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The Florida Supreme Court has suspended attorney David Robert Heil from the practice of law for three years, rejecting a referee’s recommendation of a 180 day suspension and imposing a far harsher penalty in a case that left a Central Florida couple living with a gutted kitchen and exposed drywall for nearly nine years.

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In an order issued April 9, 2026, the Court approved the referee’s findings of fact and guilt but disapproved the recommended discipline, instead imposing a three year suspension requiring proof of rehabilitation before Heil can return to practice.

According to the Report of Referee, Heil was hired in October 2016 by Reinaldo Rodriguez and Maria Batista to fight First Liberty Insurance Corporation’s denial of their water damage claim. Heil referred the couple to Speed Dry, Inc., a contractor he had represented since 2001 in more than one hundred court cases, earning over one million dollars in fees from that single client. He never disclosed the conflict. He never obtained written informed consent. He never told his clients he had personally reviewed and revised the assignment of benefits form Speed Dry handed them to sign.

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The referee found that Heil sent one letter to First Liberty in December 2016, ignored the insurer’s February 2017 follow up letter, and then did no further meaningful work on the homeowners’ claim. Behind the scenes, however, he filed suit on behalf of Speed Dry as the assignee, settling for over fifteen thousand dollars paid to Speed Dry and himself in 2019 and 2020, while telling Batista by email that the payments were a good sign their own claim was close to settlement.

For years, Heil told Rodriguez and Batista the case was active. When pressed in 2022, he claimed the insurance company had invoked appraisal and that he was out of the case. Counsel for First Liberty later confirmed appraisal was never invoked because the policy did not allow it. The appraisal clause had been replaced with mediation, a fact that would have been visible to Heil had he read the policy in his own file.

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The statute of limitations on the homeowners’ claim expired in August 2021. Heil paid restitution one week before the final hearing, nine years after the damage occurred.

The referee found this was Heil’s fourth disciplinary matter. He was admonished in 2008 for similar diligence and communication failures, suspended for ten days in 2009 for letting a personal injury client’s claim die after the defendant’s death, and admonished again in 2012 for a conflict of interest involving a public adjuster and a homeowner couple, just five years before he took on the Rodriguez and Batista case.

The Court found Heil guilty of violating Rules 3-4.3, 4-1.3, 4-1.4(a), 4-1.4(b), 4-1.7(a), and 4-1.16(d) of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar. The suspension takes effect 30 days from the order to allow Heil to close his practice, and he is barred from accepting new business immediately. Costs of $4,214.33 were taxed against him.

Justice Tanenbaum did not participate. Chief Justice Muniz and Justices Labarga, Couriel, Grosshans, Francis, and Sasso concurred.