Florida’s current appellate court system—a supreme court and intermediate appellate courts (IACs)— began in 1956 with the creation of three IACs. Before that, appeals were heard by the Supreme Court of Florida. As the state grew and caseloads increased, the state added IACs in 1965, 1979, and 2022. Each court needed headquarters and judges, cases, and a clerk. This article briefly traces the history of new appellate courts in Florida.
Headquarters
The first three IACs were in Tallahassee (the state capital in North Florida), Lakeland (Central Florida), and Miami (South Florida). When the fourth IAC was added in 1965, the legislation directed that the headquarters would be selected by a commission comprised of the supreme court justices, the governor, and six cabinet members. Vero Beach was the first location, but in 1967 the headquarters was moved to West Palm Beach.
In 1979, the fifth IAC was created. The legislature selected the headquarters, bypassing Orlando and choosing Daytona Beach, a move attributed to the strong legislative leadership from the area.
Also around this time, the legislature amended the statute to allow for branch headquarters. The Lakeland-based IAC promptly designated Tampa as a branch, the only court to have done so. This court operated in two locations until 2023.
In 2021, a sixth IAC was proposed, and it was created in 2022. Three existing courts were reconfigured in the process. The legislature chose to locate the new court in Lakeland, rather than follow the recommendation to place it in St. Petersburg. The Tampa branch became the headquarters for one of the original three IACs. On Jan. 3, 2023, this court consolidated its operations in Tampa as a temporary headquarters until a new courthouse can be completed in St. Petersburg. Courthouse funding is now being requested for the Lakeland courthouse as well.
Judges
Florida has both created new judgeships and reassigned existing ones. The 1965 legislation creating the fourth IAC provided for the appointment of three new judges in staggered terms. In 1979, however, judges who lived in a realigned county could “opt in” to service in the new court. Two judges elected to transfer, and a circuit court judge was assigned to serve temporarily in an associate capacity.
In 2022, existing judges were moved to the IACs where they resided as of Dec. 22, 2021; and seven new appellate judges were added. The legislature is now considering whether two courts have “excess capacity” that should be reduced by attrition when judges from these courts retire.
Transfer of Cases
In 1965 and 1979, pending cases were transferred to the courts that now had territorial jurisdiction over the counties or circuits where the cases originated. In 1979, an administrative order directed that case records were physically transferred unless judicial labor had begun or was scheduled in the near future. For the cases underway, jurisdiction vested with the new court but the case records were retained in the original court. The clerks and deputy clerks were designated deputy clerks of the new court for these cases. And assigned judges in the original courts were designated temporary judges of the new court.
By 2021, electronic records eliminated the need to load a truck with boxes of paper files. Just a year earlier, the IACs had received electronic transfers of pending cases due to a change in jurisdiction over appeals from county court. These case records were electronically transferred from the circuit clerks to the IACs. But the computer systems are not the same between the circuit and appellate courts, and the transferred files left something to be desired.
Fortunately, the IACs all use the same case management systems (CMS). There were interesting questions about the best approach. Florida is midway through a multi-year project to adopt C-Track as its new appellate CMS. The new court would open on Jan. 3, 2023; and C-Track was set to go live in the first courts at the end of that month. Instead of standing up new versions of an old CMS, should the new court be in the first group for C-Track? After review, this option looked too risky and more expensive. The new court would go to the end of the C-Track schedule.
Consideration was given to whether a single case management system could house cases for two different courts in a commingled database. This was rejected because of the complexities in case numbering; the problem of pulling case information from the e-filing portal for separate courts; and the difficulties in populating forms and templates. Programmatically, it was estimated to be much more complex to commingle data than to create a new CMS.
Housing the new court on servers that are dedicated back-ups—also considered but rejected for various reasons, including what was likely to be a sluggish response time with the use of long-distance servers. Ultimately, new versions of the existing CMS were set up to run on new servers. Case data for the transferred cases was migrated from original courts to new courts in a way that allowed the dockets to be recreated in whole.
In the process, CMS accounts for attorney access were migrated, even for attorneys who had accounts at multiple IACs. The Florida Courts E-Filing Portal was able to transfer the case data and electronic service lists for transferred cases. And the portal added a warning for filers who attempted to file in the old case numbers, even providing the new case number.
Clerk of Court
The newest court started with a core group of 6 judges from existing IACs who would be recommissioned based on their residence in the new court’s territory. The supreme court charged them with planning for the new court to open its doors on Jan. 3, 2023. The success of their mission was certainly assured by their early decision to hire Stacey Pectol as the clerk of court. She brings to the job her valuable experience as clerk of the Arkansas Supreme Court and Court of Appeals. With her assistance, the court has adopted administrative orders and internal operating procedures, designed a website and document templates, and done the thousand other things that we take for granted in an on-going operation.