City Courts?

Question

How do city courts work in Florida? What kind of cases do they take on? How many people work there? Is there a court that you have to go BEFORE the city court? And what about if nothing is settled in the city courts then what? Do people go to Federal Courts? Do you know any link that have to do with city courts? Please help!!

Answer 1

I think you are referring to county courts as there is no such thing as a city court in Florida.

Florida's Court System consist of:

o State Courts Home

o Judicial Administration

o Supreme Court

o District Courts of Appeal

o Circuit Courts

o County Courts
http://www.ncsconline.org/D_KIS/info_court_web_sites.html#florida
http://www.ncsconline.org/D_Research/Ct_Struct/FL.htm

Here is a brief decription of a county court:
Organization
The Constitution establishes a county court in each of Florida's 67 counties. The number of judges in each county court varies with the population and caseload of the county. To be eligible for the office of county judge, a person must be an elector of the county and must have been a member of The Florida Bar for five years; in counties with a population of 40,000 or less, a person must only be a member of The Florida Bar.

County judges are eligible for assignment to circuit court, and they are frequently assigned as such within the judicial circuit that embraces their counties.

County judges serve six-year terms, and they are subject to the same disciplinary standards, and to the jurisdiction of the Judicial Qualifications Commission, as all other judicial officers.

Jurisdiction
The trial jurisdiction of county courts is established by statute. The jurisdiction of county courts extends to civil disputes involving $15,000 or less.

The majority of non-jury trials in Florida take place before one judge sitting as a judge of the county court. The county courts are sometimes referred to as "the people's courts," probably because a large part of the courts' work involves voluminous citizen disputes, such as traffic offenses, less serious criminal matters (misdemeanors), and relatively small monetary disputes.
http://www.flcourts.org/courts/county/county_description.shtml

Check out this site where you can put in a city and find out which county court to go to:
http://www.flcourts.org/courts/circuit/circuit.shtml

For a better outline of the types of cases the county courts handle, go to the bottom of this chart:
http://www.ncsconline.org/D_Research/Ct_Struct/FL.htm

Answer 2

City courts, also called municipal courts, are often equivalent to small claims courts. They are run by the city, rather than the county or the state, and handle small local matters.

The specific jurisdiction, and the types of cases they can here, is determined by local statute/ordinance, and vary by state/city. Those laws also set forth what options exist to appeal the court decision.

Federal courts operate on an entirely different hierarchy than city/county/state courts. The two systems are not related.

Answer 3

Why not make a trip to the court house and sit in on some cases, follow them and see what happens.
Remember there are several different types of courts in the court house so you would have to sit in each one.