Sixth District Court of Appeal Chief Judge Meredith Sasso was named to the Florida
Supreme Court by Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday, May 23, 2023. (Handout)

By JIM SAUNDERS | News Service of Florida
PUBLISHED: May 23, 2023 at 1:36 p.m. | UPDATED: May 23, 2023 at 1:56 p.m.

TALLAHASSEE — 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 much 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.

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.

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.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2023/05/23/desantis-names-sasso-as-next-supreme-court-justice/ 

 

Florida Supreme Court shields top corporate executives from depositions
By JIM SAUNDERS AUG 30, 2021 AT 10:35 AM

NEWS SERVICE OF FLORIDA |

TALLAHASSEE — Prompted by a case involving the retired chairman of Suzuki Motor Corp., the Florida Supreme Court has shielded high-ranking business executives from having to give depositions in lawsuits.

Justices, in a 6-1 decision on Thursday, extended to corporate executives a protection that has long allowed top government officials to avoid being required to testify about government actions. The decision said broadening what is known as the “apex doctrine” will help prevent harassment of corporate leaders.

“Over the years, varied government officers in Florida have benefited from the apex doctrine,” said the 15-page decision, written by Justice Carlos Muniz and joined by Chief Justice Charles Canady and Justices Alan Lawson, Ricky Polston, John Couriel and Jamie Grosshans. “We think that the efficiency and anti-harassment principles animating that doctrine are equally compelling in the private sphere.”

Muniz wrote that the decision is not a “blanket prohibition” on high-ranking corporate executives facing depositions. In part, declarations or affidavits will have to be filed that indicate the executives lack “unique, personal knowledge of the issues being litigated.”

But in a dissent, Justice Jorge Labarga wrote that the majority decision “abandons Florida’s longstanding refusal of affording special discovery protections to top-level corporate decision-makers.” He also argued that Florida already had adequate legal rules to prevent potential harassment.

“Florida’s existing discovery framework provides trial courts with the necessary tools to address abusive discovery practices, ranging from mandating the method of discovery to be used, to prohibiting the discovery from occurring in the first place. … Accordingly, there is no need for the special discovery protection afforded to top-level corporate officers by the majority’s new rule,” Labarga wrote.

Muniz wrote that the “impetus” for the Supreme Court to address the issue was a dispute about whether Osamu Suzuki, who retired in June as the chairman of Suzuki Motor Corp., should have to be deposed in a Florida products-liability lawsuit.

 That lawsuit was filed against the Suzuki company by Scott Winckler, who was paralyzed from the waist down in a 2013 motorcycle accident, according to an appellate court ruling. Four months after the accident, the company issued a recall of the brakes on the type of motorcycle Winckler was riding, and the lawsuit related to the brakes issue.

 In the lawsuit, Winckler’s attorneys argued that the Suzuki chairman had knowledge about facts relevant to the case and should testify. But the company’s attorneys fought efforts to depose the chairman, arguing in part that the plaintiff’s attorneys could get the information from lower-level company officials.

A divided panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal in 2019 rejected an attempt to prevent Osamu Suzuki from testifying, saying the apex doctrine had not been extended to high-ranking corporate executives.

“The problem with its (Suzuki’s) argument is that the doctrine is only clearly established in Florida in the government context, with respect to high-ranking government officials,” appeals court Judge Timothy Osterhaus wrote in a majority opinion joined by Judge Lori Rowe.

That spurred Suzuki’s attorneys, including former Justice Raoul Cantero, to appeal to the Supreme Court. In a brief filed last year, the attorneys wrote that Osamu Suzuki’s only involvement in the brake issue had been initialing a document.

 “Mr. Suzuki is the chairman of a global company,” the brief said. “His extensive duties consume his schedule. The notion that he has any personal knowledge about a motorcycle accident in Florida is not credible on its face, and plaintiff does not claim that he does.”

The Supreme Court heard arguments in December in the Suzuki case but had not ruled. Along with the decision Thursday to expand the apex doctrine, it issued an order saying it would not rule in the Suzuki case.

