Summary
The Florida Third District Court of Appeal affirmed an order involving a domestic violence injunction in a family-law matter. The court held that the appellant failed to provide a sufficient record for review and cited the abuse-of-discretion standard applicable to domestic violence injunctions.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the circuit court's domestic-violence-related injunction order should be reversed on appeal.
- Whether the appellant supplied an appellate record sufficient to permit review of the challenged injunction order.
Holdings
- An appellant must provide an appellate record sufficient for the reviewing court to evaluate the issue assigned as error; where the record is partial or otherwise inadequate, the appeal cannot establish reversible error and the challenged order is affirmed.
- An order granting an injunction in the domestic-violence context is reviewed for abuse of discretion.
Key quotations
“It is the responsibility and duty of the appellant to provide the appellate court with a record sufficient to review the matter assigned” (at 2)
“The piecemeal transcripts deprived this court of the ability to review the record as a whole. Such record omissions are fatal to an appeal.” (at 2)
“To a large extent appellants proceed at their peril when they furnish a partial transcript.” (at 2)
Factual background
The opinion provides no substantive factual account of the parties or the alleged domestic violence. The appeal concerned a domestic-violence-related injunction, but the court's two-page per curiam opinion focused on the appellate record and did not describe the underlying events.
Procedural history
Yitzchok Yoel Kasowitz appealed from an order entered by the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County. The Third District Court of Appeal affirmed, relying on the abuse-of-discretion standard for domestic-violence injunctions and the appellant's obligation to provide a record sufficient for appellate review.