Not far from the bank of the Thames, up a gentle slope from the Blackfriars tube station, stands the United Kingdom’s High Court of Justice. An austere stone-grey edifice, it exudes legal tradition. Close by are Lincoln’s Inn and Grey’s Inn, and further afield the Inner Temple and Middle Temple; the four Inns of Court with their cloistered, windowed chambers that admit filtered sunlight into space that has long hosted the world’s most celebrated tradition of legal advocacy.

These institutions are remarkable for their longevity. They continue to function today as they ever have. Yet they are not museums of a dead time. Although their roots are deep in the past, at present they undertake the heavy work of finding justice. The barristers and judges peopling them today grasp an unbroken cord of tradition and precedent spanning many centuries; a record of proceeding, argument, and opinion revealing both accreted wisdom and discarded errancy — The common law.

Overview

In the autumn of 1829, the territory1 of Florida adopted the general common and statute laws of England existing on July 4, 1776, as its own.2 Florida’s territorial legislature had in one stroke given the future state a complete legal system that would soon grow into a new, never-before-seen system of jurisprudence. This system, under which Florida citizens live today, consists of all of the judge-made law ever written in Florida and all of the judge-made law ever written in England until July 4, 1776. We call this Florida common law.

This article asks the existential question, “What is Florida common law?” It also asks the doctrinal question, “How is the English half of Florida common law identified, understood, and applied or rejected in Florida courts?” In answer to both questions, we will find a jurisprudence that marries the ancient forms with Florida’s modern statutes and the Florida Supreme Court’s evolving discernment of its own role.

Florida’s Receiving Statute: The Rise of Florida Common Law Jurisprudence

For ease of reference, this article refers to that part of the English common law made until July 4, 1776, as the “English half” or “English common law.” In practical terms, the key to the application of English common law in Florida is F.S. §2.01, which provides:

The common and statute laws of England which are of a general and not a local nature, with the exception hereinafter mentioned, down to the fourth day of July, 1776, are declared to be of force in this state; provided, the said statutes and common law be not inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States and the acts of the [l]egislature of this state.

In 1973, the Florida Supreme Court issued two watershed opinions that would affect the vitality of the English law annexed to Florida and the position of the Florida Supreme Court as the interpreter, arbiter, and protector of Florida common law, both the Florida and English halves. One restrained the Florida Legislature’s authority over Florida common law. The second asserted the Supreme Court’s own ultimate authority over established aspects of Florida common law.

Kluger v. White : The Stewardship of Judicial Review

The first of these key opinions was Kluger v. White, 281 So. 2d 1 (Fla. 1973). In Kluger, the Florida Supreme Court tackled the broad, yet novel question of “whether or not the constitutional guarantee of a ‘redress of any injury’ bars the statutory abolition of an existing remedy.”3 Kluger involved a challenge to the constitutionality of a legislative act, F.S. §627.738, that set a minimum claim threshold for civil lawsuits seeking to recover for property damage. This statute effectively barred claims for property damage from automobile accidents unless plaintiffs had declined property damage coverage with their auto insurer and the plaintiffs’ damages exceeded $550.4

The Kluger court struck down the statute as inconsistent with the “access to the courts” clause at Fla. Const. art. I, §21. In the process, the court transformed the adopted rights and remedies of the English common law from something that was not to conflict with acts of the Florida Legislature into something that was to be left intact by the Florida Legislature, absent the creation of an equivalent remedy or a demonstration of great public necessity.5 The Kluger court struck the statute and held:

[W]here a right of access to the courts for redress for a particular injury has been provided by statutory law predating the adoption of the Declaration of Rights of the Constitution of the State of Florida, or where such a right has become part of the common law of the [s]tate pursuant to Fla. Stat. §2.01, the [l]egislature is without power to abolish such a right without providing a reasonable alternative to protect the rights of the people of the [s]tate to redress for injuries, unless the [l]egislature can show an overpowering public necessity for the abolishment of such right, and no alternative method of meeting such public necessity can be shown.6

