Support Online Legal Notices, But Oppose Florida Senate Bill 1666
Brevard Times Editorial
A bill introduced by Florida State Senator Jack Latvala (R-Clearwater) proposes to substantially change the legal process for foreclosures in Florida. Included in Florida Senate Bill 1666 is a provision for the publication of foreclosure sales online rather than in hard-copy newspapers.
Legal notices should be brought into the 21st Century and published online. However, the law must be crafted so that the online legal notices reach the widest possible audience within the county where the litigation takes place and is uniformly applied to all court proceedings. Senate Bill 1666 fails to accomplish any of those goals.
Online versus Print
Publication of legal notices in hard-copy newspapers does very little to reach an audience under 50 years of age. According to a Pew Research poll conducted in December 2010, there is an enormous divergence amongst age groups where Americans get their news:
Internet Television Newpaper Radio
18-29 65% 52% 21% 15%
30-49 48% 63% 22% 19%
50-64 34% 71% 38% 15%
65 + 13% 79% 47% 14%
Publication of legal notices on free online news websites would resolve this age discrimination in the legal process. The current law requires that hard-copy newspapers publish legal notices on their websites and also on floridapublicnotices.com. But the current law does not address the move by hard-copy newspapers in recent years to a paid website model where it is unlikely that non-subscribers, who are disproportionately low income, minority, or under 50, would visit.
Reduced Costs To Florida Taxpayers and Litigants
If the legal notice requirement were opened to free online news websites, local television news websites, and local news radio station websites, the increased competition would lower the rates Floridians pay for legal notices. Also, it would reduce the enormous costs local governments pay when they are required by Florida statute to publish legal notices.
Notice and Due Process
Senate Bill 1666 makes little effort to require a legal notice
publication that would likely be seen by geographically-targeted
residents and potentially interested parties (which is the fundamental
purpose of a legal notice publication.)
The proposed Senate Bill 1666 does not require that legal notices be published on a news website. Instead, it only requires publication on a website with 100,000 total impressions a month. More importantly, it does not require that those impressions come from within the county where the party resides or the proceeding takes place.
The problem with this loosely-defined website requirement is that it is not difficult at all to artificially generate website impressions. Additionally, even if the the impressions are genuine, those impressions could come from anywhere around the world.
Readers are accustomed to relating and finding legal notices with local news. Restricting the online legal notice publications to local news websites would still create a competitive environment to lower costs while at the same time reaching the intended audience.
Foreclosure Carve-Out
The bill only addressees legal notices related to foreclosure proceedings. Any law affecting the legal notices of Florida court proceedings should be done in a uniform manner and not piecemeal. If the online publication is sufficient enough notice for one type of court proceeding, then it should be sufficient for all court proceedings.
The portion of Florida Senate Bill 1666 that relates to online legal notices follows:
Section 3. Section 50.015, Florida Statutes, is created to
175 read:
176 50.015 Publicly accessible Internet website.—
177 (1) A publicly accessible Internet website must be approved
178 for legal publication, advertisement, and notice by the Florida
179 Clerks of Court Operations Corporation and must:
180 (a) Maintain a notice of foreclosure action for 90 days
181 following the first day of posting or for as long as provided in
182 subsection (3), and maintain publications of sales searchable
183 and accessible to users for 10 years following the first day of
184 posting.
185 (b) Receive at least 100,000 total impressions a month,
186 which must be certified by a recognized Internet search engine.
187 As used in this paragraph, the term “impression” means the time
188 at which a notice is viewed once by a visitor on an Internet web
189 page.
190 (c) Maintain 24-hour customer support, along with live
191 electronic communication and telephone support for a minimum of
192 12 hours a day during peak-time usage, and post online tutorials
193 for users.
194 (d) Be maintained on a data center that is compliant with
195 the Statement of Auditing Standards No. 70, and the website
196 provider shall provide the clerk of court with a certificate of
197 compliance with the Standards.
198 (e) Provide 24-hour access at no charge to the chief judge
199 of each judicial circuit and his or her designee, as well as to
200 each clerk of court and each deputy clerk. The website provider
201 must develop and maintain on file and provide to each clerk of
202 court and each chief judge a disaster recovery plan for the
203 website.
204 (2) The website provider shall publish its affidavits
205 electronically in substantial conformity with ss. 50.041 and
206 50.051 and may use an electronic notary seal.
207 (3) Legal publication, advertisement, or notice of
208 foreclosure action shall be posted within 3 business days,
209 excluding court holidays, after the date for the foreclosure
210 sale is set and shall continue for 10 days after the foreclosure
211 sale, or for 90 consecutive days, whichever period is longer.
212 (4) Each clerk of court may contract with a publicly
213 accessible Internet website provider for legal publication of
214 notice of foreclosure action as required by s. 702.035.
215 (5) A publicly accessible Internet website may charge a fee
216 of up to $50 per notice.
