57.10 and email service of the safe harbor notification.

A recent Florida Supreme court case sheds light on some Judicial Administration procedures involving email notifications.

57.10 and email service of the safe harbor notification. Hello my name s John Pankauski.

Are you involved in a lawsuit right now and somebody is seeking fees under 57.105. That is a statute in Florida that allows one party to get fees, attorney’s fees against the other side for any position, defense or claim that they are making that’s frivolous. That’s not based on fact or law. Now, the question becomes how do you serve the 21 day safe harbor notice before you file your motion under 57.105. Are you serving it by email. If you are serving it by email, you need to read the Matt vs Kaplan case if you are in the 4th district. You have to read different opinions in the 2nd district because they interpret 57.105 and a Florida rule of Judicial Administration, 2.516 differently. So you need to read that rule as well.

But there is a more recent case that you want to read that interprets rule 2.516. It’s the Wheaton case, it’s from Florida’s Supreme Court issued Jan 4th, 2019. It interprets 2.516 when dealing with proposals for settlement, sometimes called offers of judgement and also the rule on proposals for settlement and the statute when the proposal is sent by email and it determines whether this rule of judicial administration is applicable or not. What does this mean? What this means is if sending something by email you may not have to comply with 2.516. The Wheaton case didn’t deal with 57.105, but’s analysis of this is applicable or I should say needs to read in light of 57.105. Read the Wheaton case.