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Florida Justice Reform Institute

DeSantis Names Meredith Sasso, Another Federalist Society Apostle, to Supreme Court

May 23, 2023/in Flagler Live

FlaglerLive

MAY 23, 2023

Judge Meredith Sasso

Judge Meredith Sasso of the Sixth District Court of Appeal. 

Continuing to mold a conservative Florida Supreme Court, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday named Meredith Sasso to succeed former Justice Ricky Polston, who stepped down in March.

Sasso, of Orlando, has served as a state appeals-court judge since 2019 and is chief judge of the Lakeland-based 6th District Court of Appeal. Her previous positions included chief deputy general counsel for former Gov. Rick Scott.

With the pick, DeSantis has appointed five of the seven Supreme Court members, as the court has become dramatically more conservative since the Republican governor took office in January 2019.

“I am proud to appoint Judge Meredith Sasso to the Florida Supreme Court because her fidelity to the Constitution will help preserve freedom in our state for generations to come,” DeSantis said in a prepared statement.

Since Polston announced his resignation, speculation had swirled about Sasso as a potential successor. Along with serving in the Scott administration, she has been active in The Federalist Society, a conservative group that has played a key role in state and federal judicial appointments.

In her application for the Supreme Court seat, Sasso wrote that while working in the executive branch of government, she “gained an informed appreciation for the separation of powers.”

“Appropriate deference to coordinate branches is not a matter of courtesy; it is essential for the people’s chosen representatives to operate,” Sasso wrote. “Likewise, judicial decisions are not the only available solution to problems. When judges step outside their role, they often justify it by claiming an altruistic purpose of correcting a perceived injustice. But as judges, we should honor both our defined role and the overall system in which we operate.”

The Florida Justice Reform Institute, a legal group that advocates on issues such as limiting lawsuits against businesses, praised the appointment. William Large, the organization’s president, issued a statement that said the pick continued DeSantis’ efforts to carry out a promise to reshape the Supreme Court.

“The governor’s appointment of Meredith Sasso to the Florida Supreme Court cements this promise of appointing justices with a proven record of embracing textualism and the notion that the courts should interpret our laws, not write them.” Large said.

Sasso will join Chief Justice Carlos Muniz and Justices John Couriel, Jamie Grosshans and Renatha Francis as DeSantis appointees on the court. Justices Charles Canady and Jorge Labarga were appointed by then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist.

Before DeSantis took office, the Supreme Court had a generally liberal majority — much to the frustration of state Republican leaders and business groups. But three longtime justices, Barbara Pariente, R. Fred Lewis and Peggy Quince, left the court in early 2019 because of a mandatory retirement age, allowing DeSantis to make appointments.

Polston, another Crist appointee, was usually part of a conservative majority, so it is unclear how much Sasso will affect the ideology of the court. Labarga is the only remaining justice from the more-liberal previous majority.

After Polston announced his resignation, three candidates, including Sasso, initially applied to succeed him. But the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission extended a deadline and drew 15 applicants.

The commission forwarded the names of six finalists to DeSantis. In addition to Sasso, the finalists were 6th District Court of Appeal Judges Joshua Mize, Jared Smith and John Stargel, Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Thomas Palermo and 20th Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Thomas McHugh.

Sasso became a judge on the 5th District Court of Appeal in 2019 and shifted to the newly created 6th District Court of Appeal this year after a reorganization of the appellate-court system.

In her application, Sasso gave examples of opinions she had written, including a 2020 opinion about the dismissal of a former church employee that Sasso described as testing “the reach of secular judicial power.” Sasso’s opinion rejected a lawsuit alleging breach of an employment agreement, finding that what is known as the “ecclesiastical abstention doctrine” left the issue to church authorities.

“The case is significant because it demonstrates that a secular court’s only legitimate role in resolving disputes related to religious doctrine is to ensure those disputes are committed to religious authorities,” Sasso wrote in a description of the case.

Sasso has ties to Grosshans, who also served on the 5th District Court of Appeal before being appointed to the Supreme Court in 2020. Sasso spoke at a Supreme Court investiture ceremony for Grosshans in 2021, according to Sasso’s application.

Sasso, who grew up in Tallahassee, received bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Florida. Her paternal grandparents left Cuba in 1953, according to the application.

After stepping down from the Supreme Court, Polston became general counsel of the state-backed Citizens Property Insurance Corp. He had served on the Supreme Court since 2008.

