The 2017 Legislative Session came to a three-day late close when final negotiations of the Florida budget broke down. After reaching an agreement, the 2017 Legislative Session came to a close on May 8th. Unfortunately, due to a threat of a budget veto, legislators were forced back to Tallahassee for a three-day special session, out of which more spending was made available for economic incentives and development, and K-12 schools.
The Section monitored approximately 100 bills this year that might have had some impact on issues most important to trial lawyers – judicial independence and access to courts. All the bills passed this year have been presented to the Governor and await either his approval or veto. All of the bills will have been signed or vetoed by June 29, 2017.
Judicial term limits was the hot issue this year, with consideration of HJR 1 (House Joint Resolution 1), which proposed an amendment to the State Constitution that would limit Supreme Court justices and district court of appeal judges to 12 consecutive years and would prohibit justices or district court judges from being reappointed for one year after leaving office. The House Resolution passed the House floor with a vote of 73 to 46, mostly along party lines. Six Republicans did vote against this bill, disagreeing with one of the leadership’s priority issues for this Session. Even though Senator Travis Hutson sponsored a similar bill in the Senate, the Senate did not even schedule the bill for a hearing and it died in committee. As this issue was a Speaker priority we are keeping a close ear out for any signs of it coming back next year or being considered by the Constitutional Revision Commission.
This year the House held numerous committee meetings on the efficiency of the Court system, and even asked Judges to maintain time slips on cases before them in January. The House budget and conforming bill included language imposing a form of performance pay on sitting judges. Performance would have been evaluated by court accessibility and fairness, clearance rates, time to disposition, age of active pending cases, trial date certainty, reliability and integrity of case files, legal financial obligations, effective use of jurors, court employees’ satisfaction and cost per case. Thankfully, this provision was left off of the final budget negotiations. Instead, judges, elected state attorneys and public offenders will receive a 10 percent pay increase.
With reports of cases with no opinions in excess of 700+ days, bills emerged in both the House and Senate on Supreme Court reporting requirements. These bills would have required the Supreme Court to prepare annual reports regarding cases that are pending before them. The information to be reported included a detailed explanation of the court's failure to render a decision or disposition within 180 days after oral argument or after the date on which the case was submitted to the court panel for a decision without oral argument. The bills also asked the Court to estimate a date on which the court expected to render a decision or disposition. While it looked like this bill was going to pass, after an amendment was added to include Juvenile Civil Citations the House did not consider the new version. A last ditch effort was made to place similar reporting language on to HB 441 that related to court records, but that effort failed. Due to the ease in which the idea of Supreme Court reporting requirements moved through both chambers this year, we expect it to be brought up again in the 2018 Legislative Session (which will run from January to March, 2018).
Because of the two Supreme Court decisions impacting workers compensation, considerable time was spent in both houses on a fix. The House took a more comprehensive, business friendly approach, while the Senate version had reached a compromise which appeared more acceptable to claimants. There were substantial differences between the bills that in the end could not be worked out. The House bill (HB 7085) would have capped fees for workers’ attorneys at $150 an hour, while the Senate bill (SB 1582) would have included a maximum of $250 an hour. The two chambers could not work out a compromise between these two amounts by the end of Session and the bill died. This will come up again next year as the Legislature is determined to find a fix to this issue.
The issue of prejudgment interest was also brought up again this year. The Senate version only included interest on economic damages while the House version had language that included economic and non-economic damages. Interest on non-economic damages accrues from the date the defendant received notice of the claim from the plaintiff. For both the Senate and House version, interest on economic damages would have accrued from the date of the loss of an economic benefit or payment made by the plaintiff. While the bills had traction this year, this issue failed to be taken up by the full chambers before the end of the 2017 Session.
The Justice Appropriations of the Florida budget were approved by the Governor. These appropriations include $4.5 billion for criminal justice and corrections agencies, $514.7 million for the state court system budget, a 10 percent increase in pay for judges, elected state attorneys and public defenders and a $10,000 pay increase for criminal conflict and civil regional counsel. The Justice Administration Commission received $884.2 million in funding, a $5.5 million decrease from the previous year’s budget.
The members of the Constitutional Revision Commission have been making their way around Florida in its “Floridians speak, we listen” tour. Recently, the full commission met to adopt rules by which they will operate, adopting rules similar to those used during the last revision commission (1997-98). After a rule-less and contentious meeting, the Commission adopted rules proposed by Brecht Heuchan, an appointee of Gov. Rick Scott. His proposal was based off of the rules used by the last Constitutional Revision Commission. The Section and the Florida Bar are keeping a close eye on any potential projects and suggestions for changes to Article V.
A list of the CRC members follows:
CRC:
Appointments by Senate President Negron:
Don Gaetz
Anna Marie Hernandez Gamez
Patricia Levesque
Sherry Plymale
William Schifino, Jr.
Chris Smith
Bob Solari
Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch
Carolyn Timmann
Appointments by Governor Rick Scott:
Chairman: Carols Beruff
Dr. Jose “Pepe” Armas
Lisa Carlton
Timothy Cerio
Emery Gainey
Brecht Heuchan
Marva Johnson
Darlene Jordan
Fred Karlinsky-Weston
Belinda Keiser
Frank Kruppenbacher
Dr. Gary Lester
Jimmy Patronis
Pam Stewart
Nicole Washington
Appointments by Chief Justice Jorge Larbarga:
Hank Coxe
Arthenia Joyner
Robert Martinez
Appointments by the Speaker of the House Richard Corcoran:
Representative Jose Felix Diaz
Speaker pro tempore Jeanette Nunez
Representative Chris Sprowls
Senator Tom Lee
Senator Darryl Rouson
Sheriff Chris Nocco
Erika Donalds
Rich Newsome
John Stemberger