Certiorari Review of Nonfinal Orders: Trying on a Functional Certiorari Wardrobe, Part II

Last month, we said that the test used for deciding on petitions challenging nonfinal orders from trial courts is not good enough. We argued that courts only grant these petitions when there’s been a big mistake in the law that causes serious harm and can’t be fixed later, but in reality, they don’t stick to this standard very well. We suggest that the courts should make a clear and specific test for when they will review nonfinal orders. This will help create fair and consistent decisions. For example, if a judge denies a jury trial for a serious case like medical malpractice, the court should review this decision to make sure it’s fair. This will help ensure that everyone gets a fair trial. In a case where the trial court denied your client’s request for a jury trial, the usual way to challenge this decision may not work. But if we use a different approach, we can argue that the court made a mistake in denying the jury trial, and this mistake can be easily identified and corrected by the appellate court. This is because the denial of a jury trial is a violation of the right to a fair trial, and it’s a clear legal error that the appellate court should fix. So, even though the usual way to appeal this decision doesn’t seem to work, we have a good argument for why the court should review and fix this mistake. Under the second part of the functional test, it’s clear that denying a jury trial is unfair and goes against the Constitution. The appellate court should step in to fix this mistake. The court could announce a test to determine if orders denying jury trials can be reviewed. The test would require the petitioner to show they have a right to a jury trial, haven’t given up that right, and the trial court doesn’t have a good reason to deny the jury trial. Your client is being sued for a car accident that caused a scar on the plaintiff’s face. The plaintiff is also claiming emotional distress because her husband left her. Your client wants to see email messages between the plaintiff and a religious leader to prove that the plaintiff was planning to leave her husband before the accident. The judge denied your request for the emails, saying it would violate the plaintiff’s religious and privacy rights. But he’s open to sending the question to a higher court for a decision. When researching your options, you find that the rules about getting access to evidence in legal cases aren’t very clear. There are very few court decisions in Florida that even mention the rule about getting evidence, and most of them are about the trial court allowing evidence, not denying it. The higher courts almost never review decisions where evidence is denied, saying that you can fix the problem in a different way later. But it’s really hard to prove that the decision to deny evidence actually hurt your case. If you never get the evidence, you can’t show how it would have helped you. So, it seems like there’s no way to fix this kind of mistake in court. This is a problem because if the courts said they can’t fix evidence mistakes later, they would be flooded with a whole bunch of cases about getting evidence. It looks like the higher courts not reviewing evidence denials is a way for them to manage all their cases. There have been some recent court decisions that suggest there may be a chance to appeal a denial of discovery in certain situations. However, it’s not easy to meet the strict requirements for getting this kind of appeal accepted. The court needs to find a clear error and there needs to be a very good reason for the appeal. It’s not as simple as just showing that the trial court made a mistake. Even if the chances of winning an appeal are slim, there may still be a possibility, but it’s a tough road to go down. In your client’s case, the hearing transcript is enough for the higher court to decide if it was right to deny them access to evidence. There’s not much case law on this issue, so the higher court may need to step in to solve it. The denial can’t be fixed in the regular court process, so the higher court may need to intervene. The trial court’s mistake is causing confusion and unfairness, so the higher court should step in to fix it. It might cost a lot, but it’s worth it to make sure the case is fair. The higher court may need to make special rules for cases like this, where there’s not a lot of case law. If the trial court is open to having the higher court review a decision about discovery, and there’s no clear law on the issue, the higher court may step in. This could happen if the trial court says the decision involves an important discovery issue that hasn’t been decided before, and that needs to be resolved to help the current case and set a precedent for the future. However, in Florida, the rules don’t allow this type of review right now.

If there is relevant precedent and the trial court denies a discovery request, the higher court could step in if there’s a good reason to think that the requested evidence would likely be important for the case, not just repetitive or for attacking someone’s credibility. This type of review wouldn’t happen often and would only be used if the trial court seemed to make a big mistake. Your client might need to explain exactly why she thinks the other party’s email messages would be helpful for the case, and if she can do that, the higher court would likely review the decision denying discovery. In summary, we believe that using a tailored approach to review certiorari cases would be better than the current one-size-fits-all method. This would make it easier for judges and lawyers to decide whether to file or resolve a petition, and result in fairer and more accurate outcomes. Although it would require some initial effort, we think it would be worth it in the long run. We didn’t choose our test subjects randomly. We picked two common issues for a short article. One is about the right to a jury trial, and the other is about when certiorari relief should be restricted. There’s a lot of debate about these issues in the law. Some past cases have addressed these issues, but there are still questions to explore. The right to a jury trial is an important part of our legal system, and there have been cases where the courts had to decide if someone waived this right. It’s a topic worth studying. This is a column from the Appellate Practice Section, written by Judge Chris Altenbernd and staff attorney Jamie Marcario. It includes references to legal cases and rules in Florida. The column is aimed at promoting duty and service to the public, improving justice administration, and advancing the science of jurisprudence.

Source: https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/certiorari-review-of-nonfinal-orders-trying-on-a-functional-certiorari-wardrobe-part-ii/