William Igou, Petitioner, v. Jimmie'S Truckstop, Inc., Respondent. (2023)

Dismissed.

The petitioner asks for an extraordinary interim review of the pre-trial record in his case to determine whether a discovery order compelling a vocational examination under Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.360 departs from the essential requirements of law. He fails to recognize, however, that discovery in a civil suit is a matter of procedural grace imported from the old equity courts and now allowed by rule adopted by the supreme court. Cf. Richard Marcus, “Looking Backward” to 1938, 162 U. PA. L. REV. 1691 (June 2014) (tracing origin of pre-trial discovery to incorporation of equity practice into consolidated federal rules of civil procedure; Stephen N. Subrin, How Equity Conquered Common Law: The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in Historical Perspective 135 U. PA. L. REV. 909 (Apr. 1987) (same); John H. Beisner & U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, “The Centre Cannot Hold”: The Need for Effective Reform in the U.S. Civil Discovery Process (May 2010), available online at https://instituteforlegalreform.com/research/the-centre-cannothold-the-need-for-effective-reform-of-the-u-s-civil-discovery-process/.

As such, the order of which the petitioner complains is the product of an internal court process, not one governed by substantive law. A putative deviation by the trial court from this rule-based process, by definition, could not be a departure from the essential requirements of law—unless the petitioner could point to a constitutional or statutory right or privilege that has been impinged or violated by the trial court's action. The petitioner does not do this in his petition. In other words, he fails to demonstrate a jurisdictional basis for this court to grant him the relief he wants.

On that point, the ultimate relief that the petitioner seeks here is not the writ (which essentially is just the mechanism by which we would review the interim record, something we now have done). The petitioner instead asks that we quash the discovery order. I concur in the refusal to grant that quashal. Because his petition fails to establish an entitlement to the relief being sought—and our authority to grant it at all events—the proper disposition in an original proceeding like this is dismissal.

Per Curiam.

Roberts and Long, JJ., concur; Tanenbaum, J., concurs with opinion.