Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

100 Fla. 1248

130 So 912

Tootle v. State

Supreme Court of Florida

Decided November 15, 1930

Supreme Court of Florida · decided 1930-11-15

Relies on Suarez v. State of Florida

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1930-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently December 1999

18 state decisions

1001930194019501960197019801990decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Brown, J.

¶1 (Dissenting) : The liberal doctrine as to.allowances of amendments to informations obtaining in many jurisdictions is not in my opinion applicable in all respect in this State, where by Statute the rules of pleading and practice relative to indictments obtain also as to informations. At least, no amendment to an information, unless consented to by the defendant, should be made without application to the court for leave to amend and notice to the defendant of such application, so that he may have an opportunity to be heard thereon. Suarez v. State, 115 So. R. 519, 95 Fla. 42. It is true that in this case, the amended information was resigned, resworn to and r'efiled, thus *1252 amounting perhaps to the filing of a new information, which, in my opinion, at least entitled the defendant to a continuance. The defendant did made a motion for a continuance on this, and other grounds, after his motion to quash had been overruled. Both motions were overruled, and the ruling in. each instance assigned as error.

¶2 When an information is once filed in court, it becomes a court document, and the solicitor has no right to take it and amend it without the court’s consent, and when he applies for such leave to amend, the defendant should be given notice. If the solicitor desires to withdraw the information and file a new information in the place of it, he should likewise apply for leave of the court.

¶3 Even if the amendment made in this case would have been permissible if made with leave of the court, which I very much doubt, it being an amendment in substance and not in form, the defendant should not have been required to immediately go to trial under it. The motion for continuance at least should have been granted.

/100/fla/1248 · .json · Public domain