Opinion

Board of County Commissioners v. Brabham

  • 710 So. 2d 230
  • 1998 Fla. App. LEXIS 5624
  • 1998 WL 250760
Court
District Court of Appeal of Florida
Filed
May 20, 1998
Status
Published
On the bench
Dell, Glickstein, Gunther
Cited by
0 cases
Authority
More cited than 0.6%

The opinion

PER CURIAM.

The Board of County Commissioners of Palm Beach County seeks review of an order requiring it to compensate a court appointed attorney pursuant to section 925.036, Florida Statutes. A petition for certiorari is the appropriate method of seeking review of an order which awards counsel fees to court-appointed attorneys in a criminal case. Beers v. Palm Beach County, 415 So.2d 846 (Fla. 4th DCA 1982). Accordingly, we treat this appeal as a petition for certiorari. The record reveals that the trial court disregarded the testimony of the three expert witnesses on the issue of the reasonableness of the hours claimed by respondent. In Beers we noted that the trial court has discretion not to follow the estimates set by the experts, but that discretion is subject to further judicial scrutiny. Our scrutiny of the record here leads us to the conclusion that given the facts before it, the trial court departed from the essential requirements of law by disregarding the expert testimony of all three *231 expert -witnesses on the issue of the reasonableness of the hours claimed by respondent, Accordingly, we grant the petition, quash the trial court’s order, and remand for the trial court to enter an order consistent with this opinion.

GLICKSTEIN, DELL and GUNTHER, JJ., concur.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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