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Judge disqualified from case may not perform anything other than "ministerial" acts in case after disqualification.  [Added/ 1/17/12]

    Judge was presiding over a dissolution of marriage case.  While an issue in the case was on appeal, Former Husband moved to disqualify Judge.  By the time the Fourth DCA's mandate following the appeal had issued, Judge had granted the disqualification motion.  "Notwithstanding the entry of that order, [Judge] conducted a teleconference with the parties, and directed the former husband to submit to the court the former husband’s objections or a proposed order."  Former Husband objected and filed a petition for prohibition.

    The Fourth DCA granted the petition and ordered Judge to participate no further in the case.  A disqualified judge generally is barred from further participation in that case.  There is a limited exception, announced in Fisher v. Knuck, 497 So.2d 240 (Fla. 1986), "'[w]hen a judge has heard the testimony and arguments and rendered an oral ruling in a proceeding, the judge retains the authority to perform the ministerial act of reducing that ruling to writing.'  Fischer, 497 So.2d at 243 (citations omitted).  'However, any substantive change in the trial judge’s ruling would not be a ministerial act.'  Id."

    Here, the judge's actions went beyond the "ministerial act" exception.  "[I]n order to carry out this court’s mandate in the appeal, the trial judge would have to exercise his discretion to consider the former husband’s objections to the former wife’s proposed order, the former husband’s proposed order, or to draft his own order – any of which would constitute more than performing a ministerial task."  Ross v. Ross, __ So.3d ___ (Fla. 4th DCA, No. 4D11-2707, 1/11/2012).

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