But the Fifth District Court of Appeal is not expected to have the last word. "There are high stakes involved in this case. It will absolutely go to the highest court it can go," predicts Orlando attorney Eric H. Faddis, who is seeking the records on behalf of his clients in a wrongful death suit [FT, May 1997]. Robert and Kathlyn Sipkema are suing Walt Disney World over the 1994 death of their son Robb, who was riding in a pickup truck that crashed after allegedly being pursued by a Disney security guard.
Faddis, joined by the state attorney general and the Sun-Sentinel newspaper company, argues that the records are subject to Florida's public records law because the security force polices the public roads of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which contains the park. At Disney's request, the district was established by the Florida Legislature in 1967 to govern the 24,000-acre area that contains the resort. Its governing board, which has powers like those of municipal governments, is elected by property owners within the district, who get one vote for every acre of property owned. Disney accounts for about 85% of the district.
Walt Disney World, which is joined in the suit by the Florida Chamber of Commerce, argues that its security force provides only "routine premises security" for Walt Disney World and not law enforcement for the district - an argument the trial judge found persuasive. The company also suggests that Faddis' detour into public records law is a tactic designed to keep Walt Disney World defending itself on two fronts.
Florida businesses don't want the public records act to be used to harass them, argues Miami lawyer and former Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Arthur J. England Jr. on behalf of the Florida Chamber. The law must not be used "to make private business records public, based on an unchecked and abstract philosophy of ?openness.'"
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FLORIDA BAR
A New Agenda
Miami lawyer Edward R. Blumberg will be sworn in as Florida Bar president later this month as an army of interest groups gear up for the first opportunity in 20 years to tinker with the state's constitution and, by extension, with the state's legal profession.
A constitutional revision commission will begin holding public hearings in late July as part of a review of the Florida Constitution required every two decades. Interest groups with agendas ranging from tort reform to stripping the Bar's authority to discipline lawyers are already lining up to push their causes. Because the commission has the authority to move its final recommendations directly to referendum in 1998, it's a powerful opportunity for advocates to make their case. But the 46-year-old personal injury lawyer and 4-term member of the Bar's board of governors downplays suggestions that the commission could be swept up by anti-lawyer or anti-bar sentiment. He says he has no plans to use his presidency as a platform for an aggressive lobbying campaign.
Instead, Blumberg is putting together committees of practicing lawyers and academics in every subject likely to be explored by the revision commission, and he has volunteered their services as a source of legal research and information. "We're more interested in being a source of facts," explains Blumberg.
As the most high-profile advocate of the state's 55,000-member lawyer industry, Blumberg may seem to be taking an oddly low-key approach. But it just might be the most effective kind of lobbying of all.
"I think it was very, very smart of him, personally," says Billy Buzzett, a former legislative staff lawyer expected to serve as the revision commission's executive director. "He's really seized the day."
Blumberg's agenda also includes a nod to lawyers frustrated by Bar disciplinary procedures, which are perceived by many as incapable of quickly distinguishing between minor or frivolous complaints and serious ethical violations. Blumberg hopes to get approval from the Florida Supreme Court of a pilot program to use mediation to resolve minor complaints between lawyers and clients. The idea is drawing a mostly favorable response. "A large number of grievance complaints against lawyers are the result of lack of adequate communication," says Warren Lindsey, president of the 2,400-member Orange County Bar Association. "I think mediation would be a good thing."
Not surprisingly, however, the proposal does not appease the Bar's most persistent critics. Sarasota civil practitioner Henry P. Trawick, vice president of the 5-year-old Attorneys' Bar Association of Florida - which was organized in protest of bar policies and disciplinary procedures - says any complaint suitable for mediation is a complaint that the Bar shouldn't be involved with in the first place.
"They are apparently afraid to tell a complaining person that they don't have an ethical offense," says Trawick.
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LEGAL TRENDS
A Matter Of Class
Chemical giant DuPont is defending itself again in a Florida courtroom - this time over its tactics in defending itself the last time.
A Miami lawsuit that seeks class-action status on behalf of approximately 800 Florida ornamental plant growers accuses the Delaware-based corporate giant of racketeering, perjury, destroying evidence and tampering with witnesses to keep unfavorable information about the fungicide Benlate from the growers.
If allowed to proceed, the case will join a growing number of class-action claims pending in Florida state and federal courts as plaintiffs organize to take on nursing homes, tobacco companies and grocery stores. To earn class status, plaintiffs have to show that their claims involve substantially the same issues of fact and law and that the number of individuals is too large to make separate suits practical.
Some industry lawyers, however, complain that Florida courts interpret such rules too broadly. "It sends a bad message to Florida business: Florida welcomes massive, tort class-action suits," says West Palm Beach lawyer Stephen Krigbaum, whose clients include the Philip Morris tobacco company.
The 72-page DuPont complaint, filed by lawyers at Miami's Kozyak Tropin & Throckmorton, claims the growers were twice damaged by the company - first as the result of a fungicide that left them with "hundreds of millions" of dollars in damage to their plants and businesses, and second as the result of a nationwide litigation strategy that misrepresented and concealed the results of in-house testing of the product.
The suit alleges DuPont, the law firm of Cabaniss & Burke and outside counsel Thomas M. Burke of Orlando orchestrated a campaign of "disingenuous science" and deception to conceal Benlate's defects.
In a statement, the company characterizes the suit as "fundamentally untrue" and proof of plaintiffs' attorneys "insatiable appetite" for Benlate litigation.