Full Opinion

DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA FOURTH DISTRICT JOHN WILLIAM CARROLL, Appellant, v. GLORIA JO GYLAND WEGER, Appellee. No. 4D2025-2910 [October 28, 2026] Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, Broward County; Jessica M. Marra, Judge; L.T. Case No. 062025DR008663AXDVCE. John William Carroll, Sunny Isles Beach, pro se. No appearance for appellee. PER CURIAM. John William Carroll appeals a final judgment of protection against stalking entered in favor of appellee, Gloria Jo Gyland Weger. We reverse because one of the incidents the trial court relied upon to issue the injunction was insufficient to support the injunction. Background The parties dated for about two years and broke up in the summer of 2024. Both parties admitted that the relationship was volatile. In May 2025, appellee petitioned for an injunction for protection against stalking. A final judgment of injunction for protection against stalking was entered against Carroll in July 2025, but the trial court vacated this judgment because Carroll did not receive proper notice that he would be required to attend the final hearing in person. On September 30, 2025, the trial court held another final hearing on the petition. Both parties gave sworn testimony. Appellee testified that Carroll threatened her by filing a lawsuit against her, which Carroll later explained was over unpaid rent, but the court instructed appellee to focus on alleged incidents that “had no legitimate purpose by anybody’s standards.” After extensive testimony by both parties, the court ultimately found two qualifying incidents of harassment, relying upon Carroll’s conduct on April 18, 2025, and May 15, 2025. The April 18 Incident We need not discuss the details of Carroll’s conduct on April 18, 2025, as we will assume for purposes of this opinion that the conduct qualified as an incident of harassment. The May 15 Incident On May 15, 2025, Carroll posted the following online review of appellee’s employer under his own name: “I was unfortunately in the ICU and while I was on life support the waitress Gloria cheated on me...” (ellipsis in original). Carroll admitted writing the review. When asked about the purpose for this review, he testified: “I was really upset . . . when I found out that while I was on life support, she slept with a bartender at her job.” Appellee denied cheating on Carroll. The Trial Court’s Oral Findings After listening to the parties for over three hours, the court issued its oral ruling. The court found “no question” that “the contact that has been taking place” had caused appellee “substantial emotional distress,” noting that appellee “has said it throughout the entirety of this hearing today, and she does appear extremely distressed as a result of all of the contact.” The court concluded that appellee had met her burden for a stalking injunction, identifying two qualifying incidents of harassment with no legitimate purpose: (1) the April 18, 2025 incident; and (2) the May 15, 2025 incident. As for the May 15th online review, the court found “no legitimate purpose for that harassing comment or communication” because “that comment obviously has absolutely nothing [to do] with giving a review to the business.” The court found both the April 18th and the May 15th incidents to be willful and malicious harassment. 2 On September 30, 2025, the trial court entered the operative final judgment of injunction for protection against stalking. Discussion On appeal, Carroll argues that the two incidents found by the trial court do not establish repeated statutory harassment under an objective standard. An order granting a protective injunction is reviewed for competent, substantial evidence. Thoma v. O’Neal, 180 So. 3d 1157, 1159 (Fla. 4th DCA 2015). But the legal sufficiency of the evidence supporting the injunction is reviewed de novo. Garcia v. Soto, 337 So. 3d 355, 359–60 (Fla. 4th DCA 2022). Section 784.0485(1), Florida Statutes (2024), creates “a cause of action for an injunction for protection against stalking.” “Stalking” occurs when a person “willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows, harasses, or cyberstalks another person.” § 784.048(2), Fla. Stat. (2024). “Harass” means “to engage in a course of conduct directed at a specific person which causes substantial emotional distress to that person and serves no legitimate purpose.” § 784.048(1)(a), Fla. Stat. (2024). A “course of conduct” is “a pattern of conduct composed of a series of acts over a period of time, however short, which evidences a continuity of purpose.” § 784.048(1)(b), Fla. Stat. (2024). “Because the harassment must be repeated for an injunction to issue, at least two instances of harassment are required.” Carvajal v. Ferretti, 434 So. 3d 72, 79 (Fla. 4th DCA 2026) (cleaned up). “Two or more acts that are part of one continuous course of conduct are legally insufficient to qualify as separate instances of harassment.” Cash v. Gagnon, 306 So. 3d 106, 109 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020). “A course of conduct requires multiple acts that are separated by time or distance.” Id. Thus, “multiple communications forming one continuous episode cannot be parsed into separate acts to meet the statutory threshold.” Carvajal, 434 So. 3d at 80. “Whether a communication causes substantial emotional distress should be narrowly construed and