With this statement, the Florida Supreme Court formally reannounced7 and re-reserved for itself one-half of a power of judicial review,8 The power to strike legislation contradicting the Florida Constitution or Florida common law. The Kluger majority infuses its opinion with a tone of institutional superiority when it justifies the majority holding by refusing to “allow the [l]egislature to destroy a traditional and long-standing cause of action upon mere legislative whim.”9

Kluger conceived of a separation of powers in Florida wherein the legislature may alter and even abolish common law rights, but only under the aegis of the Florida Supreme Court. Kluger does this by imposing on the legislature a burden to demonstrate, before abolishing common law rights, that legislation striking such rights either meets a great public need or provides a reasonable alternative. Within the worldview ushered in by Kluger, it is the Florida Supreme Court’s role to determine when and whether this new legislative burden is met. Thus, under Kluger, English common law rights are formally protected, and the Florida Supreme Court is their protector.

Kluger also raises the profile of the English half of Florida common law. After Kluger, the English part is affirmed as not merely a symbolic nod to Florida’s heritage, or quaint cyclopedia of principles that lawmakers only recall from school books. Kluger makes clear that those centuries-old common law rights and causes of action from England incorporated into Florida common law by the receiving statute are on equal footing with rights and actions found in Florida writ opinions.10

Kluger Refined and Applied

In 1987, the Florida Supreme Court revisited the Kluger holding in Smith v. Dept. of Insurance, 507 So. 2d 1080 (Fla. 1987). Smith involved a constitutional challenge to the Tort Reform and Insurance Act of 1986, legislation that placed a cap of $450,000 on noneconomic damages in tort claims.11

Following Kluger, the Smith court weighed the effect of the new statute against the right of access to the courts provided by the Florida Constitution. In affirming the holding in Kluger and describing it as “seminal,”12 The Smith court, en route to striking down the damages cap, further refined the Kluger holding into a two-part alternative test.

Under the Smith court’s reading of Kluger, individual rights and remedies13 expressed as causes of action in court, including causes of action arising at English common law, may not be restricted by the legislature unless one of the following two conditions exists:
1) the legislature has provided a reasonable alternative remedy or a substitute benefit commensurate with the restricted right of recovery; or 2) the legislature has demonstrated a) an overpowering public necessity for the abolishment of the right, and b) there is no alternative method of meeting such a public necessity.14 This article labels this holding and the alternative two-prong test it sets forth as the Kluger-Smith doctrine.

A Nod to Statutory Construction

Arrival at the Kluger-Smith doctrine presupposes that a legislative act appears to conflict with, for our purposes, an English common law principle existing on July 4, 1776. Satisfying this prerequisite requires statutory construction. The Florida Supreme Court provided detailed guidance on how to go about this type of statutory construction in two 1990s era opinions, Thornber v. City of Fort Walton Beach, 568 So. 2d 914 (Fla. 1990), and State v. Ashley, 701 So. 2d 338 (Fla. 1997). Thornber presents the following instructions to Florida courts construing statutes when deciding whether a cognizable common law principle is arguably altered or superseded by statute: 1) presume that no change in the common law principle is intended unless the statute under review is expedient and clear in terms of legislative intent to do so; 2) unless the statute under review unequivocally announces a change to the common law principle or is so repugnant that the statute and the principle cannot coexist, decide that no change was intended; and 3) do not favor the statutory abrogation of a common law right, particularly a long-established common law right.15 Ashley paraphrased these instructions as follows: Even where the legislature acts in a particular area, the common law remains in effect unless the statute specifically states otherwise.16 Thus, a condition precedent to the Kluger-Smith doctrine is a clear alteration of the common law. Ashley and Thornber stand for the proposition that courts must not find such an alteration by implication.

Hoffman v. Jones: The Florida Supreme Court’s Judicial Fiat

One day before Kluger was issued, the Florida Supreme Court handed down Hoffman v. Jones, 280 So. 2d 431 (Fla. 1973). Hoffman is best known as the case in which the Supreme Court discarded the doctrine of contributory negligence in favor of comparative negligence.17 In Hoffman the Supreme Court decreed that it would, as a product of its constitutional authority, acting alone, now change Florida common law when society changed.

