Lawsuit: Miami NIL King John Ruiz’s Co. Refused to Pay Helicopter Bill

A contractor has sued wealthy Miami lawyer and executive John Ruiz’s aviation firm, claiming it refused to pay a bill for repairs on his $30 million helicopter. 

In the Miami-Dade County lawsuit, Delaware-based Summit Aviation claims that after it repaired and refurbished Ruiz’s Sikorsky S92 helicopter, his company failed to pay the full amount for the services — leaving a balance that exceeds $172,000.

“Defendant has refused to remit payment following demand,” reads the lawsuit, which was filed against Ruiz’s Coral Gables-based company, MSP Recovery Aviation, on January 22.

Ruiz’s company entered into a contract with Summit Aviation in February 2022 for repairs and other work on the luxury 19-seat chopper, according to the complaint. The court file includes a work order that lists dozens of services to be performed on the aircraft, including painting, pressure washing, tail rotor work, mechanical maintenance, and inspection services. A July 2022 invoice lists four pages of parts and supplies and a labor cost of $162,000.

When reached by New Times, MSP Recovery Aviation denied the allegations and claimed Summit “failed to timely perform the agreed upon work.”

“This is a frivolous lawsuit from a company that was paid $316,610.86, despite being negligent and unable to complete the work that was contracted by both parties. Summit Aviation Inc. held the aircraft for many months beyond the timeframe that was agreed upon, at the expense of MSP Recovery Aviation, and submitted invoices for work that was never approved,” MSP Recovery Aviation’s agent, SmartJets, said in a statement.

SmartJets, which managed the repair project, claims Summit also sold a nearly $64,000 part that belonged to MSP Recovery Aviation and kept the money.

The statement says Ruiz’s company will “vigorously defend itself against these false allegations.”

An attorney for Summit Aviation tells New Times the company declined to comment beyond saying it “hopes through the litigation to receive the past due payment for the repair work on MSP’s helicopter.”

The contract in the court file describes an aircraft downtime of 40 to 60 “estimated working days.” It mentions high-priced items such as replacing a shaft-and-bearing assembly for the copter’s tail rotor, as well as installation of soundproofing material at a cost of $95,000.

Aside from the helicopter at the heart of the lawsuit, Ruiz owns a fleet of aircraft, including a number of luxury planes he has paid to have refurbished over the years.

In 2022, New Times reported that Ruiz hired VIP Completions, a sister company of SmartJets, to turn a Qantas Boeing 767 into a flying luxury penthouse, complete with two lounge rooms and a master bedroom with a queen-size bed and luxury bath. (VIP Completions’ president told New Times he couldn’t remember whether Ruiz’s Boeing 767 was the fifth or sixth plane his company had refurbished for the entrepreneur.)

A shareholder of Ruiz’s publicly traded insurance-claim recovery company, MSP Recovery (a firm that’s separate from MSP Recovery Aviation), tried to bring a class-action lawsuit last year, claiming MSP Recovery spent exorbitant funds on air travel on the decked-out 767.

But a court dismissed that case as a “shotgun pleading”; the judge said the filing contained boilerplate language that made it unclear which claims applied to each count.

Ruiz is perhaps best known in South Florida as host of the Spanish-language program “La Ley” and as an attorney in high-stakes insurance litigation cases. He made national headlines in 2022, when MSP Recovery went public with a $32 billion valuation but suffered a subsequent stock collapse in which shares lost most of their value.

A darling of the early name-image-and-likeness (NIL) era for college athletes –– and one of the University of Miami’s most prominent athletic supporters –– Ruiz reportedly invested $14 million in NIL deals for 165 athletes, including Kansas State transfer Nijel Pack. ESPN once dubbed Ruiz “Miami’s NIL King.”

While he helped bring athletes — and an influx of money — to his alma mater’s athletic program, the entrepreneur ran into controversy after UM’s women’s basketball team learned that he invited two recruits, the famed Cavinder twins, to his home for dinner. While team was subsequently sanctioned by the NCAA, Ruiz maintained there was nothing improper about the meeting.