Before Florida adopted the federal summary judgment standard in 2021, parties could use pending discovery to prevent summary judgment. Summary judgment can decide all or part of a case and can be a devastating blow if granted to the opposing party. Before 2021, Florida courts typically held that litigants can substantially complete or even fully finish all outstanding discovery before the court would consider a motion for summary judgment. It was considered reversible error for a judge to grant such a motion when discovery, like the taking of depositions, had not occurred before a party was required to respond to the motion for summary judgment.

Summary judgment is only proper when there is no genuine dispute of material fact in a case and the only dispute that remains is how the law should be applied. Under the pre-2021 standard, courts greatly disfavored granting summary judgments and would deny them based on the mere “scintilla” of evidence of a disputed fact, or the simple allegation that a dispute existed. Therefore, this requirement that discovery be essentially completed made sense —if the facts of a case were not considered sufficiently developed to enable a court to determine that no issue of fact existed, summary judgment was considered premature and would be denied.