The problem facing the Hoffman court was the widespread belief that the doctrine of contributory negligence allowed for unjust outcomes in auto accident suits.18 For policy reasons, the Hoffman court aimed for the end result of replacing the older rule with the newer, more flexible standard. To arrive at that result, the Supreme Court cut a path that would keep the debate outside of the province of other branches of state government.

Hoffman begins with a statement challenging the notion that changes to the common law are the exclusive province of the legislature.19 According to the Hoffman court, contributory negligence was a judge-made rule, albeit one existing in Florida only as of 1886.20 and according to the court’s view of earlier foundational principles of Florida jurisprudence, judge-made rules can be judicially unmade.21 Accepting this helpful premise, the Hoffman court would write the Florida Legislature out of the constitutional equation of the problem at hand.

Marshaling support from the past for its rationale, the Hoffman court cited the following earlier instances where the common law had been changed according to judicial discretion: Randolph v. Randolph, 1 So. 2d 480 (Fla. 1941), where the common law preference in parental custody previously enjoyed by fathers was withdrawn; Waller v. First Savings & Trust Co. , 138 So. 780 (Fla. 1931), which departed from the common law bar against suits for personal injuries against a deceased tortfeasor; and Hargrove v. Town of Cocoa Beach, 96 So. 2d 130 (Fla. 1957), which first allowed municipalities to be held liable for the torts of police officers under a respondeat superior theory.

Against this backdrop, the Hoffman court, while replacing contributory negligence with comparative negligence,22 set out the following policy statement, which we label as the Hoffman doctrine: “All rules of common law are designed for application to new conditions and circumstances as they may be developed by enlightened commercial and business intercourse and are intended to be vitalized by practical application in advanced society.”23

At the heart of Hoffman is the Supreme Court’s implied suggestion that the courts serve as the final safeguard against injustice when the other branches of government have failed to act. The Hoffman court notes that the legislature had unsuccessfully attempted to abolish contributory negligence.24 In one instance, the statute in question was held unconstitutional by the court itself for failure to be of general application, not for the substance of the law.25 In the second instance, the Florida governor vetoed the bill,26 Inspiring the Hoffman court to comment: “One man thus prevented this [s]tate from now operating under a much more equitable system of recovery for negligent personal injuries and property damage.”27

In any event, in Hoffman, the Supreme Court stepped in to do what Florida’s other two branches of state government had not done, replace an 80-plus-year-old rule of common law with a new rule that the Hoffman court described as “simply a more equitable system.”28 The scope and dynamism of the Hoffman doctrine was not lost on Hoffman’s dissenting justices, led by Justice Roberts, who railed against the majority opinion as “judicial fiat.”29 The real question Hoffman raised, according to Justice Roberts, was “who [as between the courts and the legislature] should do the changing.”30

Hoffman says that the Supreme Court may change even clearly established principles of common law “where great social upheaval dictates,”31 and so becomes the obvious complement to Kluger. Where Kluger checks the legislature, Hoffman allows the Supreme Court to remain unchecked (outside of any legislative purview over the common law).

Modern Jurisprudence and Doctrine

The Florida Supreme Court’s enthusiasm for the English half of Florida common law flowered in three marquee opinions in the 1990s. In two of these opinions, the Supreme Court recognized English common law causes of action not previously found in Florida case law. In these decisions, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its omnipotence over issues of common law. In the third decision, however, the Supreme Court constrained its own authority in contrast to that of the Florida Legislature by limiting the application of the Kluger-Smith doctrine.

U.S. v. Dempsey, 635 So. 2d 961 (Fla. 1994), and Stone v. Wall, 734 So. 2d 1038
(Fla. 1999),
were separated by four years, but present a shared jurisprudence due perhaps to the striking commonality of their facts and circumstances.