–Jim Saunders, News Service of Florida

https://flaglerlive.com/desantis-names-meredith-sasso/ 

https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/fjri-news.jpg 800 800 RAD Tech https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Florida-Justice-Reform-Institute.jpg RAD Tech2023-05-23 15:55:142024-12-05 15:44:18DeSantis Names Meredith Sasso, Another Federalist Society Apostle, to Supreme Court
Florida Justice Reform Institute

Florida Legislature Is Set to Push Sweeping

March 6, 2023/in Flagler Live

FlaglerLive

Florida Legislature Is Set to Push Sweeping Changes to Legal System, Favoring Business and Government at Individuals’ Expense

MARCH 6, 2023

Paul Renner

Paul Renner, the Palm Coast Republican and House Speaker, is enthusiastically
leading a House that has lurched further to the right than under any administration
since the Jim Crow era. (© FlaglerLive)

Shortly after a state House committee last month OK’d sweeping changes to the state’s litigation process, Speaker Paul Renner gathered a powerful array of business and insurance representatives in the Capitol’s Fourth Floor rotunda for a news conference.

They all agreed that, in making it harder to sue insurance companies, the legislation would reduce frivolous lawsuits and thereby protect businesses and everyday Floridians. At least that’s what certain GOP lawmakers and lobbyists believe.

One of those everyday Floridians, amid dozens who’d come to Tallahassee to oppose the bill, was watching the lobbyists speak that day in late February. His name is Gary Miracle, and he’s a former salesman who’d suffered amputation of all four of his extremities following a medical crisis, rendering him unable to perform basic life functions, much less hold a job.

He’s able to support his family because of a medical malpractice settlement — precisely the kind of legal process that the fellows in suits that day were intent on limiting. Standing there on prosthetic legs in the same room with them, Miracle felt completely unseen.

“They did not portray one single bit that they just listened to two hours of people complaining about this bill. They stood up there as if this was from the Bible and everybody was in agreement,” Miracle told the Phoenix later, in a telephone interview.

“And it was all fairies and unicorns when in all actuality everyone that stood up was fighting against it.”

As monumental a change to the law as the legal reforms under discussion would represent, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-led Legislature aren’t stopping there.

During the 60-day regular session that opens on Tuesday, lawmakers also will consider making it easier to sue journalists for libel and requiring bloggers who write about the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, chief financial officer, commissioner of agriculture, or legislators to register with the state and report any income their posts generate.

The inconsistency between suppressing the ability to sue on one hand and encouraging it on the other makes Florida First Amendment Foundation executive director Bobby Block’s head spin.

“All over the place he’s limiting lawsuits and in this particular instance he’s opening the door to a wild west of litigation where the only beneficiaries would be trial lawyers,” Block said of DeSantis. “It makes no sense unless if you look at it as an attempt to punish critics.”

Valentine Day’s massacre
DeSantis launched the push for the insurance lawsuit bill on Valentine’s Day, during a joint appearance with Renner and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo.

“For decades, Florida has been considered a judicial hellhole due to excessive litigation and a legal system that benefitted the lawyers more than people who are injured,” DeSantis said at the time. “We are now working on legal reform that is more in line with the rest of the country and that will bring more businesses and jobs to Florida.”

The legislation (HB 837) is a stab at “tort” reform — meaning a wrongful act or infringement of a right amendable to a civil lawsuit.

It seeks to discourage insurance litigation by making these cases less lucrative to trial attorneys. That means making lawsuits against a range of industries including insurance harder to win and crimping the ability to force carriers to pay fee awards in litigation over rejected or low-balled claims.

For example, existing law apportions liability for accidents according to plaintiffs’ and defendants’ comparative liability: If the injured party bears 40 percent of the blame, the defendant can be ordered to pay 60 percent of the damages. The bill, however, would spare the defendant from paying any damages if the plaintiff is found more than 50 percent liable.

There’d be changes to policyholders’ ability to sue insurers for failing in their legal obligation to handle claims in good faith by improperly denying, underpaying, or stalling them — that is, operate in bad faith. Insurers would gain a grace period to offer settlements and policyholders would be required to act in good faith themselves by providing information needed to review claims. If not, a judge could reduce their recovery.

The bill would limit what evidence plaintiffs can present regarding their medical bills to reflect what they themselves have actually paid, since medical providers sometimes accept discounts on high initial invoices; the theory is that people should recover their real losses only, and not reap windfalls based in artificially inflated medical list prices. Courts would have to offset any payments to a plaintiff by government or private insurance.

