CANDICE WOLFSON, PETITIONER,
v.
HOWARD WOLFSON, RESPONDENT

Fla. 3d DCA | 2016-02-24
No. 3D15-1854
Before SHEPHERD, EMAS and LOGUE, jj;
185 So. 3d 1273 Florida District Court of Appeal, Third District (2016)

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.

Synopsis

A Florida appellate court denied the father's motion to enforce its prior mandate requiring expedited custody hearings before the original family court judge, despite recognizing that the mother's strategic filing of a dependency petition appeared designed to trigger an automatic case transfer to a different judge. The court exercised discretion to permit the transfer because the Unified Family Court could resolve the matter more quickly, prioritizing the child's best interests over vindicating its own authority.


Holding

The court denied the father's motion to enforce the mandate and permitted the case transfer to proceed. Although the court recognized its prerogative to overrule administrative assignment orders and could have enforced its authority by returning the case to the original judge, it exercised discretion to allow the transfer because the Unified Family Court could progress the case more quickly, which the court determined was in the child's best interests.


Headnotes

[1] A party's filing of a dependency petition can trigger an administrative order that transfers a related custody case to a different division and judge.

[2] Litigants do not have a right to have or not have a particular judge hear their cause, subject only to substantive law regarding judicial disqualification.

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Key Quotes

“We have the prerogative to overrule the natural workings of this administrative order as it pertains to this case.”

Establishes the appellate court's authority to overturn automatic case assignment procedures if it chooses to do so.

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Facts & Procedural History

After a mother unsuccessfully sought recusal of the family court judge and obtained certiorari relief from the appellate court requiring expedited hea…

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Opinion of the Court
SHEPHERD, J.

ON MOTION TO ENFORCE MANDATE OR ALTERNATIVE PETITION FOR WRIT OF MANDAMUS.

SHEPHERD, J.

After the mother in this post-dissolution child custody casé1 unsuccessfully sought *1274the recusal of the learned family division trial judge2 assigned'to the custody dispute and soon thereafter succeeded on. a petition for certiorari relief to this Court, which wé expedited, granted- the relief sought, and remanded with instructions to the assigned' judge to hear the pending cross-petitions for modification of child custody “forthwith,” the mother has' derailed the evidentiary hearings she so urgently sought in her petition for certiorari relief by filing a private petition for dependency just twelve days before the date scheduled for the hearings.

The mother’s filing of this private dependency. petition, which has all of the markings of an effort by the petitioner to get her way despite her earlier unsuccessful recusal effort, has triggered Administrative Order 03-15, which automatically caused the transfer of this custody case to the Unified Family Court Complex Litigation. Division and a new judge. The dependency petition seeks the same relief as the mother’s family court cross-petition for modification which was twelve days from being heard — removal of the child from the temporary custody of the ‘father and placement in the care1 and custody of the mother. The' facts alleged in the petition extend back at least as far as August, 2015. We would be naive to believe that the mother and her new counsel, retained for this purpose, were unaware of the administrative order requiring this case to be transferred to a different judge.

We have the prerogative to overrule the natural workings of this administrative order as it pertains to this case. See Muehleman v. State, 3 So.3d 1149, 1161-62 (Fla.2009) (“[A]dministrative orders of judicial assignment ‘do not limit the lawful authority of any judge ofithe court, nor do they bestow rights on-litigants.’ ”) (quoting Rodriguez v. State, 919 So.2d 1252, 1278 (Fla.2005)); Anderson v. Wagner, 955 So.2d 586, 590 (Fla. 5th DCA 2006) (“Subject only to substantive law relating to disqualification of judges, litigants have no right to have* or not have, &ny particular judge of a court hear their cause — ”). In fact, we would be inclined to do so for the purpose of vindicating the authority of this Court. In this case, however, we make an exception in what we believe to be the best interests of the child. The child will be eight years old on May 1 of this year. He has been a pawn in the post-dissolution gamesmanship in which his parents have engaged for nearly a quarter of his young life. In a response to the motion to enforce mandate filed at our request by the General Counsel to the Circuit Court, we have been advised that the family court judge has released the time he had previously set aside to try this case and could not reach the case again until June. On the other hand, the Unified Family Judge has set both an arraignment in the dependency case and a status conference to set a trial,date in the custody case for late this month. With no disrespect to the family court judge who was at the ready, to resolve the disputes between the former spouses in this case, we are advised that, the case is. .likely to progress more quickly in the Unified Family Court. For this reason, we exercise our discretion to deny the father’s motion to enforce this Court’s mandate in favor of a speedy resolution which would be in the child’s best interests. This opinion should not be read *1275to express any opinion of this Court on the resolution of the matters before it.

Motion denied.- .


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