is governed by the reasonable person standard.” David v. Textor, 189 So. 3d 871, 875 (Fla. 4th DCA 2016). “Mere irritation, annoyance, embarrassment, exasperation, aggravation, and frustration, without more, does not equate to substantial emotional distress.” Cash, 306 So. 3d at 110 (cleaned up). The required distress “is greater than just an ordinary feeling of discomfort.” Id. “[T]he bar for 3 establishing that a reasonable person would suffer substantial emotional distress is set fairly high.” Craft v. Fuller, 298 So. 3d 99, 104 (Fla. 2d DCA 2020). Unpleasant, uncivil, and distasteful communications “do not rise to the level required to support a permanent injunction against stalking.” Reid v. Saunders, 282 So. 3d 151, 151 (Fla. 1st DCA 2019). “While profanity and accusations of lying might be offensive or even defamatory, this speech does not fall within a course of conduct that allows for injunctive relief.” Hasan v. Rivera, 332 So. 3d 1023, 1025 (Fla. 4th DCA 2022) (cleaned up). “[E]mails, articles, blog posts, and videos that contain false allegations or embarrassing information are not sufficient for purposes of imposing a cyberstalking injunction because a reasonable person would not feel substantial emotional distress.” Benhalima v. Iakovenko, 51 Fla. L. Weekly D1539, 2026 WL 2177426 at *3 (Fla. 2d DCA July 29, 2026). “Distress relating to a person’s business reputation and personal reputation among colleagues does not rise to the level of substantial emotional distress.” Id. In short, “injunctions are not available to stop someone from uttering insults or falsehoods.” Logue v. Book, 297 So. 3d 605, 614 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020). In Carvajal, for example, the record reflected “insults, accusations, and disparaging social media posts, namely being called a ‘psychopath,’ a ‘stalker,’ or an ‘abuser,’ and being criticized publicly,” including an accusation in a social media post that “tagged” the petitioner’s workplace. 434 So. 3d at 78, 81. We held that “this type of speech does not rise to the level of causing substantial emotional distress.” Id. at 81. By contrast, where the complained-of conduct is more extreme and outrageous, courts have found the conduct to be sufficient to cause substantial emotional distress in a reasonable person. “Florida courts reserve that label for behavior far more severe—such as repeated, intrusive surveillance or conduct that invades a person’s physical sense of security.” Id. at 82; see also Robertson v. Robertson, 164 So. 3d 87, 88 (Fla. 4th DCA 2015) (holding that the ex-husband’s actions were sufficient to cause substantial emotional distress in a reasonable person where the ex- husband went to his ex-wife’s home in the middle of the night and looked inside her darkened windows with a flashlight for three consecutive nights). Another required element of harassment is that the course of conduct “serves no legitimate purpose.” § 784.048(1)(a), Fla. Stat. (2024). “[W]hether a communication serves a legitimate purpose is broadly 4 construed and will cover a wide variety of conduct.” David, 189 So. 3d at 875. “Whether the purpose for contact is ‘legitimate’ is evaluated on a case-by-case basis[.]” O’Neill v. Goodwin, 195 So. 3d 411, 413 (Fla. 4th DCA 2016). “However, courts have generally held that contact is legitimate when there is a reason for the contact other than to harass the victim.” Id. Assuming, without deciding, that the April 18 incident constituted a qualifying incident of harassment, we examine whether the May 15 incident was sufficient to qualify as a second incident to support the statutory injunction. The May 15 incident was legally insufficient to qualify as harassment under Florida law. The May 15 conduct consisted of Carroll posting an online review of appellee’s employer in which he accused appellee of cheating on him while he was in the hospital. To be sure, this post had nothing to do with reviewing appellee’s employer, and Carroll has not identified any purpose for the post other than causing embarrassment to appellee. Still, even though this conduct had no legitimate purpose, an online post containing accusations or embarrassing information is not sufficient to support an injunction because a reasonable person would not feel substantial emotional distress. This is not the type of severe conduct that invades a person’s physical sense of security. The May 15 incident is similar to the conduct at issue in Carvajal, where we held that disparaging social media posts—including a post that accused the petitioner of “stalking” behavior and tagged the petitioner’s employer—did not establish substantial emotional distress under an objective standard. Here, the public accusation that appellee was a cheater is no worse than the public accusations in Carvajal that the petitioner was a “psychopath,” “stalker,” and “abuser.” If Carroll’s accusation of cheating was false, appellee’s remedy is a defamation action, not a stalking injunction. In short, the May 15 online review was not the type of “extreme and outrageous” conduct necessary to support a stalking injunction. Because the trial court’s findings support, at most, a single episode of harassment, we reverse and remand for the trial court to vacate the injunction. Reversed and remanded. GROSS, MAY and CIKLIN, JJ., concur. * * * 5 Not final until disposition of timely-filed motion for rehearing. 6