The Suzuki case drew friend-of-the-court briefs from a series of business and legal groups, including the Florida Justice Reform Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Defense Lawyers Association.

William Large, president of the business-backed Florida Justice Reform Institute, issued a statement Thursday praising the court’s broader decision on the apex doctrine.

“In our amicus (brief), we argued that allowing the deposition of an apex corporate employee who does not have uniqu information could lead to a flood of discovery demands for that same employee in other cases, leaving that person no time to actually run the business,” Large said. “The (Supreme) Court agreed, but in an unexpectedly profound way.”

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/fl-ne-nsf-florida-court-shields-corporate-executives-20210830-zdr6xz56h5enpgw3qsz7w3nxie-story.html 

 

Florida Supreme Court conservatives reverse longstanding criminal protections. It’s ‘alarming,’ defense lawyers say

By MONIVETTE CORDEIRO
ORLANDO SENTINEL | JUN 08, 2020

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ two new picks for the Florida Supreme Court represent diversity of gender and ethnicity,
but not ideology.Both are members of the Federalist Society. So were the two justices they replaced. So were all nine people
considered. It is increasingly apparent that the Federalists have a monopoly on the courts. (Associated Press)

The Florida Supreme Court made it easier last month to execute some inmates who may be intellectually disabled.

A week before, justices threw out a legal standard used for more than 100 years as a safeguard against wrongful criminal convictions based solely on circumstantial evidence.

The conservative majority, which includes Chief Justice Charles T. Canady and Justices Ricky Polston, Alan Lawson and Carlos G. Muñiz, has not shied away from saying past rulings “got it wrong.” In January, justices decided juries do not need to unanimously agree when recommending a judge sentence someone to death, calling the 2016 mandate from its predecessors “clearly erroneous.”

Continuously ignoring stare decisis, the doctrine of adhering to previous rulings when making decisions on similar cases, undermines the credibility of the institution and creates chaos in the legal system, Harper said.

“From the public’s point of view, this is a rogue court,” he said.

But William Large, president of the Florida Justice Reform Institute, a lobbying group that works to limit “wasteful” civil litigation, said he doesn’t see the court playing a political role. Large praised Gov. Ron DeSantis’ latest Florida Supreme Court picks for “[continuing] his mission to restore the court to its proper role as the interpreter of our laws, not the author,” according to the Florida Times-Union

No court ruling is untouchable, Large told the Orlando Sentinel.

“Stare decisis provides stability but it doesn’t provide blind adherence,” he said. “Perpetuating a pre-existing error in the law under the guise of stare decisis doesn’t serve society and undermines the integrity and credibility of the court. The court has shown its willingness to overturn unsound rulings in the criminal context — hopefully it will do so in the civil context.”

Court discards precedent

Neither the state nor the defense asked the Florida Supreme Court to discard the circumstantial evidence standard in the Bush v. State ruling issued May 14, said Orlando criminal defense attorney Richard Hornsby.

On their own, justices decided to abandon the heightened standard, which held that if a case was based solely on circumstantial evidence and prosecutors were unable to exclude a reasonable hypothesis of innocence, the trial judge must acquit the accused rather than send the case to a jury, or the appellate court must reverse a conviction.

Sean Alonzo Bush, who is facing the death penalty for the 2011 murder of his estranged wife, wanted the state’s high court to review his conviction, which he argued was legally insufficient because it was based entirely on circumstantial evidence.

The Florida Supreme Court affirmed his conviction 4-1 and discontinued the special standard because it is “unwarranted, confusing and out of sync” with the rest of the country’s courts, according to the majority’s opinion.

The lone dissenting Justice Jorge Labarga argued Bush’s conviction would have stood even without changing the standard.

“This Court eliminates another reasonable safeguard in our death penalty jurisprudence and in Florida’s criminal law across the board,” he wrote.

Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office, which handled the prosecution side of Bush’s appeal, did not respond to a request for comment.

Though the decision to discard it came in a murder case, the circumstantial evidence standard was most beneficial to people accused of drug crimes “simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Hornsby said.

