Writ of Certiorari to Remedy Pre-Trial Discovery Order
Sometimes, a trial court issues a pre-trial order on a discovery issue that a party claims causes it irreparable harm. In this situation, the only basis to appeal the pre-trial discovery order is through a petition for writ of certiorari, as recently explained by the Second District Court of Appeal:
A party seeking review of a pretrial discovery order must show that the trial court’s order departed from the essential requirements of law and caused material injury to the petitioner throughout the remainder of the proceedings below, effectively leaving no adequate remedy on appeal. Generally, certiorari is not available to review orders denying discovery because in most cases the harm can be corrected on appeal. But certiorari relief may be appropriate when the requested discovery is relevant or is reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence and the order denying that discovery effectively eviscerates a party’s claim, defense, or counterclaim. The harm in such cases is not remediable on appeal because there is no practical way to determine after judgment how the requested discovery would have affected the outcome of the proceedings.
Westerbeke Corp. v. Atherton, 42 Fla.L.Weekly D1741c (Fla. 2d DCA 2017) (internal quotations and citations omitted).
In this recent opinion (discussed in more detail here), the trial court in a product liability case denied a defendant’s right to perform destructive testing of a boat’s gas generator that caused an explosion. The defendant claimed the destructive testing was necessary to determine the cause of the explosion and prepare a defense. In other words, the harm imposed on the defendant could not be corrected on a final appeal since the harm prevented it from generating a sufficient defense. Here, the Second District granted the writ of certiorari because the trial court applied the wrong legal standard in denying the defendant’s request to perform destructive testing. The take-away is the Second District’s explanation as to when certiorari relief is appropriate to remedy a pre-trial discovery order.
Please contact David Adelstein at [email protected] or (954) 361-4720 if you have questions or would like more information regarding this article. You can follow David Adelstein on Twitter @DavidAdelstein1.
