Snider v. Metcalfe

Snider v. Metcalfe, 157 So.3d 422 (Fla. 4th DCA 2015), 2015 WL 444497

While part of a trust dispute, this case involved the procedural question of when one must raise a defense of lack of personal jurisdiction in a proceeding.  Here, the Court held that even though the trustee of the trust at issue did not assert her defense of lack of personal jurisdiction in her original motion to dismiss a beneficiary's complaint for breach of trust, because she raised it in a subsequent amended motion to dismiss, she did not waive the defense.  Interestingly, the Court held that neither filing a notice of intent to use trust funds to pay the trustee's attorney's fees nor the filing of two responses to discovery requests amounted to "submission to the court's jurisdiction" or requests for affirmative relief sufficient to waive the defense of lack of personal jurisdiction  The Court distinguished these facts from situations where the party asserting the defense obtained a ruling on their motions before asserting the defense, or where they sought affirmative relief through filing their own pleadings and actively litigating, both of which constituted a waiver of the defense.

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