Both were plurality opinions.32 Both were conceived as answers to certified questions issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.33 Both concerned the law of children.34 Each featured concurrences or dissents expressing reservation against judicial conceptions of new legal remedies.35 Both reached back to the Supreme Court’s self-minted license to change the common law en route to keeping pace with societal evolution.36 Both involved perceived deprivations cast as pleas that, to the objective observer, would be considered just.

Stone turned on the putatively altruistic kidnapping of a minor by her maternal grandparents and her father’s right to recover the expenses sustained in her lawful recovery.37 Dempsey concerned whether in the medical malpractice context there existed a cognizable right of recovery for loss of a parent’s future companionship with their handicapped child.38

The similarities continue. Both Stone and Dempsey analyzed not yet recognized causes of action emanating from so-called “natural parental rights” rooted in English common law — a father’s property interest in his offspring and heirs.39 The holdings in each recognize “new” claims facilitated by the adoption of English common law in §2.01.40

Beyond the furtherance of new forms of relief in the seemingly mature areas of tort and family law, Stone and Dempsey are significant for infusing the Hoffman jurisprudence they rely upon — the remarkable currency of judicial review — with the equally precious substance displayed in Kluger and Smith, the superintendency of Florida common law. This potent recombination of Hoffman’s jurisprudence by Dempsey and Stone might be construed as follows: Florida common law must evolve to keep pace with the society it serves and binds together, principles of common law may be altered judicially when necessary, and it is the Supreme Court, as fount and repository of common law rights, new and old, that has the idiosyncratic authority to write the change.41

Following in the footsteps of Justice Roberts’ dissent in Hoffman, the Stone and Dempsey dissenters offered a cautionary corollary to the large-writ powers of law giving their majority opinions found in Hoffman, which we can paraphrase as: Quite often, restraint from sounding the depths of this remarkable reservoir of authority is the preferred course, in the maintenance of comity with the legislature, the maintenance of the Supreme Court’s own polity, and the observance of the receiving statute itself.42

The third 1990s-era opinion, Agency for Healthcare Administration (AHCA) v. Associated Indus. of Fla., Inc., 678 So. 2d 1239 (Fla. 1996), asked whether the same constitutional right of access to the courts that Kluger and Smith defended was infringed upon by a 1978 Medicare subrogation statute that was expanded by legislative amendment in 1990 and 1994. This was a long-unnoticed law that later experienced a volcanic rise in significance with the advent of the Lawton Chiles-era tobacco wars.43 During the publicized tobacco litigation, the 1994 amendment effectively withheld from defendant cigarette manufacturers the classic common law affirmative defenses to subrogation, and the question of the amendment’s validity prompted the AHCA appeal.44

Writing for the AHCA majority, Justice Overton first revisited the now famous “sea change” in tort liability ushered in by Hoffman’s abolition of comparative negligence.45 There followed a recitation of Kluger, then a twist. In a shift of the doctrinal direction the Supreme Court had pursued in and since Kluger and Hoffman, the AHCA majority seemed to, in the face of a challenge to legislative removal of a common law right, leave the Kluger-Smith test behind. Rather than test an apparent legislative preemption of common law principles under the Kluger-Smith doctrine, which the appellee had urged, the AHCA majority instead construed Kluger with Hoffman in a new way to conclude, again by fiat, that Kluger does not apply to affirmative defenses.46 To the appellee and its corporate clients, it may have seemed as if the AHCA majority rewrote the receiving statute itself to provide that the laws of England of a general and not a local nature down to July 4, 1776, are hereby declared of force in this state — except for affirmative defenses.

