Full Opinion

Third District Court of Appeal State of Florida Opinion filed February 5, 2020. Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing. ________________ No. 3D19-1870 Lower Tribunal No. 18-16290 ________________ Miami-Dade County, Florida, Petitioner, vs. Eastern Partners, LLC, Respondent. A Writ of Certiorari to the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Abby Cynamon, Judge. Abigail Price-Williams, Miami-Dade County Attorney, and David Sherman, Miguel A. Gonzalez and Richard Schevis, Assistant County Attorneys, for petitioner. Armas Bertran Pieri, and J. Alfredo Armas and Francesco A. Zincone, for respondent. Before EMAS, C.J., and SCALES and LOBREE, JJ. SCALES, J. Petitioner Miami-Dade County (the “County”) is the defendant below in a putative class action case and seeks certiorari review of a September 11, 2019 order of the circuit court that both denied its motion for protective order and granted Respondent, plaintiff below, Eastern Partners, LLC’s motion to compel discovery. Because this Court’s precedent dictates that, in a putative class action case, a trial court departs from the essential requirements of law when it compels merits discovery prior to its determining whether a plaintiff has standing to serve as class representative, we are compelled to grant the County’s petition and quash the circuit court’s discovery order. Overview Respondent seeks to represent a class of persons challenging the County’s interpretation and enforcement of Miami-Dade County ordinance 19-5. This ordinance authorizes the County to impose a special assessment lien on real property when the County has abated a public nuisance at the property and the owner has failed to reimburse the County. The challenged portion of the ordinance purports to give such liens priority by equating them to tax liens; the pertinent provision reading, in part, as follows: “A special assessment lien shall be enforceable in the same manner as a tax lien in favor of Miami-Dade County . . . .” Miami-Dade County, 2 Fla., Code § 19-5 (1992). Respondent alleges that code enforcement liens are not tax liens and the County is without authority to characterize and enforce them as such.1 Background Respondent purchased a parcel of property in Miami, Florida, from a lender that had previously foreclosed on the property. The property had four County liens recorded against it that were not extinguished by the lender’s foreclosure, two of which were section 19-5 special assessment liens the County had imposed during the pendency of the foreclosure action (and after the foreclosing lender filed its notice of a lis pendens). When the County maintained that the two section 19-5 special assessment liens survived the foreclosure, Respondent brought the instant action, asserting on its own behalf and on behalf of a putative class of property owners,2 that section 19-5’s attempt to give these liens a priority (so that they will survive foreclosure) is ineffective. The County has challenged Respondent’s standing to serve as the class representative of the putative class, asserting that the 1 Respondent cites City of Palm Bay v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., 114 So. 3d 924, 928-29 (Fla. 2013), for the proposition that a local government cannot create priority status for its code enforcement liens. The Florida Supreme Court concluded, and Respondent argues here, that Florida Statutes chapter 695 pre-empts any effort by a local government to establish such a priority under its chapter 162 code enforcement authority. Id. at 927. 2 According to its amended complaint, Respondent seeks certification of a class of “[a]ll persons who paid any amounts to the County to satisfy any Code Enforcement Liens that were recorded pursuant to County Code section 19-5 prior to the entry of a foreclosure judgment and should have been extinguished at the foreclosure sale.” 3 County waived Respondent’s liability for the challenged liens, so that Respondent suffered no injury.3 Respondent then served the County with extensive class discovery to identify the relevant properties and property owners, and the corresponding payments collected by the County to settle section 19-5 liens. Respondent filed its motion to compel the production of these documents. The County filed its competing motion for protective order, asserting that, before the County must expend resources to respond to class discovery, the trial court must first determine whether the Respondent has standing to represent the proposed class. Analysis 4 This Court has held that a trial court departs from the essential requirements of law, warranting certiorari relief, when the trial court compels merits discovery without first determining that a putative class representative has adequate standing. Baptist Hosp. of Miami, Inc. v. DeMario, 683 So. 2d 641, 643 (Fla. 3d DCA 1996); see also United Auto Ins. Co. v. Gables MRA, 997 So. 2d 1208, 1209 (Fla. 3d DCA 3 The County has filed a motion for summary judgment on the issue of Respondent’s standing. We express no opinion on the merits of either the County’s summary judgment motion or the allegations in Respondent’s complaint. 4 Our standard of review of a discovery order via certiorari is whether the order constitutes a departure from the essential requirements of law that could cause material injury through the proceedings and leave no adequate remedy on appeal. Banco Latino (S.A.C.A.) v. Kimberly, 979 So. 2d 1169, 1171 (Fla. 3d DCA 2008). 4 2008) (“As a general rule, precertification discovery should be limited to matters relevant to class certification, not the merits of the case.”). In Taran v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Fla., Inc., 685 So. 2d 1004, 1006 (Fla. 3d DCA 1997), this Court affirmed a summary judgment entered against purported class representatives on the authority of DeMario, concluding that a determination of their standing must precede class discovery. The holding of DeMario (which is elucidated in Taran and followed in Gables MRA) plainly precludes merits discovery until putative class representative standing has been established. DeMario, 683 So. 2d at 643 (“If De Mario were determined to have no standing, he obviously would have no right to continue to pursue discovery of a putative class . . . .”); Gables MRA, 997 So. 2d at 1209; Taran, 685 So. 2d at 1006. We therefore grant the County’s petition and quash those portions of the trial court’s September 11, 2019 order that compel the County to respond to merits discovery propounded by the Respondent, and that deny the County’s motion for protective order to shield the County from having to respond prematurely to merits discovery. Petition granted; order quashed. 5