Similarly, plaintiffs would have to disclose whether their medical providers issued “letters of protection,” agreeing not to collect bills until the plaintiff prevails in court.

One-way attorney fee
Furthermore, the bill eliminates Florida’s one-way attorney fee, adopted by the Legislature in 1893 to even the balance of power between policyholders and insurance companies with their stables of lawyers. Instead, each side would bear its litigation costs.

The amount of attorney fees plaintiffs can recover is limited to a reasonable number of hours worked by the attorney multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate, unless the plaintiff can demonstrate that number wouldn’t allow him or her to retain counsel.

Sponsor and state Rep. Tommy Gregory of Manatee County, who is an attorney, argued during Renner’s news conference that consumers would be the ultimate beneficiaries.

“It’s common sense to them. They can tell by the number of insurance companies going bankrupt and fleeing the state and they can tell by the insurance premiums that there’s something amiss in the legal climate here. There’s something off in the civil remedy and the pursuit of damages,” he said.

“The civil justice system really is operating like a casino; all you need is an attorney. Once you get in there, you’re going to win. You can call it a casino, you can call it an ATM — they’ve got the PIN number. And they have the PIN number because we have one-way attorney fees; because we have inflated fee multipliers; because we have excessive and damages.

“This bill is designed to address those problems, bring the civil justice back into equilibrium, and that’s going to save all Floridians, all of our constituents, money, so they can stop paying that Florida tort tax, the insurance premium or surcharge,” Gregory said.

The American Tort Reform Association was represented during the news conference. So were Associated Industries of Florida, the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Florida Justice Reform Institute, the Florida Retail Association, the Florida Trucking Association, the National Federation of Independent Business, the James Madison Institute, and Uber.

Separate bills could cover construction-defect claims (HB 85); nursing-home claims (HB 1029) asbestos claims (HB 755)l auto-glass claims (SB 1002); and RV park and premises liability immunity (SB 1054).

Jacksonville trial attorney Curry Pajcic, president of the Florida Justice Association, is lobbying hard against the legislation.

“This isn’t tort reform. This is an effort to deform our entire justice system, tilt the playing field in favor of the insurance industry by taking away the rights of Floridians … to hold people accountable and responsible when they harm you or your family,” he told the Phoenix by telephone.

Negligence doesn’t count
Pajcic complained the tort reform bill would specify that negligence by a carrier in handling a claim couldn’t be ground for a bad-faith lawsuit and that medical damages would be limited to 140% of what Medicaid would pay for similar care.

He cited an amendment added to the bill in committee that in premises-liability claims involving, say, a criminal act committed against a hotel guest, juries would be required to consider the criminal’s contribution to the injury — not just the hotel operator.

“That reduces their responsibility when someone provides negligent security,” Pajcic said.

In the case of the school shooting in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, it would mean assessing the role played by the gunman as well as failures by the school system and law enforcement.

“Who do you think the jury would give 90% to 99% of the liability to? The murderer of course. Why would the insurance company want to do that? Because they want to sell policies for general liability and not pay a dadgum nickel. It would make Florida a more dangerous state,” he said, because it would disincentivize hotels from investing in reasonable security,” he said.

“You can’t put the dog on a verdict form in a dog-bite case because the owner of the dog has a responsibility to protect you from the dog. It would be like putting the fire on the verdict form when the house burns down — well, it’s the fire’s fault, not the electrician’s fault for negligently putting the wiring together.”

As for the comparative negligence language, Pajcic proposed this scenario: A motorcyclist suffers catastrophic injuries after getting hit by a driver running a stop sign. Under the new contributory negligence rule, if a jury decides the biker was even slightly more to blame for an accident, he collects nothing from the driver’s insurer.

On the other hand, if the driver is found 49% responsible, she would pay only 49% of the biker’s medical costs.

“This would result in the largest increase in the Medicaid rolls in the history of this state, because he would be on the public dole instead of State Farm and Progressive and Geico and Liberty Mutual paying their fair share, their 49%,” Pajcic said.

‘A pretty solid seven to 10 years’
Miracle, whose malpractice settlement provides for his continuing care and financial support for him, his wife, and seven children, said the medical cost limits would have been devastating to him.

“I’m guessing I would have had a pretty solid seven to 10 years of living with the money that was awarded to me based on what this bill would look like. And I’m only 41 years old. That means that by the time I’m 50 I’m out of money and not physically able to go back to work,” he said.

