HILL
v.
HILL

Fla. 5th DCA | 2018-05-14
No. 5D18-1192
Florida District Court of Appeal, Fifth District (2018)

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.


Holding

A trial judge must be disqualified when the judge's comments are sufficient to put a reasonably prudent person in well-founded fear of not receiving a fair or impartial hearing.


Headnotes

[1] Judicial disqualification must be based on an objectively reasonable fear of bias; the subjective perceptions of the litigant are insufficient.

Previewing 1 of 1 headnotes on this case. FLexlaw’s editorially structured points of law — every proposition, pinpointed — are reserved for members.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

Key Quotes

“were sufficient to put a reasonably prudent person in well-founded fear of not receiving a fair or impartial hearing or trial”

Court's application of the disqualification standard from State v. Gresham

Facts & Procedural History

Darryl Hill sought to disqualify the trial judge in proceedings involving Iris Elizabeth Hill and Ponte Vedra Animal Hospital, Inc. The trial court de…

The full statement of facts, procedural history, and disposition for this case are member content.

Join FLexlaw to unlock all legal intelligence

© FLexlaw, Inc. — AI-generated enrichments are proprietary. All rights reserved.


Opinion of the Court

PER CURIAM. Darryl Hill petitions this court for a writ of prohibition, challenging the denial of his timely motion to disqualify the trial judge presiding over the below proceedings. After a review of the record, including the transcript from the hearing described in Hill’s motion to disqualify, we conclude that comments made by the judge at that hearing “were sufficient to put a reasonably prudent person in well-founded fear of not receiving a fair or impartial hearing or trial.” State v. Gresham, 214 So. 3d 780, 781 (Fla. 5th DCA 2017) (citing

Shuler v. Green Mountain Ventures, Inc., 791 So. 2d 1213, 1215 (Fla. 5th DCA 2001) (holding that fear of judicial bias giving rise to disqualification motion must be objectively reasonable)). Accordingly, we grant the petition and issue the writ of prohibition.

PETITION GRANTED. COHEN, C.J., and LAMBERT, J., concur. TORPY, J., dissents without opinion.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Authorities Cited

Full citator, related cases, and AI research tools

Open in FLexlaw