“Let’s say law enforcement raids a house and someone is standing by the table where the drugs are,” he said. “The prosecutor has to prove the drugs are theirs more than just by being in mere proximity. Because of that standard, prosecutors don’t bring hundreds of prosecutions.”

The pre-existing standard was “an important safeguard against innocent people being wrongly convicted based on flimsy evidence,” said Maitland criminal appellate attorney William Ponall.

“I have an appeal currently pending before a Florida appellate court where the circumstantial evidence standard that existed before Bush resulted in the trial court dismissing the charge against my client’s co-defendant,” Ponall said. “Now that Bush has been decided, it is unclear whether my client will get the benefit of the same standard that applied to his co-defendant.”

Hornsby predicts a “hundred-fold” increase in drug prosecutions because the state no longer has to worry about a circumstantial case being dismissed.

“It’s a concern for everybody,” Hornsby said. “We’re seeing a politicization of the Florida Supreme Court. … The new standard for becoming a justice is, are you a member of the Federalist Society? Are you politically aligned with the governor — which is not how it should be.”

DeSantis recently appointed two new justices for the state’s high court, from a pool of candidates who were all affiliated with the Federalist Society, a conservative-libertarian organization that advocates for “the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.”

The Federalist Society did not respond to request for comment.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to reverse so many of its owns cases in a short period of time leads the public to question whether those decisions are based on politics instead of the actual merits of a case,” Ponall said.

Hornsby said other recent decisions from the court show an “assault” on protections for criminal defendants, including receding from a 2010 ruling that it’s a “fundamental error” not to instruct juries on lesser offenses they can choose to convict on as an alternative to the charge a defendant faces, as well as an attempt to rewrite speedy trial rules that would “make it less helpful to criminal defendants.”

“I think it’s very alarming,” said Hal Schuhmacher, president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “It’s coming in this rapid succession of just blatantly ignoring the rules that have been established and protected us all.”

‘No second chance’

Harry Franklin Phillips wanted the Florida Supreme Court to consider again if he was intellectually disabled before being put to death.

Phillips was convicted of first-degree murder for gunning down a Miami parole supervisor in 1982 and sentenced to death twice after the high court found his counsel was ineffective the first time.

During a decades-long appeals process, Phillips argued he could not be executed because of his intellectual disability. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court found that sentencing intellectually disabled people to death is a “cruel and unusual” punishment forbidden under the Eighth Amendment.

To meet the intellectual disability standard, Florida required defendants to have an IQ of 70 or below, a condition that was ultimately struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014 because justices said the strict cutoff “creates an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed.”

State courts found Phillips failed to meet the standard, scoring 70, 74 and 75 on IQ tests.

To fix the issue, Florida would have to consider whether a defendant’s IQ score fell within the test’s 5-point margin of error, which expanded the score range to between 65 and 75 points. The state Supreme Court ruled in 2016 the new rule would apply retroactively, giving inmates like Phillips another chance to prove their intellectual disability.

But the Florida Supreme Court denied Phillips’ latest appeal May 21 and decided to go further, ruling that it “clearly erred” when deciding the rule should apply to older cases.

“While this Court has consistently acknowledged the importance of stare decisis, it has been willing to correct its mistakes,” the majority wrote. “… Stare decisis provides stability to the law and to the society governed by that law. Yet stare decisis does not command blind allegiance to precedent.”

Justice Labarga said the ruling was “patently unfair” because some death row inmates had received new hearings under the retroactive rule.

“Yet again, this Court has removed an important safeguard in maintaining the integrity of Florida’s death penalty jurisprudence,” Labarga wrote. “The result is an increased risk that certain individuals may be executed, even if they are intellectually disabled.”

The court’s decision to overturn the unanimous jury rule for defendants in capital cases drew praise from conservative Ocala-based State Attorney Brad King in January. King could not be reached for comment this week.

“We’ve seen in this experiment with unanimous jury verdicts for death recommendation that the results are arbitrary,” King said then. “You basically let one juror out of 12 dictate the result and that’s not democracy. … That’s not a legitimate process when one juror can hijack the entire sentencing result.”

