News & Events

As you may be aware, the Florida Supreme Court has enacted significant changes to the Rules of Civil Procedure, most of which are effective on January 1, 2025. We are writing to you to advise you of these changes and let you know how we will be complying with the new rules and how they will affect your company and your insureds in the litigated matters you have been kind enough to assign to our office. 

One of the most significant changes is to Rule 1.280(a)(1), which governs civil discovery. The parties will now be required to serve initial discovery disclosures within sixty (60) days after service of the Complaint. Within this sixty (60) day period, the parties must provide: 

• The name and, if known, the address, telephone number, and e-mail address of each individual likely to have discoverable information regarding this matter, along with a brief description of the information the individual may possess;·      
• A copy, or a description by category and location, of all documents, electronically stored information, and tangible things that are in the party’s possession, custody, or control or, if not in your possession, custody, or control, a description by category and location of such information. This could include contracts, employee records, photos, videos, text messages, emails, voicemails, or any other documents relevant to this claim; 
• If the party is making a claim for damages, a computation for each category of damages claimed by the party and a copy of the documents or other evidentiary material on which each computation is based, including materials bearing on the nature and extent of injuries suffered; and
• A copy of any insurance policy or agreement under which an insurance company may be liable to satisfy all or part of a possible judgment in the action or to indemnify or reimburse for payments made to satisfy the judgment. 

Additionally, the rules require that we supplement our initial disclosures with any information/documentation that we obtain throughout the proceedings as soon as we receive that additional information or documentation.  

In addition to new discovery rules, the Courts will be issuing Case Management Orders from the beginning of the case setting forth detailed timelines which will contain the prospective trial date, as well as deadlines for every phase of the litigation. As the case advances, the prospective trial date will be finalized. Once finalized, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain a continuance pursuant to the new rules. 

In light of the shortened timelines for the completion of discovery and early trial settings, it will be necessary for us to retain both liability and damage experts much earlier in the life of the case than we in the past. Furthermore, we anticipate that it will be more difficult to find and retain appropriate experts given that all civil litigants requiring expert testimony will be required to retain experts earlier in the case to ensure that they will be able to comply with earlier expert discovery and disclosure rules.  

As such, once a case is assigned to us, it is imperative that we move quickly to meet with our clients, obtain the information required to be disclosed within the first sixty (60) days of the litigation and retain experts as early as possible to ensure that we don’t have difficulty doing before the deadlines for discovery and disclosure. We are very mindful of your company’s guidelines for the retention and approval of experts and will make every reasonable effort in which to comply with the guidelines but we anticipate having to obtain authority for the retention of experts much earlier in the case than we previously needed to. We are therefore requesting that your claims handlers be advised of these new requirements and the need to move quickly to obtain the necessary authority, as any unnecessary delay may ultimately result in our clients’ inability to present that testimony at trial.  

We truly appreciate the relationship that we have with your company and we wanted to make sure that we communicate these issues with you. We welcome any recommendations you may have to improve the communication process with our lawyers and your claims handlers to make sure we adapt to these new rules without any significant issues. We are happy to provide you with a Powerpoint summary of these new rules on your request. 

Should you have any questions or wish to discuss these issues any further please do not hesitate to reach out.