The New Pretrial Compliance Tool

The OJCC has new procedural rules, which became effective November 10, 2014. The current resource is the PDF document that this link accesses. The IT team is currently working on an HTML version of the rules that will be readable from the website itself. 

One change of note is the new parameter for timeliness with the pretrial compliance questionnaire. Rule 60Q6.113(1).

The Claimant or Claimant's counsel is supposed to complete the Claimant's portion of the questionnaire and forward it to the defense fourteen (14) calendar days prior to the scheduled pretrial hearing. The defense is supposed to complete their portion and forward the questionnaire back no later than seven (7) days prior to the pretrial hearing. The timing should afford both sides the opportunity to make the pretrial questionnaire an effective tool for shepherding the case to trial. 

The OJCC has deployed a new tool to assist with the process. It is a pretrial compliance questionnaire form that can be generated from e-JCC, which will be auto-populated with a great deal of the information needed for this process. For filing a pretrial, the form will be helpful, but it can also be generated quickly in preparation for mediation, or anytime a party would benefit from review of the currently pending issues.

To access the form, log into e-JCC, and open the appropriate case. This can be done by keying the OJCC case number into the field on the screen, or by selecting the case from your "case list."

Once that case is opened, and the information is displayed on the screen, click on the "Case Schedule" tab. This will provide you with a complete list of the events upcoming in that particular case. At the left side of the table containing all of these appointments, there will be an arrow pointing to the right, just beside the date for this particular pretrial. For the event titled "mediation conference," click that arrow. This should make all of the other scheduled events disappear, and should add a new button to the screen, "Create Uniform Statewide Pre-Trial Stip." If you made a mistake, just hit the back button, or the "Return to Schedule" button. 

When you click the "Create Uniform Statewide Pre-Trial Stip" button, the computer is likely to ask you what you "want to do with" the document, and you will usually select "Open."  It may take it a minute to download; please remember that it is gathering information from the database to populate the form. 

You may receive a message that the file cannot be opened "because there are problems with the contents."  Just click "OK." That could result in a message that there was "unreadable content" found, and this will also question whether "you want to recover the contents of this document."  Just click "yes."

This should result in a Word document appearing on your screen. The demographic information should already be present including things like names and case number, the mediation and accident dates, and all of the claims for benefits that the OJCC database currently reflects as "open."  

The Claimant can add issues to this form, just as she/he could always do with other forms. And conversely, any issues on the form that have been resolved can be removed. Counsel should also file a dismissal of any issues that need to be removed. This pleading will alert the OJCC that a particular issue or issue currently reflected as "active" in the database should instead be inactive. 

Any ideas for improving the form should be sent to askojcc@doah.state.fl.us.