Executive Summary: -

In a monumental shift for state-court litigators and litigants, the Florida Supreme Court recently decided to forego the established state law standard for summary judgment in favor of adopting the more lenient, and more defense-friendly, federal standard articulated by the United States Supreme Court in the trilogy of cases of Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317 (1986), Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242 (1986), and Matsushita Electrical Industrial Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574 (1986). Florida now joins 38 other states in adopting the federal standard.