non-competes against former franchisees

Post-term covenants not to compete against former franchisees are governed by Fla. Stat. § 542.335, the same statute that governs most employee non-competes, and it contains a provision written for franchising. When a covenant is enforced against a former franchisee, distributor, dealer, or licensee of a trademark, a court must presume a restriction of one year or less reasonable in time and a restriction of more than three years unreasonable. The franchisor’s goodwill associated with its marks in a specific geographic area is a recognized legitimate business interest, irreparable injury is presumed once a violation is shown, and the court may not consider the individualized economic hardship the covenant imposes on the former franchisee. A two-year, ten-mile covenant in a typical franchise agreement sits comfortably within what Florida courts enforce.

The defenses are narrower than franchisees expect: that the franchisor has no legitimate business interest in the area, for example because it has no plan to re-enter the market; that the covenant is broader in scope than necessary, for example by barring any fitness business rather than a competing boutique studio; that the franchisor materially breached first; or that the covenant does not apply on its terms because the franchisee did not actually operate a competing business. Florida’s newer CHOICE Act, enacted in 2025 for certain highly compensated employees, does not change the franchise analysis. Our guide to non-compete agreements in Florida covers § 542.335 in detail.

Personal guaranties

Nearly every franchise agreement with an entity franchisee requires the owners, and often their spouses, to sign a personal guaranty of the entity’s obligations, including royalties, post-termination damages, and sometimes the covenants themselves. A franchisee that formed an LLC expecting to limit its exposure discovers that the guaranty puts the owners’ personal assets on the line. Spousal guaranties raise specific questions, including whether a spouse who had no role in the business was required to sign as a condition of the deal and what Florida’s homestead and tenancy-by-the-entireties protections do and do not shield. Our guide to personal guaranty disputes in Florida explains how guaranties are read and enforced.

Where and how the case will be decided

Forum selection and choice of law

Franchise agreements almost always designate the franchisor’s home state for disputes and select its law. Florida courts generally enforce mandatory forum-selection clauses, under the Florida Supreme Court’s decision in Manrique v. Fabbri (Fla. 1986), unless enforcement would be unjust or unreasonable, and federal courts enforce them under Atlantic Marine Construction Co. v. U.S. District Court (2013). A Florida franchisee of an out-of-state franchisor may be litigating in Texas, Georgia, or Minnesota under that state’s law. A franchisee of a Florida franchisor may be brought here.

The leading Supreme Court decision on jurisdiction over franchisees came out of Florida. In Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462 (1985), the Court held that a Michigan franchisee who negotiated a long-term relationship with a Miami-based franchisor, agreed to Florida law, and sent payments to Miami could be sued in Florida, even though he never set foot in the state. Florida franchisors continue to rely on that reasoning.

Arbitration

Many franchise agreements require arbitration, often with a class-action waiver, a confidentiality provision, and carve-outs that allow the franchisor to go to court for injunctions to protect its trademarks and enforce its covenants. Courts enforce these clauses under the Federal Arbitration Act, including class waivers. The asymmetry matters strategically: the franchisor may be able to obtain a trademark injunction in court quickly while the franchisee’s fraud and breach claims proceed in a private arbitration months later. Our guide to arbitration versus litigation in Florida explains how arbitration clauses are enforced and what changes when a dispute is arbitrated.

Shortened limitations periods and Fla. Stat. § 95.03

Franchise agreements frequently require claims to be brought within one year of the events giving rise to them, much shorter than Florida’s five-year statute for written contracts and four-year statutes for fraud and FDUTPA claims. Fla. Stat. § 95.03 declares void any contract provision that fixes a shorter period than the applicable statute of limitations for actions arising out of the contract. When Florida law governs, that protects franchisees. When the agreement selects another state’s law, as many do, the shortened period may be enforced, and the choice-of-law clause becomes a threshold battle.

Attorney’s fees and jury waivers

Most franchise agreements contain a prevailing-party attorney’s fee clause and a jury trial waiver. Under Fla. Stat. § 57.105(7), a fee clause that favors only one party is made reciprocal when Florida law applies, so a franchisee who prevails on a contract claim may recover fees under a clause drafted for the franchisor. Florida courts generally enforce knowing and voluntary jury waivers in commercial contracts. Our guide to attorney’s fees in Florida business litigation explains the reciprocity statute and how proposals for settlement can shift fees.

For franchisees: protecting yourself

Before signing:

Read the whole FDD, not the summary. Items 3, 7, 12, 17, 19, 20, and 21 deserve particular attention. Note the date you received it; the 14-day period runs from receipt.
Call former franchisees, not only the ones the franchisor recommends. Item 20 lists those who left the system in the last fiscal year. Their experiences are often more informative than any earnings claim.
Put every earnings statement in writing. If a salesperson tells you what units earn, ask why it is not in Item 19, and keep the emails, spreadsheets, and notes of calls.
Do not sign an acknowledgment that is untrue. If the questionnaire asks whether anyone made an earnings claim and someone did, say so, or do not sign until it is resolved.
Understand the guaranty, the covenant, and the territory before you invest. These three provisions decide what happens when things go wrong.

When a dispute arises:

Gather the sales file: the FDD and its receipt, every version of the agreement, emails, pro formas, and notes of calls and discovery days.
Track unit performance against what you were told, month by month.
Calendar every notice and cure period, and respond in writing using the notice provision in the agreement.
Keep paying what is undisputed where you can. A franchisee in payment default gives the franchisor an easy ground for termination that can overshadow stronger claims.
Do not simply stop operating or rebrand. Abandonment or holdover use of the marks can turn a franchisee with good claims into a defendant facing a trademark injunction, a non-compete, and a lost future royalty claim.
Check the forum, arbitration, and limitations provisions immediately. Some of your claims may already be running against a contractual clock.

