## Facts

- A contractor entered a construction contract with homeowners to build a residence.
- The contractor purchased hardware for the project from a supplier and incorporated it into the home.
- The homeowners took possession but allegedly did not pay an unpaid balance of about $19,500, prompting the contractor to file a circuit-court action to foreclose a mechanic’s lien and recover the contract balance.
- While that action was pending, the supplier sued the contractor and the homeowners in county court for about $900 for the hardware.
- In the supplier’s county-court case, the contractor asserted a cross-claim against the homeowners seeking reimbursement for any amount the contractor owed the supplier; the county court entered judgment against the contractor for $900 and, on the cross-claim, ordered the homeowners to pay that amount to the contractor.
- The homeowners then asserted in the circuit-court lien foreclosure case that the contractor had impermissibly split a single cause of action by recovering the $900 item in county court, barring further recovery on the construction contract.
- The circuit court dismissed the contractor’s circuit-court case with prejudice; the intermediate appellate court affirmed without opinion.

## Issues

1. Whether a contractor’s recovery on a county-court cross-claim for a $900 supplier charge connected to the same project constitutes impermissible splitting of a cause of action that bars a separate pending circuit-court mechanic’s lien and contract action for approximately $19,500 against the same homeowners.

## Decision

- The Florida Supreme Court quashed the intermediate appellate decision and set aside the circuit court’s dismissal with prejudice.
- The Court held that the contractor’s county-court cross-claim and judgment did not bar the separate circuit-court foreclosure/contract action.
- The case was remanded to allow the contractor to proceed with the circuit-court action.

## Legal Principles

- A party generally must seek in one action all relief arising from a single, indivisible cause of action; piecemeal litigation of contract damages can be barred as claim splitting.
- The claim-splitting doctrine is applied in light of its purposes (avoiding harassment, repeated litigation, and inconsistent obligations) and should not be applied mechanically to produce forfeiture or inequitable results.
- A limited, reactive cross-claim in a separate action initiated by a third party—especially in a court with restricted monetary jurisdiction—may be treated as incidental and not as an election to litigate the entire contract controversy, and thus may not preclude a larger, properly pending claim.

## Conclusion

The Court refused to treat a small county-court pass-through cross-claim arising from a supplier’s suit as a bar to a contractor’s much larger, already pending mechanic’s lien and contract action, because applying claim-splitting doctrine in that setting would not serve its protective purposes and would unjustly extinguish a substantial claim.


Stanley Builders, Inc. v. Nacron, 238 So. 2d 606 (Fla. 1970)