FIFTEENTH Jupiciat CIRCUIT
Peren D. BLaNe TAOS NORTH ODE MORAY
‘ner ov00r Wear Pau Beach FLomion 23401
March 25, 2011 eevacc.7e)
David J. Stern, Esq.
900 South Pine Island Road
Suite 400
Plantation, FL 33324-3920
Dear Mr. Stern:
I have received and reviewed your letter of March 4, 2011. Florida Rule of
Judicial Administration 2.505(f) lists the exclusive ways an attorney may be permitted to
terminate his or her appearance in a pending case. Notice to the court such as that
contained in your letter of March 4, 2011, is neither a recognized nor an approved
method of termination. Therefore, there is no basis in the law for me to consider your
March 4, 2011, letter an effective or legal termination of the obligations that attach to
your representation in pending cases here in the 15" Circuit and in Palm Beach County
and I strongly urge you to reconsider your unilateral decision to cease representation.
In an effort to gather the necessary information to respond administratively to the
issues raised in your letter, one of our case managers was in contact with your office to
determine the following
1. Did you maintain copies of the stipulations for substitution of counsel to
which you refer in your letter?
2. Doyou have contact information for your clients?
In response, we were told that you did not preserve copies of the stipulations.
However, your office did provide us with an electronic version of client contact
information.
Therefore, in order to determine the actual status of representation in the cases
you have listed, we will begin setting groups of your pending foreclosure cases for case
management conferences. The orders setting hearing that we send to your office will
require you to provide notice to all parties to the proceeding including your clients. The
order will also specify that you advise your clients to provide notice to any new counsel
who have appeared or are contemplating appearing as attorneys of record. We will set
the hearings in large blocks to reduce the amount of court time necessary to address
the high volume of cases. We will also send copies of our orders out electronically to allregistered users of our online scheduling system to increase the likelinood of new
counsel receiving notice and will post the notices on our 15" Circuit website to increase
the likelihood that those parties who may be anticipating new counsel taking over will
receive notice as well
This process should also give you the opportunity to properly withdraw in those
cases where an order of withdrawal or substitution of counsel is appropriate but has not
been entered. It will also help the court identify those cases in which new counsel is in
the process of taking over. Finally, for those cases in which no one appears on behalf
of the plaintif, the court reserves the right to enter an order of dismissal.
We will begin sending out notices of case management conferences in
approximately seven (7) days. It would seem to make sense to group the cases
together for individual dockets based upon common plaintiffs
Finally, although | find your letter to the court to be an exception to the ex parte
communication prohibition because it addresses administrative issues only and does
not relate to the merits of the cases, | will e-mail copies of your letter and my response
to all registered online scheduling users and also post copies of both on our 15" Circuit
website because Canon 3B(7) of the Code of Judicial Conduct encourages such action.
Sincerely,
Ley yp Ply —
Peter D. Blanc
Chief Judge
PDB:sal
cc: Online Scheduling Registry
15" Circuit Website — www.15thcircuit.com