Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.38,0 Failure to Make Discovery, Sanctions, informs in which court to enforce a litigator’s discovery right, what orders to seek from the trial court, and sanctions that may eventually be available. However, the rule does not inform what criteria the trial court should consider in making its rulings. Instead, those matters are to be found in voluminous, but divergent, case law. That case law, through prolific, is disjointed and lacking in a coherent sequence. This Article surveys, and resolves, those issues for each Florida court system.
For two reasons, this Article is important for judges and litigation counsels. First on the prolificacy of cases this Article reviews over one hundred cases and bundles those reports into related packets (per court systems). Second on disjointedness; this Article maps and resolves the discombobulation of diverse cases using disparate language in providing analytical rules.