Fifteenth Judicial Circuit of Florida, Palm Beach County Filing Rules

A Notice of Compliance must be filed with a fully completed Checklist before the court will schedule a final hearing on a Petition for Adoption.

A discovery response must state objections specifically and clearly indicate whether responsive material is withheld on the basis of an objection; otherwise, all objections except privilege objections are waived.

A case-management-conference notice must identify the issues to be addressed and list all pending motions, including uncoordinated motions.

A temporary or final custody petition must have the completed checklist uploaded with a proposed final order through OLS before the hearing is set.

At least three days before trial, counsel must provide Chambers one set of proposed jury instructions and, for disputed instructions, each party's proposal and supporting legal grounds.

The parties must upload the appropriate proposed form of order with attachments through OLS at least 24 hours before the scheduled UMC hearing or conference.

Pretrial motions, including motions in limine, must be heard five days before calendar call.

Plaintiff must provide the final trial witness list, including rebuttal witnesses, at least 75 days before the Pretrial Conference.

All motions, including dispositive motions and motions in limine, must be heard no less than 5 days before the Calendar Call.

A party objecting to a remote dependency adjudicatory hearing must file a written objection within 72 hours after the hearing is set.

When an attorney appears or is removed as counsel, the attorney’s email addresses must be individually updated in the Florida Courts E-filing Portal, the Clerk’s system, and the Circuit’s administration systems because those systems are not integrated.

The parties must serve document-production demands by the date stated in the report.

The noncompliance suggestion must identify the person and conduct at issue, be served on all parties, and be sent to chambers.

The Division serves orders electronically to attorneys and parties who have registered primary and secondary email addresses with the circuit.

The party must keep the clerk and opposing parties informed of current mailing and email addresses because future papers will be served at the addresses on record.

The requesting party must provide the confidentiality order to the Clerk of Court and send it to the Communications Department for filing and publication as directed by the court.

Competing proposed orders must be sent to Chambers in one email with Word attachments, identified points of disagreement, and clear differences.

An objecting party must contact the divisional JA to schedule a remote hearing.

A Special Set hearing is scheduled by emailing the judicial assistant with all parties copied.

Interpreter-request confirmation must be emailed to the divisional CAD, interpreter address, and all parties with the case details, language, hearing time, and expected duration.

Exhibits must be bound using staples, Acco-type fasteners, or a similar binding method.

For files not produced in their native format, extracted text must be provided in ASCII format, labeled, produced on Production Media, and named using the corresponding document's first-page Bates number followed by “.txt.”

The exhibit list must use sequential numbering.

When native production is impossible or inadvisable, each file page must be converted into a single-page TIFF image reflecting its printed appearance.

Every exhibit intended for entry into evidence must be pre-marked using the Exhibit Tag/Template.

Memoranda of law may be filed electronically.

Division IZ final judgments and orders emailed in Word format will be electronically signed and filed directly with the Clerk.

Final judgments must be submitted through Online Services in Word format with a service list but without a date or signature line because the Court will electronically sign, date, file, and serve them.

The Order Rolling submission must contain accurate upcoming trial-docket dates or it will be rejected.

A hearing exceeding five minutes per side must be specially set, and special-set hearings cannot be scheduled through OLS.

An extension or case-management amendment motion must state the basis and timing of the need, opposition status, requested date and agreement, and corrective actions with specific dates.

Counsel must not impose unfair or extraneous conditions when granting extensions.

Motions modifying a DCMO deadline that do not affect the Calendar Call date or trial period must comply with Rule 1.200(e).

A request to extend a Daubert-motion deadline must be filed before that deadline and set for hearing.

A DCMO extension motion must describe the actions and specific dates needed to meet the proposed schedule, including participant availability.

If you resolve your motion prior to the hearing date, please cancel your scheduled hearing via OLS and submit a courtesy copy of the e-filed Notice of Cancellation to CAD-DivisionIZ@pbcgov.org.

All parties must provide chambers with copies of every document, pleading, and authority they want the court to consider.

A courtesy copy of a properly filed petition or motion must be provided to the court for the request to be addressed.

Courtesy copies of memoranda of law and legal authority must reach the court before the hearing or trial.

An emergency motion must be filed with the clerk and emailed to the court with all parties copied.

A hearing on a subsequent temporary-relief application requires authorization from the assigned judge.

Counsel must make reasonable efforts to communicate in person or by telephone and pursue reasonable compromises to resolve or narrow disputes before seeking court intervention.

Before the Meet and Confer, counsel must compile proposed keyword search terms and search parameters for discussion and assess whether phased review or a more advanced search methodology should be proposed.

Motions for rehearing, clarification, or new trial must not be set for hearing unless the court directs otherwise.

After conferring, the movant must schedule a hearing for every contested nondispositive motion within five days of filing or the motion may be deemed abandoned without further notice or hearing.

Civil indigent status does not entitle a party in civil, family, or civil traffic infraction cases to publicly funded transcripts or digital recording copies.

Parties with combined annual income over $100,000 must use private mediation.

Guardian fingerprinting or criminal-check fees must be verified with the sheriff's department.

Eligibility for the provider's sliding scale requires submission of a Social Security earnings statement.

Companion-case files must remain separate, and pleadings may not be consolidated into a single pleading file.

Parties may schedule only one motion hearing at a time and may schedule another only after the Court rules on the last motion heard.

After mediation, the parties must schedule the temporary-relief or final hearing in a 30-minute special-set slot.

BUT IF YOUR MATTER INVOLVES MORE THAN A HANDFUL OF RELATIVELY SHORT DOCUMENTS: please provide hard copies to chambers IN ONE JOINT BINDER by postal system (USPS, Fed-Express, UPS etc.) or hand delivered to the 1st floor drop-box.

For Special Set hard copies, parties are encouraged to submit one joint binder containing all pertinent materials, ordinarily no more than three inches thick.

A filer may file a Motion to Determine Confidentiality of Court Records to seek treatment as confidential for information outside the 23 categories identified in Rule 2.420(d)(1).

Bank account numbers, Social Security numbers, health information, and similar confidential information must be removed from evidentiary documents provided to the court.

Counsel should invoke the sealing process for private or sensitive information before it becomes publicly available in the court record.

A producing party may redact privileged, protected, personal data, data-protection, and other legally authorized information from produced documents and information.

Unless the Court schedules argument otherwise, proposed record redactions are to be addressed at the pre-trial status conference.

Although there is no strict page limit, motions, responses, and incorporated memoranda should rarely exceed five pages for UMC matters and 12 pages for Special Set matters.

The court can print only documents totaling ten pages or fewer.

Memoranda may not exceed 10 pages absent good cause.

The standing order recommends limiting motions and responses to five pages on the Uniform Motion Calendar and ten pages for a special set, with a proposed order provided.

Memoranda of law must comply with the Florida Court Technology Standards' technical size limits and any page limit set by the divisional judge.

Lead counsel should identify an attorney with seven or fewer years of experience before a hearing, and the Court permits multiple lawyers to argue an issue when a less-experienced lawyer is presenting.

The Court encourages argument opportunities for less-experienced lawyers, asks lead counsel to identify an attorney with seven or fewer years of experience before the hearing, and permits multiple lawyers to argue an issue when a less-experienced lawyer is presenting.

Ordinarily one lawyer per party may argue a discovery hearing, but a party should notify the court before the hearing if an attorney with three or fewer years of experience will argue, in which case multiple lawyers or additional hearing time may be allowed.

The court encourages participation by less-experienced lawyers and instructs a party to give advance notice when a lawyer with three or fewer years of experience will argue, in which case multiple lawyers may argue for that party.