Fifth District Changes Procedures for Extensions of Time

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The Fifth District Court of Appeal has twice modified its rules regarding extensions of time in less than a month, reducing the availability of stipulated extensions and placing additional burdens on all attorneys seeking an extension for their clients.

Agreed Extensions of Time for Filing Briefs

Since 2013, the Fifth District has allowed parties to file a “notice” in lieu of a “motion” to obtain limited extensions of time for briefs in criminal and civil appeals, with certain exceptions.  The original administrative order authorized as much as 90 days for initial or answer briefs, and 60 days for reply briefs.

But in an amended order effective March 2, 2018, the amount of time available is now limited to 60 days for initial or answer briefs, and 30 days for reply briefs.

New Notice Requirements for Extensions

The Fifth District did not stop there.  In its March 27, 2018 Administrative Order A05D18-02, the Fifth District mandated that every extension request filed by an attorney must be accompanied by a certification that the attorney has provided a copy of the motion or notice to his/her clients.  This applies to all cases before the Court, and not just those that allow for the “notice” procedure discussed above.

The administrative order notes that it does not “require the client’s signature or consent,” nor does the certification have to include the client’s name, address, or signature.  According to the order, the attorney will comply with the order by certifying “by a statement included in the signed certificate of service on the motion or notice filed with this Court, that counsel has that day provided a copy of the motion or agreed notice to his/her client(s) via U.S. Mail, e-mail, or by hand delivery.”

The order does warn, however, that noncompliance with this requirement may result in the denial of any request for extension of time, whether by notice or motion.

What it Means to You

Given these added restrictions, we deduce that the Fifth District must perceive there has been some abuse of its extension procedures that require stricter regulation.  The new rules appear designed to increase attorney oversight by both the Court and clients.  Unfortunately, for those attorneys who do not abuse the process, these new rules will make seeking an extension slightly more difficult, and it will reduce the number of limited extensions available.  It remains to be seen whether other districts will adopt similar rules.

There is a strong likelihood that many who do not specialize in appellate practice will be caught off-guard by this new rule, and thus will have a motion or notice for extension denied or stricken.  We watch for rule changes like this because appeals are what we do.  Let us help you navigate the intricacies of the specific rules for each of the appellate courts in Florida to avoid getting caught in any procedural traps such as the ones created by these new rule changes in the Fifth District.

A final note — if you want a blast from the past, check out the article Jared wrote back in 2014 for the HCBA Lawyer on the issue of stipulated extensions of time when the concept was still brand new!

UPDATE: We’ve created a handy guide to help you keep the different courts’ rules straight. Click here to sign up for our newsletter and get a link to download the guide!

Can Judges and Lawyers Be Facebook “Friends”? It Depends Where You Are.

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An attorney can be friends with a judge IRL (in real life). Now they can be Facebook friends too–at least in the Third District.

The Third District Court of Appeal, recognizing the evolving influence and role of social media in our society, has held that a judge should not be disqualified from a case for merely being Facebook “friends” with counsel for a party.

In Law Offices of Herssein and Herssein, P.A., v. United Services Automobile Association, 3D17-1421 (Fla. 3d DCA Aug. 23, 2017), the petitioners filed a writ of prohibition, seeking to disqualify the trial court judge because a potential witness and a potential defendant was listed on the judge’s personal Facebook page as a “friend.”

This issue has nearly a decade of history in Florida law.  In 2009, a Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee Opinion said that a judge may not add lawyers who may appear before him as “friends” on social networking sites, and vice versa.  In 2012, the Fourth District relied on the JEAC Opinion and granted a writ of prohibition, disqualifying a judge because he was Facebook “friends” with the prosecutor, Domville v. State, 103 So. 3d 184 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012).

Then, in 2014, the Fifth District granted a writ of prohibition because the trial judge “reached out” to a party in a dissolution case while litigation was pending and tried to “friend” her on Facebook.”  Chace v. Loisel, 170 So. 3d 802 (Fla. 5th DCA 2014).  While clearly what the trial court did was wrong, and factually different than the issue in Domville, the Chace court went on to express “serious reservations about the court’s rationale in Domville.”  The Fifth District said that “there is no difference between a Facebook ‘friend’ and any other friendship a judge might have,” and that “Domville’s logic would require disqualification in cases involving an acquaintance of a judge.”  The Fifth District also noted that “A Facebook friendship does not necessarily signify the existence of a close relationship.”

This is the legal landscape in which the Third District decided Herssein.  Preliminarily, the court recognized that merely being “friends” in the conventional sense has been historically insufficient to warrant disqualification of a judge.  It then latched onto the Fifth District’s statement regarding the closeness of Facebook “friends,” applying this rationale for three reasons:

  • “Some people have thousands of Facebook ‘friends,'”
  • “Facebook members often cannot recall every person they have accepted as ‘friends’ or who have accepted them as ‘friends,'” and
  • “many Facebook ‘friends’ are selected based upon Facebook’s data-mining technology rather than personal interactions.”

The Fifth District noted that Domville had been decided many years prior, in a quickly-evolving technological landscape–stated simply, times have changed.  It certified conflict with Domville, and denied the petition, holding that merely being Facebook “friends” with someone no longer demonstrates closeness of a relationship.

So where does that leave us practicing attorneys?