“We spend four or more hours [in committee] talking about attorneys and insurance and auto-glass repair inspectors and all of the other aspects to what this bill encompasses, and in the very fine print with the small whispers, ‘Oh, by the way, if you’re catastrophically injured and it’s not your fault, you don’t deserve what a jury would award you.

“The most hurtful part of all of this is all they’re doing to people like me is telling what I’m worth with a dollar amount — not telling me what my value is,” he said. “My identity across the board has been taken from me and now you’re telling me that my worth is going to be devalued as well, only to provide I don’t even know what.”

Libel law
Also on the agenda this session is a bill to redefine libel law in Florida. DeSantis, who has a pattern of attacking the press, lay the groundwork for the legislative effort during a panel discussion in early February.

“We’ve seen over the last generation legacy media outlets increasingly divorce themselves from the truth and instead try to elevate preferred narratives and partisan activism over reporting the facts,” he said at the time.

ry falsehoods and the ability to make their own policy judgments regarding the prevention of defamation,” the preamble reads.

‘Devastating effect’
“It’s bad. It’s very bad,” said Block, of the First Amendment Foundation.

“It basically puts anyone that comments or reports on any political or important social happenings in the crosshairs of a potential lawsuit. And I don’t mean just CNN or The New York Times or the Miami Herald or the Tampa Bay Times. I mean Facebook users, conservative broadcasters, citizen bloggers — everybody and anybody. It will have more than a chilling effect on public discourse; I expect it would freeze it. And it will have a devastating effect on media in the state — all media,” he said.

“Some people I know think it’s about helping little guys who don’t have a chance against big media companies. And I know that a lot of people think it’s about correcting excesses of the press. But, in reality, neither of those are true. It’s really about enabling powerful people to bring critics to heel. It’s an awful, un-American piece of legislation.”

Does Block think the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the bill’s offer?

“I’m not sure the votes are there. This is not Roe v. Wade,” he said.

“But what I’m concerned about if it’s challenged in court, and if courts don’t issue an injunction against it — which has been the trend of late — then the law will stand until its heard by the U.S. Supreme Court and, in that period of time, will have a devastating impact on how people participate in public discourse and how people participate in government, local as well as state.”

The blog regulation bill (SB 1316) comes courtesy of Jason Brodeur, who represents Seminole and part of Orange counties. It conflates bloggers with lobbyists, who take money to represent clients before elected officials. Accordingly, they would have to register with the state, like lobbyists do, and disclose any payments received for posts or series of posts.

They’d be subject to fines of $25 per day for late reports, up to $2,500.

It defines “blog” as “a website or webpage that hosts any blogger and is frequently updated with opinion, commentary, or business content. The term does not include the website of a newspaper or other similar publication.” It defines “blogger” as anyone “that submits a blog post to a blog which is subsequently published.”

“Paid bloggers are lobbyists who write instead of talk. They both are professional electioneers. If lobbyists have to register and report, why shouldn’t paid bloggers?” Brodeur told Florida Politics of his bill.

Block, of the First Amendment Foundation, compared the bill to censorship in the Russian Federation, the apartheid government in South Africa, and other repressive regimes.

“If you take this proposed bill in conjunction with the attempts to remake national defamation law and you add rules about who can hold an event at the Capitol, you start to wonder whether the Florida legislators and Florida politicians have not declared an all-out war on the First Amendment and free speech,” he said.

“I find all of this — there’s no other way to say it — un-American. It serves no purpose as far as I’m concerned other than intimidating and chilling and trying to punish free speech and bring critics to heel. I can’t come to any other conclusion.”

–Michael Moline, Florida Phoenix

https://flaglerlive.com/187055/lurch-house-litigation-revamp/ 

https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/fjri-news.jpg 800 800 RAD Tech https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Florida-Justice-Reform-Institute.jpg RAD Tech2023-03-06 15:54:582024-12-05 16:46:36Florida Legislature Is Set to Push Sweeping
Florida Justice Reform Institute

Rejected in 2020, DeSantis Appoints Renatha Francis Again to Supreme Court, Despite Ethical Issues

August 5, 2022/in Flagler Live

 

FlaglerLive

Rejected in 2020, DeSantis Appoints Renatha Francis Again to Supreme Court, Despite Ethical Issues

AUGUST 5, 2022

Francis

Circuit Judge Renatha Francis during her interview before the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission in 2020. (Florida Channel)

Gov. Ron DeSantis has appointed Jamaican-American Palm Beach County family law judge Renatha Francis to the Florida Supreme Court, having failed in his first attempt to place her there two years ago.