But in the event, this shift in doctrine was probably jurisprudentially defensible. Recall that in Hoffman, the Supreme Court reserved to itself a swath of judicial review over Florida common law in the interstitial spaces between valid legislative acts wherein its own writ runs. If that sphere of authority is legitimate, then the Supreme Court has the discretion to change the analysis for legislative preemption of affirmative defenses; There is no statute setting forth what methodology the court must employ in exercising its power of judicial review. So as a technical matter of following its own jurisprudence, the Supreme Court was free to limit Kluger-Smith as not applying to defenses. In so doing, however, the Supreme Court allowed the legislature a claim of plenary authority over defenses that would otherwise be considered part of Florida common law and encompassed by Kluger-Smith.47

AHCA was not unprecedented against the long sweep of the Florida Supreme Court’s common law jurisprudence. The Supreme Court had, in another era, sometimes refused to venture into the realm of legislative action when considering statutory changes to the common law. For example, in Ex Parte Beville, 50 So. 685 (Fla. 1909), a case concerning the effect of an 1891 statute on the English common law disqualification of spouses as adverse witnesses, the Supreme Court constrained itself to merely noting an instance where English common law rights and privileges were inconsistent with postreception (post-1829) statutes, declaring without proscription or advice that “the [l]egislature determined to change this common law rule.”48 In doctrinal terms, AHCA definitely limited the application of the Kluger-Smith doctrine. Kluger remains the seminal opinion on judicial review of legislative acts proscribing common law rights and remedies, now excepting the area of affirmative defenses.49

A Present Day Method of Application

The foregoing seminal cases and authorities defining the controlling jurisprudence of Florida common law as it concerns the existence and appropriate usage of the English half can be combined into the following majority-view method of application for English common law principles in present day lawsuits.

If a common law question, meaning a legal question not of the sort answered by statute, but rather a question falling within the lex non scripta tradition of Florida common law, cannot be answered with resort to controlling Florida case law, and a party or the court itself suspects that the missing answer may be supplied by the English common law, the court, ideally with the aid of the parties, engages in the following analysis.

Step 1 — Is there an English common law authority on point? If a principle of English common law is not plain, it is considered unobservable.50 Acceptable authorities as to what legal principles form a part of English common law include English cases reported prior to July 4, 1776, (widely available on commercial computer research sources) and secondary materials, including without limitation the treatises and reports of Blackstone and Coke, restating the law of the era (which remain in print and are sold by booksellers).51

Step 2 — Has the English common law authority been abrogated by statute? Answering this question calls for an analysis of any presumed conflicting Florida Statutes under the rules of statutory construction given in Thornber.52

Step 3 — If a statute is in conflict with the English common law rule, and the old rule provides a party with a right or remedy, does the statute survive the two-pronged alternative test laid out in Kluger and Smith ?53

Step 3a — If a statute is in conflict with the English common law rule, and the old rule is not of the sort providing a party with a remedy, assume the legislative action is valid and the old rule abrogated, unless and until an empowered judicial authority resuscitates or distinguishes the rule from the effect of the statute, under the authority reserved in Hoffman.

Step 4 — If the English common law rule does not implicate a Florida statute, but conditions invoking the Hoffman doctrine nevertheless persist, assume that the old rule is valid but remains subject to change by an empowered judicial authority under appropriate circumstances.

Conclusion

A peculiar feature of Florida common law is that it consists of many thousands of cases and is not contained in any one case, or 10, or even 100. There are defenses, exceptions, inapposite facts, temporal problems, and other elements that so often prevent one opinion from providing a complete solution to a legal question. Sometimes there are no cases providing an answer. One could arrange every Florida case ever written into a great literal blanket of authority and there would still be holes in the common law’s coverage where there are no comforting rules.

Enter the significance of the English half of Florida common law. The English half is an oft-forgotten treasure, a heritage that we might look thoughtfully back upon and learn from. It is through consideration of the receiving statute and the key cases that mediate Florida’s adoption and continuance of the English half as a part of Florida common law that we renew our understanding of how and when it applies.

