PRACTICE TIP:  IT'S OKAY TO CONTACT THE JUDICIAL ASSISTANT

Copyright 2003 by James W. Martin, Esq. All rights reserved.

Published in The Paraclete, St. Petersburg Bar Association (Nov. 2003)

Note: This article is for background purposes only and is not intended as legal advice.

Let’s say you have a non-jury trial and the court takes the matter under advisement and does not enter judgment at conclusion of the trial.  You wait to hear.  Sometimes hours, sometimes days, sometimes longer.  What if it’s been 8 days since the trial and you still haven’t heard?  Do you bother the judicial assistant to see if the court has ruled?  The answer is yes, because there is no way to tell if the judgment was already entered and your copy was just lost in the mail. 

You have just 10 days to ask for rehearing and just 30 days to appeal the judgment, and those deadlines are not extended even if you did not get a copy of the judgment.  The court has no power to extend those deadlines.

So says the recent Fifth Circuit opinion in Jones v. Jones, 2003 Fla. App. LEXIS 7555 (May 23, 2003, Fla. 5^th DCA, Case No. 5D02-838) (click here to download case in PDF format), wherein the former husband’s appeal of the final judgment was dismissed for failure to file notice of appeal within 30 days after rendition of the final judgment.  The former husband, through apparent oversight, was not served the final judgment.  The trial court tried to extend the deadlines, but the appellate court ruled it had no such power.

Conclusion:  Maintain close contact with the judicial assistant and docket the date of entry of final judgment and the 10-day deadline for filing motion for rehearing and 30-day deadline for filing notice of appeal.

GovernmentFilesOnline.com was also established by Florida lawyer James W. Martin.