A federal magistrate judge in the Southern District of Florida recently recommended sanctioning local counsel for allowing out-of-state lead counsel, who was not qualified in Florida and had never made an appearance to move the court for pro hac vice admission, to take the steering wheel as a backseat driver in a patent infringement lawsuit that was quickly dismissed for procedural missteps.

In a negligence and failure to warn case, a Florida district court granted the defendant Sherwin-Williams’s motion to exclude the testimony of the plaintiff’s expert after determining that his causation opinion was unreliable under Daubert. Monte v. Sherwin-Williams Dev. Corp., 2025 WL 90123 (M.D. Fla. Jan. 14, 2025).

Proper service of process that notifies a party litigant (or even a third-party) of a court summons is a critical part of the U.S. legal system. Service of process in federal district court proceedings must be made on domestic and foreign parties alike. Defects in either the process itself or its service may lead to an uninformed defendant’s failure to appear and could result in the final default judgment being overturned.