This paperwork fell through the cracks.

An attorney who was held in contempt by the Florida Bar last month for not providing an affidavit required by a previous suspension will not have to serve his punishment.

That is because he died in July 2024.

The Florida Supreme Court suspended Emelike Nwosuocha, a Miami-area attorney, for three years on Dec. 11, the Miami Herald reported.

According to database and posts on social media, Nwosuocha died on July 21, 2024. He was 64.

An Instagram post on Nov. 1, 2025, by actress Nia Miranda, who is one of Nwosuocha’s four children, noted that she learned that her father died of a heart attack.

“My father had not been sick,” Miranda wrote. “He was still going to the gym. I had scheduled a flight to see him directly after I was done filming.”

It was the second time in five years that a South Florida lawyer was disciplined after dying.

Delray Beach attorney Sabrina Spradley died on Oct. 14, 2019. She was suspended in February 2020 and disbarred 10 months later.

The suspension came after a medical negligence civil case filed by Nwosuocha on behalf of a client was dismissed and the defendant was awarded $5,310 in attorney’s fees.

The defendant filed a grievance claiming he could not collect the money from Nwosuocha. When the attorney did not answer the grievance until a fault judgment was lodged against him, he received a six-month suspension on Aug. 17, 2023.

That gave Nwosuocha a month to provide an affidavit, but he did not do that or pay the attorney’s fees.

The Florida Bar filed a petition for contempt on April 17, 2024. Nwosuocha would tell the court that “I dropped all my clients and advised them that I was suspended.”

He added that he lacked funds to pay any fees because he was unable to get hired while under suspension, the Herald reported.

However, his response came too late and Nwosuocha received a one-year suspension for contempt on June 18, 2024. Another notification affidavit was due July 17, 2024; Nwosuocha died four days later.

On Oct. 11, 2024, the Florida Bar sent a letter and email to Nwosuocha, informing him “of his noncompliance with the conditions of his suspension to his record bar mailing address and record bar email address, specifically his failure to submit the sworn affidavit.”

The request also asked the Florida Supreme Court to fine the attorney $1,250 in case costs. The state’s highest court complied on Dec. 11, 2025 — 508 days after Nwosuocha’s death.

© 2025 Cox Media Group