Florida Supreme Court

A smoker's estate went to the high court after the 5th District Court of Appeal overturned a decision by an Orange County jury to award $16 million, calling the amount “excessive.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis in early May blocked cities and counties from requiring people to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. But that hasn’t stopped legal battles over mask mandates.

The ballot language is misleading, the justices ruled.

A well-funded, and mostly misunderstood, 2018 ballot amendment could roll back public oversight of the police for the foreseeable future. How did we get here?

Justices on Wednesday will hear an appeal by the estate of a man who died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A Duval County jury awarded $6.4 million in compensatory damages, but an appeals court overturned the decision.

The Tampa-based company challenged the state’s system of requiring licensed medical-marijuana operators to handle all aspects of the cannabis business.

The ruling comes after the U.S. Supreme Court found Florida’s death-penalty system unconstitutional.

“That a use of force is justified does not shield the identity of the person using it from public view,” Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri’s attorneys wrote in the document.

Justice Joseph Hatchett, who died last week at age 88, was born in Clearwater and became the first Black justice on the Supreme Court.

Hatchett was appointed to the Supreme Court by Gov. Reubin Askew in 1975 and served until 1979, when President Jimmy Carter named him as a federal appeals-court judge.

The court ruled that the amendment would mislead “voters into believing that the recreational use of marijuana in Florida will be free of any repercussions, criminal or otherwise.”

The Florida Supreme Court unanimously rejected arguments raised by Morris, who was convicted in the murders of Tampa officers David Curtis and Jeffrey Kocab during a 2010 traffic stop.