Affluent Floridians can pay for ‘private’ judges to expedite their cases

As Florida’s judicial system grows more burdened by an exploding population, those who can afford it are increasingly paying private judges to expedite their civil cases.

While the trend isn’t new or unique to Florida, Orlando’s WKMG-TV recently reported that retaining the services of a private judge is becoming a popular option for those who don’t want their cases bogged down in a slow courthouse bureaucracy.

“It can take a year or two for people to have a trial in Central Florida, but those who want to skip the line can hire a private judge to handle their case,” WKMG reported Wednesday.

“‘My marketing motto is: “How would you like your trial tomorrow?”‘ said Robert Evans, who worked as a judge in Orange County for more than 20 years before leaving public office. Now, he conducts private trials — for paying customers — a at his Florida Private Trials practice.”

Retired judges supply the labor force, in the majority of cases, to meet the growing demand for the service. It’s a service that can be expensive. A 2013 story on private judges in U.S. News and World Report found a practitioner who pegged the typical cost at between $500 and $700 per hour.

“[Cost] varies depending on the judge, who can set his or her own fees, and the complexity of the case,” U.S. News reported. “As one might expect, a private judge can cost thousands of dollars. Kessler says he typically sees private judges charge $500 to $700 an hour. On the other hand, according to the website for Private judge Donald A. Cox, a private civil hearing in central Ohio costs $150, a sum that even cash-strapped couples could likely scrape up. Traveling farther or conducting a hearing via Skype is $200. But if you want Cox’s services for the entire day, it’ll cost you $1,900.”

States that allow for the use of private judges each make provisions accommodating those judges’ cases into the flow of the wider judicial bureaucracy. Private judges can’t adjudicate trials that require juries, and they typically must receive their compensation from both parties in a civil case (to deter allegations of influence peddling).

In Florida, as in many states, private judges are often used to preside over divorces and other domestic cases. Family issues often motivate the involved parties to pay extra for the privacy that comes with having a case disappear from — or never appear on — a public docket.

“Private judging fills a particularly worrisome gap between public adjudication and arbitration in the family law context,” noted a 2007 report in The Yale Law Journal on the emergence of private judging in California. “Though such cases often demand the privacy and convenience of arbitration, major issues of family law, including divorce and custody disputes, are off-limits to arbitrators.”

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