He announced the appointment during a news conference Friday in West Palm Beach as Francis stood beside him accompanied by her mother, husband, and two small children. Francis would be the only Black person appointed to the court under DeSantis and the second Black woman to serve.

Peggy Quince, the first Black female justice, left the bench around the time DeSantis took office in 2019.

The governor named Francis for a high court vacancy in 2020 but the sitting justices refused to seat her because she hadn’t been a member of the Florida Bar for the constitutionally mandated 10 years at the time.

“We were happy to appoint, or try to appoint, Judge Francis two years ago in the state of Florida. But then, seeing how she’s progressed since then, she’s gotten even better. And she was really good on everything, you know?” the governor said.

“She understands what the proper role of a judge is in America’s constitutional system. And I also think, being an immigrant, she probably has more appreciation for our constitutional system than many people who can trace their lineage back hundreds of years.”

Francis described her judicial philosophy.

“The Florida Supreme Court protects people’s liberty. And inherent in the way that we do that in the judiciary is respecting and observing the limited role that judges play in our constitutional system of government. Alexander Hamilton explained what that meant. That we exercise neither force nor will but merely judgement. We apply the law as written,” she said.

“This timeless principle in a civil society not only promotes uniformity, predictability; it’s essential to preserving liberty. It restrains arbitrariness; it restrains abuses of power.”

Opening prayer

The governor’s press office announced the event only two hours before it began at the Richard & Pat Johnson Palm Beach County History Museum in West Palm Beach. Unusually for these events, it opened with a prayer. DeSantis and Francis left without taking questions.

That meant no one could ask about reporting by the Florida Bulldog, an investigative news website, that Francis on her Supreme Court application failed to report that she’d been the subject of ethics complaints, as she was required to do. The publication reported that as many as five had been lodged alleging she’d been unfair to litigants.

The announcement came one day after DeSantis suspended Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren because he’d co-signed two letters with other prosecutors nationally promising to exercise discretion in charging crimes under state laws limiting abortion rights and access to transgender care.

Specifically, as the abortion-related letter put it, “prosecutors have a responsibility to refrain from using limited criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions.” DeSantis took that as a pledge to ignore legitimately enacted laws.

On Friday, he compared what he considers activist courts to “rogue prosecutors” around the country who “basically say they are not going to enforce certain laws that they don’t like — that they put their personal conception of, quote, social justice over what the law and their constitutional oath require.”

Legal challenge

What derailed Francis’ train to the Supreme Court two years ago was a lawsuit filed by state Rep. Geraldine Thompson, a Black Democrat from Orange County, whose complaint pointed out that Francis was a few months shy of the 10-year Bar membership requirement.

On Friday, DeSantis noted that Francis was late to enter the legal profession, having operated businesses including a trucking company before enrolling in the for-profit Florida Coastal School of Law in Jacksonville, which has stopped accepting students and is set to close next year.

Since then, she’s served as an attorney at the Florida First District Court of Appeal and as a judge on the Palm Beach Circuit Court and Miami-Dade county court.

“She’s had other careers before she got into law, and so I actually thought that was a good thing — to take someone that came from a different background rather than someone that was born into, like, a legal family,” DeSantis said.

On his earlier attempted appointment of a justice who didn’t quite qualify, “It was a disputed point of law” testing whether the governor could announce the appointment and let it take effect later, DeSantis said.

“The Florida Supreme Court disagreed and said once you’re selected off the list it’s that instant where you have to have had 10 years, therefore the appointment was defective,” he said.

“I thought it was disappointing. It was disappointing for Judge Francis to have to go through all that and then have this lawsuit come at the 11th hour just because someone didn’t want her on the court. I mean, it was all politics; it wasn’t anything that was based in principle.

“She handled it well, and so we have this other appointment,” he continued.

Thompson wondered in a written statement whether Francis would provide an independent voice on the court.

“Members of the Florida Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that Renatha Francis was not qualified to serve on the state’s highest court based on the constitution. They ruled that 10 means 10. These were the governor’s appointees who exercised their independence to rule based on the law,” Thompson said.

“Will Judge Francis be so beholden to the governor that she will fail to exercise her independence when issues such as the governor’s racially and politically gerrymandered redistricting maps, open gun carry, abortion, and other issues come before the Court? That’s the concern now,” she said.

