Trial Court’s Mandamus Reviewable

If a trial court’s stay order maintains the status quo, can the order be reviewed under Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.130? Or, in plain English, is an injunction by any other name still a reviewable injunction? The Third DCA says yes.

In City of Sunny Isles Beach v. Temple B’Nai Zion, Inc., No. 3D10-1137 (Sept. 8, 2010) [.pdf], the city and the Temple are wrangling over whether the Temple can demolish its existing building to make way for a new one, or whether the city can prevent demolition by naming the Temple a historic site. The trial court issued a “writ of mandamus” that ordered the city not to designate the property as an historic site while the case proceeded. The City appealed, and the Court answered the threshhold question — whether the “writ” was an appealable non-final order — in the affirmative.

Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.130(a)(3)(B) allows district courts of appeal to review “the non-final orders authorized herein”, including those that:

(B) grant, continue, modify, deny, or dissolve injunctions, or refuse to modify or dissolve injunctions;

So is a “mandamus” an injunction? It is when its purpose serves the same purpose as an injunction:

However, “[t]he very purpose of a temporary injunction is to preserve the status quo in order to prevent irreparable harm from occurring before a dispute is resolved. The Order in this case, by preserving the status quo … clearly constituted a temporary injunction.”

(citation omitted). Once framed as an injunction for review purposes, the court went on to explain that the order should also be reviewed as an injunction, and thus must comply with Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.610. It didn’t, and the Court therefore held the order to be an abuse of discretion.