eFiling Update: Pinellas County Requires Exhibits & Attachments to be Filed Separately (like Federal Court)

I recently received a notice from somone that Pinellas county was rejecting pleadings that had attachments or exhibits attached to them because they have an administrative order which requires them to be filed separately.

I reached out to the Technology Clerk for Pinellas County, and got the following response by e-mail:

You should e-file each attachment as a separate document by attaching the document to the ATTACHMENT document type under OTHER or ALL or ATTACMENT TO COMPLAINT under Complaints & Statements of Claim.  When we add the event to the docket for the case, we will add a comment as to what the attachment is.  If we can clearly identify what the attachment is, no coversheet for the document would be needed.

I also spoke with them on the phone and confirmed that they require that each document/exhibit/attachment be filed separately. So, if you have a motion with 3 exhibits, you will be filing 4 separate documents. The document type for the exhibits would be “exhibit” or “attachment” or “attachment to complaint” etc… I asked if this was contrary to the fact that most (if not all?) other counties required that the exhibits be attached to the document and be filed in one document together and the clerk indicated that to her knowledge they were the only county which required it be done this way. She indicated that it was for the judges convenience so that the judge could easily skip to exhibits they wanted to see without having to go through the entire document. Pleadings filed with the exhibits attached will be moved to the pending queue so they can be fixed by the filer.

You can visit their website at http://www.pinellasclerk.org/aspInclude2/ASPInclude.asp?pageName=index.htm to see the administrative order and other information.

So, the lesson here is, make sure you know what your individual county requires. Most counties DO have this information on the front of their website so take a minute to review their rules and make sure they dont have any special requirements.