So many contacts and yet no jurisdiction

FLORIDA LAW WEEKLY

VOLUME 50, NUMBER 23

CASES FROM THE WEEK OF JUNE 13, 2025

DESPITE AN ACKNOWLEDGED PLETHORA OF CONTACTS, COURT CONCLUDES THAT FRENCH DEFENDANT LACKED “CONNEXITY” WITH THE CAUSE OF ACTION, AND THUS REFUSED TO FIND SPECIFIC JURISDICTION OVER IT IN FLORIDA

Daher Aerospace S.A.S. v. Blackford, 50 Fla. L. Weekly D1213 (Fla. 4th DCA June 4, 2025):

The case arose out of an airplane crash that occurred on a flight from Indiana to Michigan. The aircraft crashed in Michigan. None of the Passengers aboard were Florida residents.

The plaintiffs engaged in extensive jurisdictional discovery. They gathered thousands of pages of documents, took depositions, and presented witnesses from French Daher (many of the French Daher executives were also officers at Florida Daher) to the trial court at an extensive evidentiary hearing. The trial court ruled that the plaintiffs demonstrated that the Florida court did in fact have personal jurisdiction over French Daher.

The evidence showed that the plane was manufactured by a company in France that has its American headquarters in Pompano Beach, Florida.

The evidence of French Daher’s contacts that the plaintiffs introduced were so pervasive that the majority indicated (and the dissent concluded) that they met the standard for general jurisdiction. However, because the plaintiff had conceded at the hearing that they were only seeking specific jurisdiction, the majority refused to find that there was general jurisdiction over the French Defendant.

The court seemed to distinguish all of the evidence that the plaintiff presented, finding it not directly related to the cause of action for product liability. Instead, the court found it just showed French Daher’s minimum contacts. There was evidence that the aircraft was serviced in Florida between France and its delivery to a buyer in California, that repair advice on the subject aircraft was sought in Florida, who then reached out to French Daher, received the repair advice back in Florida and THEN communicated it to the mechanics in Indiana.

While the majority concluded that the plaintiffs showed that French Daher had “substantial connections,” it refused to find that those connections were linked to the alleged causes of action.

The dissent vociferously disagreed. Judge Artau concluded that the court should not only have affirmed, finding that the plaintiffs had made a proper showing of specific jurisdiction under the long arm statute, but should have also affirmed because pursuant to the Tipsy Coachman rule based on general jurisdiction.

Because the repair work on the subject aircraft was actually performed in Indiana, the majority rejected the evidence that the mechanics in Indiana sought repair assistance through-Florida-to France-back-to-Florida-and-then-back-to-Indiana, connected the cause of action to Florida. Conversely, the dissent observed that when the air accident aircraft needed specialized technical attention, the service center contacted Florida DAHER that in turn sought a technical solution from French DAHER in France, providing enough of a link to the cause of action for product defect and the State of Florida to create specific jurisdiction.

Hopefully, post-appeal motions will yield an affirmance of this case involving extremely pervasive contacts with Florida unlike the ones seen in 99.4% of other cases.

TRIAL COURT ERRED IN GRANTING SUMMARY JUDGMENT IN FAVOR OF AN OPTHAMOLOGIST AND HIS PRACTICE IN A MEDICAL MALPRACTICE CASE IN THE FACE OF EVIDENCE CREATING GENUINE ISSUES OF MATERIAL FACT

Farese v. Aaker, 50 Fla. L. Weekly D1223 (Fla. 4th DCA June 4, 2025):

The plaintiff appealed a summary judgment entered by the trial court in a medical malpractice case involving cataract surgery.

To prevail in a medical malpractice case, a plaintiff must establish the standard of care owed by the defendant, the defendant’s breach of the standard of care, and that said breach proximately caused the damages claimed.

If a plaintiff offers expert testimony, the “expert need not incant any talismanic phrases” (such fun phrasing 😊) to survive a motion for directed verdict, and the expert’s testimony should be considered as a whole. Additionally, expert opinion testimony specifically mentioning that the treatment was below the standard of care is not necessary to defeat a motion for summary judgment.

In this case, the patient provided an expert opinion that the doctor had failed to obtain a complete history of the patient’s eye, failed to undertake a complete and proper pre-surgery examination, and failed to obtain an ophthalmology consult concerning the patient’s complications.

The expert further attested that he believed there were reasonable grounds to support the doctor’s negligence resulting in significant and permanent injury to the patient. The expert also opined that a statement taken from the patient demonstrated the doctor had only reviewed the patient’s records the morning after the surgery.

In short, these attestations were sufficient to withstand the doctor’s and his practice’s motion for summary judgment, and the court reversed the summary judgment.

TRIAL COURT ERRED IN DENYING SUMMARY JUDGMENT ON SOVEREIGN IMMUNITY GROUNDS — THERE WAS NO POLICY IN PLACE REGARDING BAKER ACT TRAINING, THUS THE VIOLATION COULD NOT BE AN OPERATIONAL FUNCTION

Nocco v. Wilcox, 50 Fla. L. Weekly D1252 (Fla. 2nd DCA June 6, 2025):

A middle schooler attempted to climb over a fence and reenter the school after dismissal to retrieve his computer tablet. The boy was confronted by a principal and assistant principal, and while walking to the principal’s office, the boy said he was going to cut himself and he was going to either cut or kill himself.

The school’s resource deputy was called to the principal’s office and observed that the boy was visibly agitated, rocking back and forth, sweating, breathing rapidly, clenching his hands and having bouts of crying. The school administrators told the school resource deputy about the boy’s self-harm statements.

When the boy’s stepmother arrived at the school, she then called his mental health counselor. The mental health counselor did not believe that he was suicidal or needed to be Baker Acted. However, the school resource deputy determined otherwise, and detained the boy under the Baker Act.

At the time of the incident, the school resource deputy had not received training specific to the Baker Act. However, she attended an 80-hour crisis intervention training which addressed de-escalation and mental health crisis training. Approximately 9 months after this incident, the deputy completed Baker Act training.

The plaintiffs sued the sheriff for failing to educate and train the school resource officer about the Baker Act provisions. The sheriff argued that the alleged deficiencies in the training involved discretionary planning level functions that were immune from suit.

Claims for negligent training are barred by sovereign immunity when they involve decisions regarding how to train officers, and about what subject matter to include in the training, because matters are an exercise of governmental discretion regarding fundamental questions of policy and planning.

However, negligent training claims based on the implementation or operation of a training program– as opposed to the program’s content– may involve operational functions depending on the facts.

Because there was no evidence that the sheriff adopted a Baker Act training policy, or that the school resource deputy received such training, and because the officer having completed the training 9 months after the incident could not establish that there was a policy in place at the time of the incident, the claims premised on the timing of the training were rooted in an exercise of governmental discretion regarding fundamental questions of policy and planning (having flowed from decisions regarding how to train). Thus, the court ruled that the plaintiff’s claims were barred by sovereign immunity.