Lake v. Lake
| Decision Date | 11 June 1958 |
| Citation | 103 So.2d 639 |
| Parties | Lillian LAKE, Petitioner, v. Vincent LAKE, Respondent. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Ollie Ben Butler, Jr., Butler & DeLeon and Heriberto DeLeon, Tampa, for petitioner.
Thomas Hamilton and B. J. Driver, Clearwater, for respondent.
This controversy comes to this court on a petition for certiorari in an attempt to have reviewed a judgment of the District Court of Appeal, Second District, disposing of the litigation with the single word: 'Affirmed.' It is petitioner's position that the Supreme Court should grant the petition because facts of the present case are 'very similar' to those with which this court dealt in Dye v. Dolbeck, 114 Fla. 866, 154 So. 847, when an opinion was rendered with which, so he contends, the effect of the ruling of the Circuit Court for Pinellas County in the present case, approved by the District Court of Appeal, is in conflict.
Simple as the situation appears it deserves special discussion because it involves a construction of pertinent parts of Article V of the Constitution of Florida as amended in 1956, F.S.A., and prompts not only an examination of the provisions but also the history that formed the background of the amendment and the ends it was designed to accomplish.
In the beginning we announce that all italics are supplied.
To begin, it can be stated with emphasis and accuracy that the members of the Bench and Bar and laity of the State who were instrumental in formulating the amendment and presenting it to the electorate were motivated by the earnest desire to improve the administration of justice. Stated otherwise, the betterment of the judicial process would come if administration of justice could be made more expeditious, more inexpensive, more sure.
The means and procedure required to accomplish the improvement were difficult, complicated, tedious and onerous.
Yet the determination was not lacking for congestion in the court of last resort had become almost intolerable. The time had come when the court, working at top speed, with cases, except extremely emergent ones, set in the order of their maturity, was hearing arguments as late as fourteen months after the cases were ready for oral persentation.
In the meantime the Bar of Florida had been metamorphosed by court order from a voluntary organization to an integrated body.
Among the movements in a progressive program of the profession, now officially designated The Florida Bar, was the effort to solve the problem of congestion in all the courts by fostering a study of the entire judicial system with all its ramifications.
In furtherance of this worthy cause The Florida Bar through its legislative committee caused to be introduced in the legislature a bill creating a Judicial Council to make an extensive study of the operation of the courts, to report annually to the governor its findings, and to make recommendations to the legislature with reference to steps that might be taken to solve a problem that was ever becoming more serious.
Largely because of the efforts of The Florida Bar the bill was enacted into law. Chapter 28062, Laws of Florida, Acts of 1953; Sec. 43.15, Florida Statutes 1957, and F.S.A
Under the act the Council was to be composed of an active or retired justice of the Supreme Court, the Attorney General or one of his assistants, a circuit judge, a judge of a court having probate jurisdiction, four lawyers and nine laymen. This Council differed from similar bodies in other states in the remarkable respect that a majority of its personnel were not members of the profession.
For about eighteen months after its creation the Council, in periodic meetings, debated and deliberated the method which might most effectively modernize a system that by overloading had ceased to function as it should to assure litigants justice without undue, or even ruinous, delay. The words of Gladstone were often heard: 'Justice delayed is justice denied.'
The councilmen were prepared and determined to meet the problem head-on, grapple with it, and solve it. But how?
After mature consideration based on study not only of the Florida system but also of systems adopted or proposed in other states it was decided that effective reform could be accomplished only by amending the organic law. This decision brings into focus the question immediately involved, namely, the extent to which the Supreme Court is empowered to go in entertaining petitions to review the decisions of district courts of appeal. This extent of review is measured by the power defined in the amendment to which many references will later be made.
The expansion of facilities for the consideration and determination of matters on appeal was obviously necessary because there was no reason to anticipate a decrease in litigation in a State that was experiencing a growth that was remarkable if not fabulous.
The possibility that the need could be met by enlarging the membership of the Supreme Court was explored, debated, considered, and discarded. Not only did the method seem impractical but everyone could remember the rejection by the electorate, in 1952, of an amendment to the Constitution to add three members to this body. Committee Substitute for Senate Joint Resolution No. 290, Laws of Florida, 1951, p. 1896. Once it was decided that increase of manpower in the Supreme Court was impractical, the Council turned to a consideration of the establishment of district courts of appeal.
These courts could be created by statute but the weakness of establishing then in such fashion was two-fold. In the first place the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court as it was defined in the Constitution could not be curtailed by statutory law, so a litigant who had been heard on appeal by a statutory district court might still assert a constitutional right to invoke the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. In such procedure accuracy might be more nearly approached, because of the participation of more judges, but surely...
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King v. State
...appeal or of the supreme court on the same point of law * * *.' (Italics supplied.) This Court has never decided, not even in Lake v. Lake, Fla.1958, 103 So.2d 639, or in Seaboard Air Line Railroad Co. v. Branham, Fla.1958, 104 So.2d 356, that it will look only and exclusively to an opinion......
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...Crawford v. Wainwright, 222 So.2d 188 (Fla.1969). See also State ex rel. Kovnot v. Ferguson, 313 So.2d 710 (Fla.1975).9 See Lake v. Lake, 103 So.2d 639 (Fla.1958), which explains that in Florida every litigant is entitled to one appeal as a matter of right and that, unless the case is one w......
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...court in order to avoid the danger of the district courts of appeal becoming way stations on the road to the supreme court. Lake v. Lake, 103 So.2d 639 (Fla.1958), overruled on other grounds, Foley v. Weaver Drugs, Inc., 177 So.2d 221 (Fla.1965). Nevertheless, the supreme court on occasion ......
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Morgan v. State
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