Sept./Oct. 2018 Issue of The Florida Bar Journal

The Sept./Oct. 2018 Issue of The Florida Bar Journal and digital edition are online featuring:

• Florida’s 2017-2018 Constitution Revision: It’s Your Turn to Decide by Mary E. Adkins, Guest Editor
  Thirty-seven Floridians, including 21 law school graduates, completed a task this past May that was awesome in the original meaning of the word. Thirty-seven people who were living their lives, perhaps being public servants for a living, perhaps serving the state in other ways, were chosen for a task that arises only once every 20 years: the nation’s only regularly recurring Constitution Revision Commission (CRC). They had only a few requirements: convene, adopt rules, examine the constitution, hold public hearings, and forward any proposed changes to the custodian of state records 180 days before the next general election. Their deliberations resulted in eight proposals to amend the Florida Constitution. The Florida electorate will vote on these proposals in the November 2018 general election.
• Litigation Privilege Immunity: For Presuit Communications, It’s Not Absolute – by Jeffrey P. Lieser and Laura R. Mauldin
  With the exception of the quasi-judicial unemployment claim process, the litigation privilege is not statutory. Instead, Florida’s litigation privilege is based on precedent, with roots in the Florida Supreme Court as early as 1907.
• Showing Constitutional Malice in Media Defamation – by Manuel Socias
  There is a myth that it is virtually impossible for a public figure to successfully sue the media for defamation. This myth is based on a perceived insurmountability of the requirement imposed on public figures to prove “actual” or “constitutional” malice by clear and convincing evidence when suing for defamation. In reality, the courts have provided an almost step-by-step guide for finding and proving constitutional malice. The guide is the badges of malice. The phrase “badges of malice” is adapted from the badges of fraud used in tax evasion and fraudulent conveyance cases to categorize types of circumstantial evidence that may support an inference of a subjective intent to defraud.
• President’s page: LegalFuel: A Playbook for Profitability – by Michelle R. Suskauer
  LegalFuel offers law office management and technology support, 70 hours of free CLEs, including 40 technology hours, and it assists you in running the business side of your practice. LegalFuel features an enhanced search capability to help you quickly find articles on everything from marketing to accounting, as well as a curated library of free webinars, podcasts, and hundreds of helpful legal forms.
• What Are You: A Hotel Guest, Tenant, or Transient Occupant? – by Miguel J. Chamorro
  Florida hotels occasionally encounter the following problem: They want a guest gone, but the guest cannot be easily removed because the guest is actually a tenant. In Florida, there is no legal requirement that residential tenancies be in writing. And thanks to vague law, the occupant of a hotel can claim to be a tenant rather easily. That last year’s hurricane rendered the hotel their primary residence, that their children are enrolled at a nearby school, that their driver’s license reflects the hotel’s address, that they have been there for a long time, and that they have nowhere else to go, are all winning arguments for the guest-turned-tenant