Court Opinion

ID: 9957488
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-04 16:05:56.23076+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:18:23.405469
License: Public Domain

FIFTH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                STATE OF FLORIDA
                  _____________________________

                       Case No. 5D23-2579
                 LT Case No. 2020-DR-000750-FM
                  _____________________________

ERICA N. FLUHART,

    Appellant,

    v.

BRANDON L. RASMUSSEN,

    Appellee.
                  _____________________________

On Appeal from the Circuit Court for Duval County.
Suzanne Bass, Judge.

Michael R. Yokan, of Law Office of Michael R. Yokan,
Jacksonville, for Appellant.

No Appearance for Appellee.

                          April 4, 2024

                           EN BANC

KILBANE, J.

      Erica Fluhart timely appeals the final judgment of
dissolution of marriage rendered by the trial court in which the
court accepted and adopted the report and recommended final
judgment of dissolution of the parties’ marriage submitted by the
General Magistrate (“GM”) following evidentiary hearings. We
affirm; but we have elected to consider this matter en banc to
recede, in part, from our decision in Gatchell v. Kryvosheia, 370 So.
3d 374 (Fla. 5th DCA 2023).

     Here, after the trial court entered its order adopting the GM’s
report and recommended final judgment of dissolution of
marriage, Fluhart timely filed her notice of appeal without first
moving under Florida Family Law Rule of Procedure 12.490(e)(3)
to vacate the order. In Gatchell, under sufficiently similar
circumstances, our court held that an appellant’s failure to file a
motion to vacate the recommended order under this rule
constituted a failure to preserve issues for appellate review. Id. at
375–76. We dismissed the appeal, concluding that the appellant’s
failure to preserve issues for appellate review by filing this motion
constituted a failure to invoke our appellate jurisdiction. Id.

     On further consideration, we find our conclusion in Gatchell
that we lacked jurisdiction to be error; and we now specifically
recede from that portion of the opinion. We do, however, affirm
the instant final judgment because, under Gatchell, Fluhart’s
failure to move to vacate the GM’s recommended final judgment
adopted by the trial court resulted in a failure to preserve for
appellate review her claimed error involving the court-ordered
time-sharing and shared parental responsibility of the parties’
minor child.

    AFFIRMED.

EDWARDS, C.J., and MAKAR, WALLIS, LAMBERT, JAY, EISNAUGLE,
HARRIS, SOUD, BOATWRIGHT, MACIVER, and PRATT, JJ., concur.
                _____________________________

    Not final until disposition of any timely and
    authorized motion under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 or
    9.331.
               _____________________________

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