Fourth District Court of Appeal Judge Alan Forst seemed to have his hands tied in a case involving an attorney who took a clandestine $100,000 payment from South Florida developers to act against his client in a real estate deal.

Forst sat on the appellate panel adjudicating whether to award attorney fees to widows who claim lawyers and developers defrauded them on a $6.2 million sale of a Boca Raton cemetery following their husbands’ deaths.