About David Kerce
James David Kerce is a litigation attorney at Farah & Farah's Daytona Beach, Florida office, focusing on plaintiff personal injury matters. A native Floridian, he ran his own independent practice for more than a decade before joining Farah & Farah, and that solo-practice background informs the strategic, plan-it-out approach he brings to client cases.
- Kerce has handled a broad range of personal injury claims through jury trial — motor vehicle, pedestrian, motorcycle, and bicycle collisions
- slander and libel
- malicious prosecution
- funeral home director liability
- landowner liability
- and wrongful denial of insurance claims. He also handles federal-court matters before the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida
Kerce earned his B.S. in Political Science with a minor in International Studies from the University of South Florida and his J.D. from Samford University Cumberland School of Law. He is admitted to The Florida Bar and the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, and is a member of the Florida Justice Association.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Farah & Farah
These results are credited to Farah & Farah. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
A federal jury in Jacksonville found for Judith Berger, a forty-year smoker with end-stage COPD, on all claims against Philip Morris USA in September 2014. It awarded $6,250,000 in compensatory damages and $20,760,000.14 in punitive damages. The trial court set aside the fraud claims and the punitive award, but the Eleventh Circuit reinstated them in 2018 and held in 2021 that the punitive award was not unconstitutionally excessive.
A federal jury in Jacksonville found that cigarettes made by R.J. Reynolds were a legal cause of a Florida man's death from lung cancer in 1996. It awarded his widow $5.9 million in compensatory damages and assigned 27.5 percent of the fault to him, which produced a judgment of $4,277,500. In October 2014 the Eleventh Circuit reversed over the exclusion of evidence of his alcohol use and remanded for a new trial, and the case settled on undisclosed terms in January 2015 before any retrial.
A Duval County jury returned a $1.83 million verdict against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco in the wrongful-death claim of Kenneth Hiott, a longtime smoker who died of lung cancer; the trial court reduced the award to $730,000 based on comparative fault, and Florida's First District Court of Appeal affirmed in January 2014.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