The territory of Florida was ceded to the U.S. by Spain by a treaty ratified in 1821.
Walter W. Manley II, ed.,
The Florida Supreme Court and its Predecessor Courts, 1821-1917 4 (1997 Univ. Press of Florida);
Michael Gannon, ed.,
The New History of Florida 207 (1996 Univ. Press of Florida).
Manley, see note 1 at 23; James W. Day, Extent to Which the English Common Law and Statutes are in Effect, 3
U. Fla. L. Rev. 303 (1950). This enactment would become
Fla. Stat. §2.01, originally enacted in the Florida Territorial Acts 1829 at page 8.
Kluger v. White, 281 So. 2d 1, 3 (Fla. 1973).
Id. at 2.
See id. at 4.
Id. at 4 (emphasis added).
In its antebellum period, the Florida Supreme Court issued several opinions that can be fairly described as the exercise of judicial review power. See, e.g., Ponder v. Graham, 4 Fla. 23 (Fla. 1851); and Flint River Steamboat Co. v. Allen, 1 Fla. 102 (Fla. 1848).
Douglas Edlin of Dickinson College has recently suggested that judicial review — an ultimate judicial authority over fundamental rights and values embedded in society and law for the protection of the populace against government or private encroachment — is a signature aspect of the English common law tradition. Douglas E. Edlin, From Ambiguity to Legality: The Future of English Judicial Review, 52
Am. J. Comp. L. 383, 395 (2004).
Kluger, 281 So. 2d at 4.
10 At the same time, however, the Kluger holding that discusses the common law in the same breath with the Florida Constitution is obiter dicta. Clearly, the applicability of the English common law was not at issue in the case; the invalidity of the collision statute turned on a perceived conflict with the state constitution. Irrespective of the dicta problem, the force and lucidity of the Kluger holding as it relates to the English common law persisted as written and would become a relative icon in Florida jurisprudence.
11 Smith v. Dept. of Insurance, 507 So. 2d 1080, 1083 (Fla. 1987).
12 This would not be the last time the Florida Supreme Court gave Kluger this honorific. See University of Miami v. Echarte, 618 So. 2d 189, 193 (Fla. 1993), cert. den. , 510 U.S. 915 (1993).
13 Like KlugerSmith did not turn on any issue of the applicability of English common law. However, the Smith opinion’s reaffirmance and illustration of the Kluger holding combined with its specific inclusion of common law adopted via the receiving statute, effectively immunized English common law causes of action co-equally with state constitutional rights against legislative action.
14 Smith, 507 So. 2d at 1088.
15 Thornber, 568 So. 2d at 918-19.
16 Ashley, 701 So. 2d at 341.
17 The case had come up from the Fourth District Court of Appeal, where the intermediate court had itself thrown out the doctrine of contributory negligence in favor of comparative negligence. See Hoffman v. Jones, 280 So. 2d 431, 433 (Fla. 1973). The Hoffman opinion almost instantly notes that the intermediate court exceeded its authority in reversing the then-existing common law precedent of the Supreme Court. See id.
18 Id. at 436. On this point the court cited its own prior opinions describing contributory negligence as primitive, unjust, and inequitable. Id. at 437.
19 See id. at 434.
20 See id.
21 See id. at 436, citing Hargrove v. Town of Cocoa Beach, 96 So. 2d 130, 131 (Fla. 1957)(“We can see no necessity for insisting on legislative action in a matter which the courts themselves originated.”); Gates v. Foley, 247 So. 2d 40, 43 (Fla. 1971)(“Legislative action could, of course, be taken, but we abdicate our own function, in a field peculiarly nonstatutory, when we refuse to reconsider an old and unsatisfactory court-made rule.”).
22 Hoffman, 280 So. 2d at 436.
23 Id.
24 Id. at 437-438.
25 Id. at 437.
26 Id. at 437-438.
