Courts have been closed for more than two months already, but today marks the first time we’ve seen a confidential, mid-hearing communication between client and lawyer during an afternoon Broward ZOOM hearing.

It happened this afternoon, during Barbara Duffy’s docket. A need arose for an attorney/client conversation, and BSO provided a telephone number for the client to speak with his lawyer off-camera and confidentially mid-hearing. Duffy put the case on recall, and concluded it a short time later after the private consultation ended.

It’s a miracle of modern technology!

Whether it’s a coincidence that Dava Tunis, a Miami judge, was on Broward ZOOM last Tuesday afternoon handling an executive assignment asking to no avail for the attorney/client break-out room to expedite her proceedings, or it’s because of this letter asking again for contemporaneous communication sent by Howard Finkelstein to Jack Tuter the same day Tunis was presiding in Broward, we’re glad to see the 17th Circuit has finally taken the initiative to take one step further away from the dark ages, courtesy of one Alexander Graham Bell …

From a press release issued this morning:

Florida’s Chief Justice Charles Canady issued an order late on May 21, 2020, creating a new pilot program for civil jury trials … In other actions last night, Canady also took the following measures:

• Issued a separate new order establishing health & safety precautions to be used in Phase 2 of the expansion of court operations. These precautions are based on a report issued by a statewide advisory COVID-19 Workgroup.
• Amended an earlier order called SCAO20-23 that provides comprehensive emergency procedures for use in courts in the pandemic. The amendments incorporate the new Phase 2 safety procedures contained in the COVID-19 Workgroup report.

__________________________________________________________________

WFMJ – Texas court holds first US jury trial via videoconferencing