Category: Case Law Updates
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Second DCA rules against DCF on imminent risk of harm. Was DCF being strategic at the expense of future cases?
Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there. —Anton Chekhov Let’s continue our look at legal…
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Fourth DCA rules against DCF on risk of harm. Do we need better laws or better lawyers?
I’ve read the Miami Herald’s Innocents Lost series with frustration, sadness, and a feeling of powerlessness. The calls for system change, better services, and more realistic funding, articulated brilliantly by many other people, are overdue and welcomed. The parts of the series briefly dealing with lawyers struck me, however, in particular because I am a lawyer who has worked both…
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Florida judge says schools probably have the right to decide which students have to suffer violence quietly
In Lake County, Florida, a young girl at Carver Middle School wanted to start a Gay-Straight Alliance in order to combat bullying and other abuses she saw at her school. The administration refused her request, stating that the group was not related to the curriculum despite the fact that other groups were approved that were…
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Guardianship orders are hard, Second DCA’s already reversed two of them this year
” But the statute clearly requires the trial court to first make a reasoned decision that reunification or adoption are not in the best interest of the child. See § 39.6221(1). Despite the language of the order, the court did not make that determination in this case and does not appear to have had a factual basis to have…
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Fourth DCA: No conflict when same judge orders TPR, hears TPR, and grants TPR
Says the Fourth DCA: It’s not a conflict for a judge to order DCF to file a TPR petition, and then preside over that TPR trial, and then grant that TPR. D.A. v. Department of Children & Families, 2014 WL 464151 (Fla. 4th DCA 2014) (Mem). Says me: Yes, the statute allows that, but if a…
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Third DCA: Foster Parents cannot access the entire file
The facts are simple: foster parents moved for party status, and the trial court partially granted them access to the entire court file. The mother (not TPR’d), joined by the GAL Program (for the children) and an AAL for another half-sibling, petitioned for cert alleging violation of privacy and lack of statutory basis. DCF took…
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Here’s what the Fourth DCA did with the amended reunification statute, section 39.522
After years of confusion on what to do on a motion for reunification when you have a “charged” parent who completed a case plan and an “uncharged” parent who was given custody, on July 1, 2013 the reunification statute was amended to include the following language: In cases where the issue before the court is…
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Recreational marijuana use isn’t a defense to TPR, yet
Apparently I missed this in November: the Fourth DCA responded to a father’s defense that his marijuana use was only “recreational.” The father never received a negative drug screen during the pendency of this case, he admitted at trial to continuing to smoke marijuana “recreationally,” and he failed to complete the required outpatient program before…