C.W., PETITIONER,
v.
DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN AND FAMILY SERVICES, RESPONDENT
AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.
A blanket rule against telephone appearances violates Rule 2.071(c), but no violation occurred here because the petitioner never made a written request.
Petitioner sought a writ of prohibition after the trial court stated it would not allow telephone appearances. The petitioner did not make a written r…
The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.
Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.
Explore caselaw by topic → Browse Recusal cases and more on FLexlaw
PER CURIAM.
We deny the Petition for Writ of Prohibition, but we write to express our concern about a statement made by the trial court that “I do not do telephone appearances.”
Rule 2.071(c), Florida Rule of Judicial Administration, provides as follows: Use Only by Requesting Party. A county or circuit court judge may, upon the written request of a party upon reasonable notice to all other parties, permit a requesting party to participate through communication equipment in a scheduled motion hearing; however, any such request (except in criminal, delinquency, and appellate proceedings) must be granted, absent a showing of good cause to deny the same, where the hearing is set for not longer than 15 minutes, (emphasis added).
A blanket rule by the trial court not to do telephone appearances would be a violation of this rule. Petitioner, however, never made a written request to appear telephonically.1 Thus, no violation occurred in this case. Nor would a violation of the rule necessarily require the disqualification of the trial judge.2
We therefore deny the petition.
. Petitioner's counsel claims that no written request was made because he had no notice of the hearing. The Motion to Disqualify Judge does not allege that and the limited record before us does not establish whether or not that is correct.
. Although we are denying relief because the motion for disqualification was legally insufficient, given everything that has transpired in this case, we suggest that the trial court may wish to recuse itself on its own and let another judge handle this case.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
-
D.F. v. Fla. Dep't of Child. & Fam. Servs., 877 So. 2d 733 (Fla. 3d DCA 2004)…tions at its disposal to ensure that D.F.’s due process rights w;ere not violated. The trial court could have allowed D.F. to testify telephonieally, after a reasonable amount of time to confer with counsel, see C.W. v. Dep’t of Children & Families, 843 So. 2d 362 (Fla. 3d DCA 2003)(permitting a telephone appearance) and M.R.L. v. Dep’t of Children & Families, 835 So. 2d 1261, 1262 (Fla. 1st DCA 2003)(allowing the prisoner to appear telephonieally). The trial court could have permitted a reasonable period of…