But Melba Pearson, the former prosecutor and ACLU of Florida deputy director who is now running for Miami-Dade state attorney, said the high court’s removal of protections for defendants in capital cases is “concerning” given the high number of exonerations from Florida’s death row.

In light of the Phillips case, prosecutors will have to take a more proactive role to make sure they’re not seeking the death penalty for someone who may have intellectual disability, Pearson said.

“We have to make sure we get it right, especially when it comes to the death penalty,” she said. “There is no second chance.”

[email protected]

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/crime/os-ne-florida-supreme-court-criminal-protections-20200608-na7vxxptpndzfpqtklxrrxy5lq-story.html

 

Florida Supreme Court poised for conservative makeover

Florida Supreme Court (Gray Rohrer)

By Gray Rohrer – Tallahassee Bureau
January 7, 2019

TALLAHASSEE – The Florida Supreme Court is about to undergo a sweeping change that could lead to liberal rulings on issues ranging from abortion to business regulations and protections for workers to gun rights being overturned.

Justices Barbara Pariente, Fred Lewis and Peggy Quince comprise three votes in the 4-3 liberal majority on the court, but must leave office by Tuesday because of a requirement in the state constitution that justices leave the bench when they complete a six-year term after turning 70.

The trio has often decided cases that went against the GOP-controlled Legislature, including opinions that junked congressional and state Senate redistricting maps; nixed a law capping attorneys’ fees in workers compensation cases; upheld the state’s ban on carrying firearms openly in public and blocked a 24-hour waiting period requirement to get an abortion.

Pariente and Lewis also often wrote cutting rhetorical barbs echoing the clashes of the harshly divided U.S. Supreme Court and the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

In an opinion scolding a dissent from conservative Justice Charles Canady, Pariente sarcastically wrote that she was thankful he didn’t accuse her of “jiggery-pokery,” a phrase coined by Scalia in his dissent to a ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act. In a recent dissent involving a case surrounding Gov. Rick Scott’s judicial appointment powers, Lewis called the majority opinion in favor of Scott a “sham” and a “travesty” in a “bizarro world.”

They were also the last remaining justices on the court who were part of the decision to order a recount in the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Conservatives are anticipating a sea change in the outcome of cases. In an op-ed for the Tallahassee Democrat, DeSantis stated he will appoint justices who will “be willing to reverse bad precedent and not legislate from the bench.”

Laws passed by Republicans to keep down expenses related to workers compensation, medical malpractice and other insurance claims have been undermined or thrown out completely by the state’s high court. Business groups that have long pushed for tort reform want to see those rulings reversed.

“The business community is looking forward to textualists being appointed to the Florida Supreme Court, justices who will say what the law is, not what it should be,” said William Large, president of the Florida Justice Reform Institute, a conservative legal group. “The business community does not want to see policymaking on the bench. Policymaking decisions should be made in the Legislature.”

Liberal groups and Democrats, long outnumbered in the Legislature and shut out of the Governor’s mansion for the last 20 years, are bracing for the removal of their last line of defense to halt GOP laws.

“We need a check and we need other branches of government to keep other branches in line,” said Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando. “If we have a bunch of other people who look the same and believe in the same thing in the Florida Supreme Court then it’s just going to be right-wing government gone wild.”

The lack of diversity throughout the court system has been an ongoing critique by black lawmakers of Gov. Rick Scott. With the retirement of Quince, the court is likely to have no black justices for the first time in 40 years.

The Judicial Nominating Commission, made up of Scott appointees, didn’t put forward any African-American nominees, so DeSantis won’t have the option of choosing a black justice. Still, black lawmakers have called on him to reject the slate of nominees so an African-American is included.

“Any decision he makes should be best for the good of the state of Florida and if that means he needs to delay if he can then he should,” said Rep. Bruce Antone, D-Orlando, chairman of the Black Legislative Caucus.