William Large, president of the Florida Justice Reform Institute, which lobbies to limit access to the courts, praised the appointment in a written statement.

“The governor’s appointment of Renatha Francis as the 92nd Justice continues his mission of appointing justices with a proven record of recognizing the court’s proper role as the interpreter of our laws, not the author,” Large said.

“Justice Francis is also only the second African-American woman appointed to the Florida Supreme Court, and we further applaud Gov. DeSantis for his continuing commitment to a Court that can draw on a rich diversity of life experience.”

Federalist Society

Next is for the governor’s office to submit an official commission to the court, court spokesman Paul Flemming said via email.

“As soon as the commission is confirmed Judge Francis can then have the oath of office administered and she will be a Justice. The timing for all of this is to be determined,” Flemming said.

“A ceremonial investiture is just that — it is a public recognition of the official acts that have already taken place. The time and manner of those events are to be determined as well,” he added.

DeSantis insisted that he considered each of the six finalists sent by the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Nominating Commission. All had ties to the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy, which grooms attorneys for places in the conservative legal movement; DeSantis, also tied to the group, turns to it for appointees to the nominating commissions that vet potential judges, too.

“I said, you know what, she got it two years ago. But two years have elapsed and I’ve gotta go and do a thorough review of everybody, because there may have been people two years ago that have progressed a lot. And so, it wasn’t anything that she was entitled to just because she got it two years ago based on the facts and circumstances at the time,” DeSantis said.

“We ran all the nominees through a very good process. They had to talk about the law, their philosophy, and all these different things. I said, I’m going to do it from scratch. No preconceived notions and we’re going to go with the person that we think has done the best job.”

–Michael Moline, Florida Phoenix

https://flaglerlive.com/179380/renatha-francis-ethical-issues/ 

https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/fjri-news.jpg 800 800 RAD Tech https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Florida-Justice-Reform-Institute.jpg RAD Tech2022-08-05 15:53:372024-11-24 22:18:43Rejected in 2020, DeSantis Appoints Renatha Francis Again to Supreme Court, Despite Ethical Issues
Florida Justice Reform Institute

To Business Groups’ Delight, Bill Granting Consumers More Data Privacy Dies

May 2, 2021/in Flagler Live

 

FlaglerLive

To Business Groups’ Delight, Bill Granting Consumers More Data Privacy Dies

MAY 2, 2021 | FLAGLERLIVE | 

data privacy

They only think they have privacy. (Joris Louwes)

Business lobbyists claimed victory Friday after the demise of a bill that would have given consumers more control over personal data collected by companies. The bill (HB 969), backed by House Speaker Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, drew heavy opposition from businesses, at least in part because it would have allowed civil lawsuits if companies collected and sold personal data after being told not to do so.

Lawmakers did not pass the bill before Friday’s end of the 60-day legislative session. Lobbyists representing companies such as Apple, AT&T, Target, Capital One Services, Quicken Loans and Walt Disney Parks and Resorts were among 343 lobbyists registered to work on the issue.

William Large, president of the business-backed Florida Justice Reform Institute, told The News Service of Florida on Friday that the bill “would have been a class-action litigation bonanza. At the end of the day, the bill was about plaintiffs’ attorney fees and nothing more.” Sprowls unveiled the data privacy bill at a news conference with Gov. Ron DeSantis.

It would have given consumers rights to personal information that companies collect on them. Consumers would have been empowered to review the personal information and to delete or correct the information. Additionally, the bill would have authorized consumers to opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information.

Consumers would have been able to file lawsuits if their personal information had been breached, sold or shared after they opted out or if it had been retained after they requested it be deleted or corrected. The Senate altered the bill to only allow the attorney general to file lawsuits against companies, and the House and Senate could not reach agreement on a final version.

Sprowls this month said it was important to have the ability to file civil lawsuits. “Should a private citizen be able to say to a big corporation, ‘Hey, I asked you not to collect my data and you did it anyway.’ Or, ‘I asked you not to collect it and not only did you collect it, you sold it without my permission.’ A private citizen should be able to do that in my opinion,” he said.         

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                –News Service of Florida

https://flaglerlive.com/162992/consumer-privacy-dies/ 

https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/fjri-news.jpg 800 800 RAD Tech https://www.fljustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Florida-Justice-Reform-Institute.jpg RAD Tech2021-05-02 15:50:332024-11-25 07:52:20To Business Groups’ Delight, Bill Granting Consumers More Data Privacy Dies
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