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499 So. 2d 21

499 So.2d 21

11 Fla.L.Weekly 2620

Docket No. BM-46.

Holland v. Wainwright

Bush Wade HOLLAND, Appellant, v. L.L. WAINWRIGHT, Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections, Appellee.

District Court of Appeal of Florida

Decided December 12, 1986.

District Court of Appeal of Florida · decided 1986-12-12

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“The writ may be used to compel the performance of a ministerial duty imposed by law where it has not been performed as the law requires.”

quoted by 3 later decisions, including 948 So. 2d 75 - Stokes v. Florida Dept. of Corrections, 820 So. 2d 317 - Milanick v. Town of Beverly Beach

Relies on Mizner Land Corp. v. Abbott, and v. Gaulden · State Ex Rel. Long v. Carey · 327 So. 2d 3 - Heath v. Becktell

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1986-12-12

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently January 2007

8 state decisions

40198619902000decided

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 →

¶1Bush Wade Holland, pro se.

¶2Jim Smith, Atty. Gen., Kimberly J. Tucker, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.

¶3MILLS, Judge.

¶4Holland is currently confined as an inmate at the Apalachee Correctional Institution. In August of 1985, he filed a petition for a writ of mandamus, challenging the assignment of the prefix letter "C" to his inmate number. The trial court denied Holland's petition on the ground that it failed to state a cause of action. We agree and affirm.

¶5In order for a petition for a writ of mandamus to be granted, it must be shown that the petitioner has a clear legal right to the performance of the particular duty sought and that he has no other legal method for redressing the wrong or of obtaining the relief to which he is entitled. State ex rel. Long v. Carey,121 Fla. 515, 164 So. 199 (1935); Heath v. Becktell,327 So.2d 3 (Fla. 1976). The writ may be used to compel the performance of a ministerial *22 duty imposed by law where it has not been performed as the law requires, State ex rel. Clendinen v. Dekle,173 So.2d 452 (Fla. 1965), but discretionary authority cannot be the subject of the writ. Hunter v. Solomon,75 So.2d 803 (Fla. 1954).

¶6Here, Holland has no clear legal right to a particular prefix, nor is the assignment of a particular prefix a ministerial duty imposed on the Department of Corrections by law. Rather, as the record supports, the assignment of prefixes has been adopted by the Department to facilitate clearer record keeping, pursuant to its discretionary rule-making authority. According to the affidavit of Bobbie Glover, Admission and Release Administrator of the Department of Corrections, the assignment of prefixes serves simply to identify one or more sets of commitment papers received from sheriff's offices when an inmate is delivered to a reception facility, and has no bearing on a prisoner's custody status.

¶7As the trial court's determination that Holland's petition fails to state a cause of action is supported by competent substantial evidence, we affirm.

¶8SHIVERS and JOANOS, JJ., concur.

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