Florida Legislature To Strip Courts of Rule-Making Ability?

We've certainly seen our share of lame-brained, reactionary, and just plain arse-inine proposals out of Tally, but this has to be one of the dumbest to come down the high speed train pike in a long time:

A constitutional amendment that would take court procedural rulemaking authority away from the Supreme Court and give it to the Legislature has been introduced in a House subcommittee that has been studying the issue.

PCB CVJS 11-01 would amend Art. V, Sec. 2, of the constitution. A second bill, PCB CVJS 11-02 would create legislation implementing the amendment, if it eventually passes the Legislature and is approved by voters.

Currently, Art. V, Sec. 2, provides that the Supreme Court has the authority to adopt practice and procedure rules for the court, and the Legislature may repeal any rule by a two-thirds vote of both chambers. It also includes some technical language about the court and the district courts of appeal submitting questions on military law for an advisory opinion to a special military appellate court.

The amendment repeals all of that, and instead specifies: “No court shall have the power, express or implied, to adopt rules for practice and procedure in any court. Court rules of practice and procedure may be recommended by the Supreme Court to be adopted, amended or rejected by the legislature in a manner prescribed by general law. If there is a conflict between general law and a court rule, the general law supersedes the court rule.”

So a court cannot issue procedural rules for proceeding before a court?  We're talking things like summary judgment time periods, discovery methods, offers of judgment etc.?

That's like Congress passing a law that pilots cannot decide how to fly a plane.

To paraphrase Barry Richard, this is f$%*ing stupid and totally unnecessary:

He also addressed whether the federal model of having Congress review procedural rules would work in Florida — something some committee members have suggested. Richard said the country’s founders assumed that virtually all cases would be resolved in state courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court was the only federal court expressly created by the Constitution. Congress, however, was given the power to create lesser courts, and hence those courts are the creatures of Congress.

Florida’s courts are created in the state Constitution, not by the Legislature, he said.

Further, he said, the jurisdiction of federal courts was much more limited than it is currently.

Richard also said in practice, even though Congress has a review, the federal procedural rules systems works much like Florida’s, with the court’s proposing rules that are rarely altered by Congress.

 Seriously, what's next?

With Governor Scott's proposed budget crippling already overburdened courts, and with the courts soon lacking the ability to even advise litigants of how many days they have to respond to an interrogatory, maybe we should just give the whole thing up and revert to duels in the street, sword fights, and other forms of self-help.

Or is that the idea?

"Cohabitators, Homosexuals or Fornicators"

No I'm not describing my circle of friends at Tuesday's terrific judicial reception honoring Judge Huck, but rather quoting from Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell's 1989 master's thesis, which denounced various degenerate activities that most of us would consider pretty standard here in sunny South Florida.

This NYT profile of him and Virginia AG Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who along with partner-in-crime Bill McCollum have launched the ND FL lawsuit seeking to have the health care bill declared unconstitutional, is pretty fascinating:

Outspoken and unwavering in his opposition to abortion and homosexuality and in support of property and gun rights, Mr. Cuccinelli is a purist among pragmatists. He stands out as a pugnacious culture warrior in a party more eager to court moderate and fiscal conservatives, and in a state whose governor hopes to portray himself as a consensus builder.

“Ken was a tea partier before there was a Tea Party,” said David B. Albo, a Republican delegate from Fairfax County and close friend of the attorney general. “I tend to take my job responsibility as doing what a majority of my constituents want me to do. Ken sees his job as setting a path and trying to explain to his constituents that this is the way we want to go.”

In recent weeks, though, some of Mr. Cuccinelli’s hard stands have become a headache for Governor McDonnell.

Last week, the governor was left to respond to questions about his attorney general after an audio clip surfaced on the Web in which Mr. Cuccinelli, in a recorded telephone conversation offered a legal strategy for testing the notion, popular among certain conservatives, that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States and therefore lacked eligibility to run for president. It was “possible,” Mr. Cuccinelli said, that a person could “challenge” a federal law as illegitimate because “someone qualified to be president didn’t sign it.”

Oy -- this is who you joined in with?

The DBR has a story today in which various legal scholars declare the suit to be more or less bunk:

Bruce Jacob, a Stetson University law professor who teaches constitutional law, said there is always a chance the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court could side with McCollum. But he said arguments cited by McCollum make it sound “like they are grasping at straws.”

“It bothers me they are wasting the time of the country with this kind of lawsuit,’’ he said.

Barry Richard, a Greenberg Traurig shareholder in Tallahassee who was part of the team that represented George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election recount, said he read the lawsuit and doesn’t think the high court will go along with it. “I don’t see any basis for the United States Supreme Court to say that Congress can’t do this,’’ he said. “This would severely emasculate the power of Congress.’’

See Bill, that's what you get for not hiring Barry!

BTW, you can sign a letter to Mr. McCollum asking him to dismiss his facacta suit here.

Calling It Quits.

Oooh, tough loss for Jack Scarola, a mucho-fine trial lawyer:

A Fort Lauderdale, Fla., jury on Wednesday ordered accounting giant Ernst & Young to pay $10.2 million on a negligent auditing claim, rejecting a request for $400 million on more serious allegations.

The verdict, reached after less than two days of deliberations, eliminated the possibility of a punitive damage award in the trial before Broward Circuit Judge Jeffrey Streitfeld.

I don't like trials in July. The judges are cranky, the jurors distracted, and no one wants to pay too much attention between the rain, the heat, and the vacations either taken or planned.

And while these cases are exceptionally tough to prove or even get past motion practice and to a jury, congrats to Barry Richard for putting another notch on the belt.