Casualty

Key Points:

• Florida is moving to stricter adherence to case management orders.
• Beware of tougher sanctions for non-compliance.

Florida is experiencing a recent push towards strict compliance with case management orders to impose more judicial control on current civil caseloads. This includes tougher sanctions for non-compliance, including sanctions affecting discovery, depositions, and continuances.

The Judicial Management Council’s Workgroup on Improved Resolution of Civil Cases is making an effort to manage civil cases and had proposed numerous changes to the Rules of Civil Procedure and the Rules of General Practice and Judicial Administration. This focus on promoting judicial efficiency is due to the backlog of COVID-19 pandemic cases. The goal of the Workgroup is to improve the clearance rate of civil cases by reducing the length of time to litigate a case.

Some rule amendments or new rules proposed for the Florida Civil Procedure Rules relating to case management orders were: 1.200 (case management in general), 1.201 (complex cases), 1.440 (setting cases for trial), and 1.275 (to codify sanctions available to the courts for litigation-related offenses). For cases in the “case management in general” category:

The parties must meet and confer within 30 days after initial service of the complaint on the first defendant served (unless this deadline is extended by the court) and work out projected deadlines in seven categories, including discovery, potential dispositive motions, and anticipated trial readiness date. Within 120 days after the case is filed or within 30 days after service on the last defendant, whichever is earlier, the parties must file a joint case management report and proposed case management order based on the meet and confer, failing which the court will issue its own case management order. The contents of the joint case management report are delineated in [Rule 1.200] subdivision (e)(3)(C). The contents of the proposed case management order are listed in subdivision (e)(3)(D), which requires the parties to set numerous deadlines, to propose a trial period or a date for a case management conference to set the trial period, and to state the anticipated number of days for trial. The court must issue the case management order as soon as practicable after receiving the parties’ proposed order; the court may also call a case management conference before issuing the case management order. In short, the case management order sets a comprehensive master timetable for the remainder of the case’s pretrial proceedings.”

The Workgroup is concerned that case management orders are being looked at as guidelines or are being completely ignored by the parties. To prevent this, the proposal included plans to hold inflexible trial dates and rigid deadlines to be enforced, and to “impose sanctions without resort to a prefatory order to show cause, given that the parties are on notice, under the case management order, of what is required of them.” And the court, “if both parties fail to appear at a case management conference…may assume that the case has been resolved and dismiss it without prejudice.”

The Florida Supreme Court addressed these proposals and declined to adopt the Workgroup’s proposal to streamline Florida’s civil litigation system. However, it does not put to bed the push for stricter compliance, as the court noted, “[t]he Court declines to adopt the Workgroup’s proposed amendment at this time because additional refinements are necessary. Instead, the Court will make a series of phased referrals for the refinement and study of the Workgroup’s proposals, beginning with the attached referrals to the Civil Procedure Rules Committee, the Rules of General Practice and Judicial Administration Committee, the Florida Courts Technology Commission, and the Trial Court Budget Commission.” The Supreme Court’s order issued referrals for the refinement and study of the proposals submitted by the Workgroup on Improved Resolution of Civil Cases. It should be anticipated that the amendments will be back under review after the studies are completed.

The impact of inflexible deadlines will be felt mainly by the defense increased difficulties in obtaining experts and completing expert discovery within a strict time frame. While plaintiffs will have the chance to prepare their cases for trial prior to filing suit, the defense will be strapped with working under harsh deadlines. For this reason, it’s important to consider new defense strategies and onboarding experts early on in litigation.