The Florida Supreme Court has already delayed hearing oral arguments in December and January because of the anticipated turnover. The court of seven justices requires a minimum of five to hear cases and at least four to form a majority opinion. There is a process for the chief justice to appoint temporary associate justices to hear cases, but such a move will only be needed if DeSantis takes a lengthy period of time to name his appointees.

In his op-ed, DeSantis said he expects to make at least one appointment this week.

[email protected] or (850) 222-5564

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/politics/political-pulse/os-ne-florida-supreme-court-balance-20190104-story.html

 

Listen to opponents of term limits for judges: Where We Stand

February 15, 2017

Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran recently wrote in a guest column for the Sentinel that it wasn’t surprising that judges weren’t “fans” of his proposal to impose term limits on the state’s Supreme Court and appellate courts. But last week, before his proposal cleared a House committee by a single vote, a more unlikely foe emerged.

The Florida Justice Reform Institute is dedicated to fighting “rampant litigation in Florida and the significant social and economic toll it takes on our state,” according to the mission page of its website. Yet its director, William Large, told committee members that the 12-year term limits Corcoran advocates would degrade the quality of applicants to the judiciary and, as a result, diminish the public’s confidence in the courts.  He argued talented lawyers would be less likely to interrupt their careers in private practice for a term-limited stint on the bench. “It will insure that the best and brightest rarely, if ever, apply,” Large said.

Criticism from the institute, which is otherwise a good fit with Corcoran’s conservative judicial philosophy, can’t be so easily dismissed by the speaker. After all, Large also echoed a regular refrain from Corcoran during the committee hearing when he called for judges “who can say what the law is, not what it should be.”

Other speakers also registered their opposition to the speaker’s proposal during the hearing, including former Republican Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, a lawyer who clerked for two federal judges and also represented Fort Myers in the House. Kottkamp argued that higher turnover among judges who are bound by term limits would unsettle the state’s legal landscape with more conflicting opinions.

Corcoran, in his guest column, cited Founding Father Thomas Jefferson’s criticism of lifetime appointments for federal judges. But Supreme Court justices and appellate judges in Florida aren’t given lifetime appointments. They must face voters in the first election after they are appointed by the governor, and every six years hence, and they lose their seats on the bench if they earn less than majority support. They are subject to a mandatory retirement age of 70.

State Rep. Jennifer Sullivan, the Mount Dora Republican sponsoring Corcoran’s proposal in the House, argued that justices and appellate judges aren’t accountable under the current system because none has been unseated by voters since Florida switched to appointing them in the 1970s. But that’s a good indication that the process used to screen judicial applicants —  a panel of lawyers and laymen that evaluates their qualifications before forwarding a short list of the best candidates for consideration to the governor — normally yields qualified judges.

And in those instances where sitting judges violate judicial rules of conduct, they face discipline from a commission and ultimately the state Supreme Court. Some appellate judges who ran into trouble this way and might have lost their seats during retention elections resigned before they had to face voters.

Sullivan declared during the committee hearing that Corcoran’s proposal “is about good government and accountability.” Actually, the opposite is true. It would treat good judges and bad judges the same. Both would be kicked off the bench after an arbitrary two-term limit. Voters would lose the power to extend the tenure of the best judges.

Corcoran’s proposal, if approved by three-fifths of legislators in both chambers, would go on the state ballot as a constitutional amendment in 2018. It would need approval of at least 60 percent of voters to be ratified. But as committee members were reminded by a representative of the Florida Bar, which represents all of the state’s lawyers, no other states impose term limits on their appellate judges. In three that proposed the idea – Colorado, Mississippi and Nevada – voters said no.

Even if legislators aren’t inclined to listen to opposition from judges to term limits, they would be wise to give weight to the objections of other knowledgeable observers of the court system, including critics of Florida’s judiciary. The issue is not really that complicated. Regularly purging the ranks of justices and appellate judges in Florida of their most experienced and knowledgeable members is just a bad idea.

This editorial has been updated to correct the name of the Florida Justice Reform Institute.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/os-ed-term-limits-judges-20170215-story.html