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Could Dedicated Business Law Judges be Coming to Your Courthouse?

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When you file a lawsuit in court in Florida, your case is randomly assigned to a judge. Except it’s not entirely random—it’s random to the extent that you will get one of the judges in your division selected randomly.

How Judges are Assigned Cases

Judges are usually assigned to a division. Family law, criminal law, probate law, and general civil law (which includes business law, but can also include things like injury cases) are all divisions in most judicial circuits in Florida.

Judges can be moved from one division to the next, usually based on caseload (foreclosures had their own division during the foreclosure crisis of the mid 2000s), but many will spend most of their career assigned to just one division.

It is generally believed that the judges assigned to one division develop a familiarity with the law and procedures of the kinds of cases in their divisions and become adept at moving their cases faster and more efficiently.

No Business Law Division?

When it comes to business law, in most circuits, including most here in South Florida, business law doesn’t have its own division; it is generally lumped in with general civil cases, which can include anything from injury cases, to defamation, to land and real estate disputes, and anything in between. There are divisions for complex litigation, which often are business law cases, but they don’t necessarily have to be.

New Business Law Judges

But a new proposal by Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis has proposed electing judges specifically for business law cases. These judges would essentially run or manage business and commercial litigation cases within their own division with their own dedicated judges (although the proposal currently is only to have one dedicated judge for business law cases).

The announcement is to have “dedicated business courts” with judges specifically elected for the purpose. But because this is only a preliminary announcement, there’s no way of knowing if and when it would actually ever happen.

If implemented, the idea may not work state wide—some areas have a flood of business and commercial litigation cases, but others just don’t have enough to warrant a specific division.

Increased Expense?

Interestingly, Patronis said in his announcement that businesses would “be willing to pay a premium” for the ability to have dedicated business law judges. Since litigants don’t directly pay for court services (other than filing fees), it’s unclear what Patronis actually meant when he referenced businesses paying extra for the convenience of dedicated business law judges.

Patronis has said that the extra judge would not add a significant cost, so it’s also unclear whether tax money would be used, or how the new judicial positions would be funded.

Business and commercial litigation is a wide umbrella; all different kinds of cases are considered business litigation, and that means familiarity with a lot of different legal issues, for both judges and lawyers. Dedicated judges may be a welcome change for the business law community.

The court system is constantly changing. Call the West Palm Beach commercial litigation lawyers at Pike & Lustig today for help with your business law case.

Source:

floridapolitics.com/archives/704842-jimmy-patronis-wants-florida-to-elect-judges-for-business-courts/

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