For franchisors: avoiding the disputes that cost the most

Control the sales process. Train development staff that financial performance representations belong in Item 19 or nowhere, review sales materials, and preserve the communications.
Keep Item 19 defensible. Use data you can substantiate, disclose the bases and assumptions, and show how many units achieved the figures presented.
Document defaults and follow the agreement’s notice procedures exactly. Terminations fail on procedure more than substance.
Think before claiming lost future royalties. An aggressive damages demand can provoke counterclaims, and an unenforceable liquidated damages clause can undercut credibility with the court or arbitrator.
Move quickly against holdover use. Delay undercuts a request for injunctive relief and the presumption of irreparable harm.
Review agreements for gag clauses that could be read to prevent franchisees from communicating with regulators.

Back to the Winter Park studio

Applying these rules to the opening example:

The sales pitch. The FDD disclaimed any financial performance representation, so the salesperson’s “seventy to eighty a month” and the break-even spreadsheet were made outside Item 19, in violation of the Franchise Rule. That supports a FDUTPA claim and, if internal data shows the franchisor knew its mature studios were not reaching those figures, a § 817.416 claim and fraudulent inducement. The couple’s signed acknowledgment that no earnings claims were made is the franchisor’s main defense, and the evidence about how it was presented will matter.

The new territory. Whether the second studio is a breach depends on the couple’s protected territory. If it sits inside the radius, it is a breach. If outside it, the couple will need to show that the franchisor exercised a contractual discretion in bad faith, using unit-level data showing what the new location did to their sales.

The remodel. The question is whether the agreement allows a mid-term remodel of this scope and cost, and whether the requirement is being applied across the system.

The termination. A two-month royalty default is typically curable. If the franchisor did not give the required notice and cure period, the termination may itself be a breach, which also undermines any trademark and non-compete claims that depend on a valid termination.

The $410,000 demand. Eight years of gross royalties, for a studio the franchisor terminated over a curable default, is exposed on causation, penalty, and mitigation grounds.

The non-compete and guaranties. A two-year, ten-mile covenant falls within § 542.335’s franchise presumptions and is likely enforceable if the termination was valid. The guaranties put both spouses’ personal assets at risk for whatever the franchisor ultimately recovers, which makes the fraud and termination claims the couple’s most important leverage.

The forum. Before anything else, the couple’s lawyer needs to know where the dispute must be brought, whether it must be arbitrated, which state’s law applies, and whether any contractual limitations period is already running.

Frequently asked questions

Does Florida require franchisors to register? No. Florida is not a franchise registration state. Franchisors that comply with the FTC Franchise Rule file an annual exemption notice with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services under the state’s business opportunity statute.

Can I sue a franchisor for misrepresenting how much I would make? Potentially. Earnings claims made outside Item 19 of the disclosure document violate the FTC Franchise Rule, which can support a FDUTPA claim in Florida. Intentional misrepresentations about a franchise’s prospects for success or the required investment violate the Florida Franchise Act. Written disclaimers and acknowledgments you signed will be raised as defenses, and how they were presented matters.

Can my franchisor open another location near mine? It depends on the territorial rights in your agreement. If the new location is inside a protected territory, it is likely a breach. If your agreement grants no territory, or reserves the franchisor’s right to do what it did, your options are much more limited.

Can a franchisor terminate me without cause in Florida? Florida has no general statute requiring good cause, so termination rights depend on the agreement. Most agreements allow termination only for specified defaults, and many require notice and an opportunity to cure. A termination that does not follow the agreement can itself be a breach.

Is my franchise non-compete enforceable? Often, yes. Florida’s restrictive covenant statute presumes a post-term restriction of one year or less against a former franchisee reasonable and one of more than three years unreasonable. Scope, geography, the franchisor’s legitimate business interest, and whether the franchisor breached first all matter.

Do I have to arbitrate in the franchisor’s home state? Usually, if your agreement says so. Courts enforce arbitration and forum-selection clauses in franchise agreements in most circumstances, and the place, the governing law, and any shortened deadline should be checked as soon as a dispute arises.

Am I personally liable if my LLC owns the franchise? If you signed a personal guaranty, which most franchisors require, you are likely personally liable for the obligations it covers, which can include post-termination damages.

Talk to a Florida franchise litigation attorney

Franchise disputes are decided by documents signed years before the dispute began and by decisions made in the first weeks after it starts: whether to cure, whether to keep operating, whether to stop using the marks, where the claims must be filed, and whether a deadline in the agreement is already running. Franchisees who preserve the sales record and respond within the agreement’s procedures keep their claims and their leverage. Franchisors that follow their own termination procedures and act promptly against holdover use protect their systems and their brands.

KWBR’s complex commercial litigation, business transactions, arbitration, and financial damages practices represent franchisees, multi-unit operators, and franchisors in disclosure, encroachment, termination, trademark, covenant, and guaranty disputes, in court and in arbitration, from our Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, and Orlando offices. If your franchise relationship is heading toward a dispute, or a notice of default or termination has already arrived, contact us before you respond.

This article is for general informational purposes and is not legal advice. Franchise rights and remedies depend heavily on the specific agreement, the governing law it selects, and the facts; statutes, regulations, and case law change. Consult a qualified Florida attorney about your situation.

Franchise Disputes in Florida: Earnings Claims, Encroachment, Termination, and the Fights That Follow