Jonathan Mann of Bresky Law Obtains Reversal in Fifth District Court of Appeal of Final Judgment Modifying Timesharing Entered After Judge Disqualified Himself<\/p>\n
Jonathan Mann of Bresky Law recently obtained reversal, in the Fifth District Court of Appeal, of a final judgment of modification of timesharing of a minor child. The parties\u2019 son was two years old in 2008 at the time of the parties\u2019 divorce. Two years after the divorce, the father sought to modify the timesharing schedule regarding the son. The trial court held a hearing on the father\u2019s petition and at the end of the hearing made an oral ruling granting the modification.<\/p>\n
However, the trial judge later disqualified himself from the case, and all cases involving the mother\u2019s trial attorneys, shortly after the hearing due to a motion by the mother\u2019s trial attorneys alleging fears they would not receive fair treatment. The parties then disagreed over the details of the final written judgment granting modification. The mother objected to the father\u2019s proposed final judgment. The trial court rendered a written final judgment two months later granting the father\u2019s petition for modification, despite the judge having disqualified himself.<\/p>\n
On appeal to the Fifth DCA, Mann argued on behalf of the mother that the trial court\u2019s final judgment was void because the trial judge rendered the written final judgment after disqualifying himself. Mann acknowledged the existence of the \u201cministerial act\u201d exception that allows a disqualified trial judge to reduce a prior oral ruling to writing. However, the exception does not apply where the judge exercises any further discretion prior to rendering the written order. Mann argued that the exception was inapplicable in this case because the trial court had used further discretion regarding the parties\u2019 disagreement over the proposed final judgment before rendering the written final judgment.<\/p>\n
The Fifth DCA agreed that the ministerial act exception to the disqualification rule did not apply in this case. The Fifth DCA issued a written per curiam opinion reversing the final judgment of modification. This beneficial result in the appellate court undid the final judgment that was detrimental to our client.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jonathan Mann of Bresky Law Obtains Reversal in Fifth District Court of Appeal of Final Judgment Modifying Timesharing Entered After Judge Disqualified Himself Jonathan Mann of Bresky Law recently obtained reversal, in the Fifth District Court of Appeal, of a final judgment of modification of timesharing of a minor child. The parties\u2019 son was two…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1807,1806,1838],"tags":[1843],"class_list":["post-2163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bresky-appellate-cases","category-family","category-notable-cases","tag-family-marital"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}