  • In the Third District, whether you are Facebook “friends” with a judge is irrelevant to whether your actual relationship is sufficiently close to warrant disqualification.  See Herssein.
  • In the Fourth District, being Facebook “friends” with a judge is sufficient on its own to warrant a disqualification.  See Domville.
  • The Fifth District’s dicta suggests it would side with the Third District, but it has issued nothing precedential upon which to rely.  See Chace.
  • Neither the First nor Second Districts have spoken on the issue.

How Are Deadlines Affected When the Courts Close Due to Weather?

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Matthew DPW Legal Appeals Court Deadlines

Hurricane Matthew is looking pretty creepy in this NASA Earth Sciences image.
Don’t let Matthew ruin your appeal!

Three Florida Appellate Courts have announced closures so far due to Hurricane Matthew. The Third and Fourth Fourth District Courts of Appeal will be closed from 1 pm today through Friday October 7th, while the Fifth District will be closed Thursday and Friday. The Florida Supreme Court aggregates announcements about emergency closures for the entire state court system on its emergency page.

What is the effect of a court closure on deadlines and argument? Certainly, argument is cancelled and will have to be rescheduled. But what about regular deadlines? It appears an emergency closure does not count as a “Court Holiday” under Florida Rules of Judicial Administration Rule 2.514(4)(B) — the Courts are not calling it a “holiday,” and doing so probably has personnel implications that Court administration doesn’t want to deal with. However, the Florida Supreme Court generally issues administrative orders extending deadlines in the affected counties, and likely will do so in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. The orders generally state that the Supreme Court is intending to “equitably relieve parties in all pending cases by extending legal time limits that they otherwise would have been unable to meet due to the emergency.” See, e.g., AOSC16-23, In re EMERGENCY REQUEST TO EXTEND TIME PERIODS UNDER ALL FLORIDA RULES OF PROCEDURE FOR HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY IN THE THIRTEENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT [.pdf]. And if the emergency further impedes the attorney or client, then the trial court is directed to resolve the claim “case-by-case basis when a party demonstrates that the lack of compliance with requisite time periods was directly attributable to this
emergency and that equitable remedy is required.” Id. I wouldn’t worry about a deadline for filing a brief — the extension will either be automatically granted by an administrative order, or the Court will be receptive to a motion for leave to accept a late-filed brief.

But what about deadlines that are not normally allowed to be extended? Rule 1.090 states that, even for good cause, a Court:

may not extend the time for making a motion for new trial, for rehearing, or
to alter or amend a judgment; making a motion for relief from a judgment under
rule 1.540(b); taking an appeal or filing a petition for certiorari; or making a
motion for a directed verdict.

There is some authority on this issue, but it is sparse and not directly on point. The Third District has held that the statute of limitations is not tolled by an administrative order closing the courts for weather-related issues. Ramirez v. McCravy, 4 So.3d 692 (Fla. 3d DCA 2009) [.pdf]. The Fourth District has held that hurricane-related closures and the resulting administrative order did toll a deadline, but it was a deadline to file for review of arbitration, which is not one of the types of deadlines excluded from enlargement by Rule 1.090. Rasabi v. Salomon, 51 So.3d 1284 (Fla. 4th DCA 2011) [.pdf]. And certainly, a court may by administrative order declare a date a Holiday, thus eliminating that day from being counted as the last day in any time calculation under Rule 2.514. See, e.g., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. Kenyon, 826 So.2d 370 (Fla. 2d DCA 2002)[.pdf] (applying prior time calculation rule). Maybe since the Florida Supreme Court promulgated Rule 1.090, its administrative orders can supersede this issue. But I wouldn’t count on it, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be the guinea pig having to argue it to the Court in order to preserve my client’s right to appeal.

Here’s what I recommend: When it comes to a notice of appeal or a motion for rehearing, best not to mess around. Get it filed by the deadline, or early, rather than rely on a yet-to-be issued AO. Jurisdictional and hard deadlines are not to be messed with. And if your issue is the timeliness of a Rule 1.530 motion for rehearing or new trial, don’t wait for the timeliness issue to play out: file your notice of appeal no later than the 30th day after the original order was filed with the clerk, rather than counting on tolling. Since the 2015 rules change eliminated the trap caused by the old rules, and filing a notice of appeal no longer abandons a properly filed motion for rehearing, there’s no reason not to just get the notice of appeal on file, even if the fight over the timing of the 1.530 motion is still pending. See Fla. R. App. P. 9.020(i)(3)(stating that appeal shall be held in abeyance while tolling motion is decided).

What happens if you do get in a pinch? If you have to make the Hail Mary throw, perhaps a Rule 1.540(b) motion asking for the judgement to be re-issued due to excusable neglect could work. The appellate courts have very rarely ordered trial courts to grant such motions where the court found excusable neglect in determining the date final judgment was rendered, in order to allow for a timely appeal. See, e.g., Pompi v. City of Jacksonville, 872 So.2d 931 (Fla. 1st DCA 2004)[.pdf] (reversing denial of Rule 1.540(b) motion and ordering re-issuance of judgment). Those cases were all in the context of the date of rendition being unclear due to multiple filing stamps on the final judgment, not in the context of missed deadline due to weather. Loss of power might be considered excusable neglect, for example. But best not to go there. Get it filed! Even a one page, incomplete, or in-the-wrong-court Notice of Appeal will preserve the rights, even if you later have to amend it. See, e.g., Kaweblum v. Thornhill Estates Homeowners Association, Inc., 755 So.2d 85 (Fla. 2000) (notice of appeal filed in wrong court preserved right to appeal).

To my fellow Florida attorneys, and anyone else in Hurricane Matthew’s path, be safe.