On October 2, 2023, the DRI Center for Law and Public Policy was pleased to join a comment to the Florida Supreme Court submitted on behalf of a coalition of organizations, including DRI’s sister organizations International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC), Federation of Defense & Corporate Counsel (FDCC), and Association of Defense Trial Attorneys (ADTA), as well as Center Advisory Council members National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) and American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA), among others. The organizations asked the court to consider three revisions to the recently proposed Florida Rules of Civil Procedure. First, Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.280 should be revised to state that discovery must be “proportional to the needs of the case” consistent with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(1). Second disclosure of third-party litigation funding agreements should be required. Third, the extreme unfairness under new Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.460—under which failure to continue trial would result in a defendant having to defend multiple trials simultaneously or close together, forcing the defendant to try some cases with a lawyer who is not the defendant’s preferred choice of counsel—must be addressed.
Read the Full Comment (PDF)