27 Id. at 438. This was strong language; the “one man” the Hoffman majority was implicitly criticizing was the state’s chief executive who was vested with a veto power. In this sense, an intellectually honest appraisal of Hoffman, whether that appraisal is cast as an exploration of the common law and constitutional concept of judicial review, or otherwise, must raise the question of whether the Hoffman doctrine is essentially an unwritten super-veto, and the further question of where does such a power fit within the existing common law and constitutional frameworks that gird Florida.
28 Id. at 437.
29 Hoffman, 280 So. 2d at 431.
30 See id. at 441.
31 Id. at 435.
32 Id. at 1047 (3-3-1); Dempsey, 635 So. 2d at 965 (1-5-1).
33 Stone, 734 So. 2d at 1039; Dempsey, 635 So. 2d at 962.
34 See id.
35 Stone, 734 So. 2d at 1038 (Overton, S.J., dissenting); Dempsey, 635 So. 2d at 965-968 (Grimes, J., concurring and McDonald, J., dissenting).
36 Stone, 734 So. 2d at 1043-44; Dempsey, 635 So. 2d at 964.
37 Stone, 734 So. 2d at 1039-40.
38 Dempsey, 635 So. 2d at 962.
39 Stone, 734 So. 2d at 1041, citing W. Page Keeton et al. ,
Prosser and Keeton on Torts §124; Dempsey, 635 So. 2d at 963, citing Ripley v. Ewell, 61 So. 2d 420, 421-22 (Fla. 1952).
40 Stone, 734 So. 2d at 1043, 1047 ( citing Fla.
Stat. §2.01 and State ex relClayton v. Board of Regents, 635 So. 2d 937, 937 (Fla. 1994), and describing English common law as the source of authority, recognizing a new variant of common law remedy as valid cause of action); Dempsey, 635 So. 2d at 962-63 ( citing English common law source of authority for ruling and consistent earlier decisions of the court adopting and expanding common law source, and adopting English common law source of authority in the form of newly adopted, updated remedy).
41 See Stone, 734 So. 2d at 1043-44, citing Hoffman, 280 So. 2d at 435-36; Dempsey, 635 So. 2d at 964, citing Hoffman, 280 So. 2d at 435, and Zorzos v. Rosen, 467 So. 2d 305 (Fla. 1985), and Gates v. Foley, 247 So. 2d 40, 43 (Fla. 1973).
42 See Stone, 734 So. 2d at 1047-48 (Overton, S.J., dissenting); Dempsey, 635 So. 2d at 966-68 (Grimes, J., concurring in result with opinion, McDonald, J., dissenting in part with opinion); see also State v. Ashley, 701 So. 2d at 343 (“as we have said time and again, the making of social policy is a matter within the purview of the [l]egislature — not this [c]ourt.”).
43 See id. at 1248-50.
44 See id. at 1249-51.
45 See id. at 1251.
46 See id. at 1253.
47 An interesting question: What are the doctrinal and jurisprudential implications of the Supreme Court’s deferment to the legislature in the matter of defenses insofar as the concept of tort reform is in no small part concerned with defenses and defensive measures against common law claims?
48 Ex Parte Beville, 50 So. 685, 688 (Fla. 1909).
49 The Florida Supreme Court most recently revisited Kluger in Warren v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co. , 899 So. 2d 1090 (Fla. 2005); and State Farm Mut. Auto Ins. Co. v. Nicholas, 932 So. 2d 1067 (Fla. 2006), both of which concerned access-to-the-courts challenges to facets of Florida’s personal injury protection (PIP) statute.
50 See Duval, 114 So. 2d at 795 (“it is…only when the common law is plain that we must observe it.”).
51 See Beville, 50 So. at 687.
52 Thornber, 568 So. 2d at 918-19. For a sample analysis on how modern statutes can infringe on timeless rights or privileges, see the discussion concerning hunting provided in Bartlett v. State, 929 So. 2d 1125 (Fla. 4th D.C.A. 2006).
53 Smith, 507 So. 2d at 1088.

Michael Cavendish and Blake J. Hood practice in the Jacksonville office of Boyd & Jenerette, P.A. Mr. Cavendish received his J.D. and M.A. from the University of Florida and his bachelor’s degree from Florida State University. Mr. Hood received his J.D. from Florida State University and his bachelor’s degree from Emory University. The authors try cases before state, federal, and administrative trial and appellate courts in Florida and other U.S. jurisdictions.

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