Dca Judge · Sixth District Court of Appeal
What applies in this courtroom
0 verified requirements govern practice before Judge Jared E. Smith across the judge, division, county, circuit, and statewide layers.
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Judge — Sixth District Court of Appeal
Judge Jared Smith joined the Sixth District Court of Appeal on January 1, 2023, following his appointment by Governor Ron DeSantis.
In 1996, Judge Smith graduated with his Bachelor of Business Administration with a degree in accounting, summa cum laude, from Fort Hays State University. Immediately following law school, from 2000 to 2002, Judge Smith clerked for the Honorable Justice Edward J. Larson of the Kansas Supreme Court.
Judge Smith had the honor of serving from 2002 to 2006 in the U.S. Air Force as part of the Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG). Judge Smith joined the Air Force in response to a call to serve his country shortly after 9/11. While assigned to MacDill Air Force Base, Judge Smith was the Chief of Legal Assistance, helping manage the legal assistance needs of several thousand active duty and retired service members in the local area. Judge Smith also served as the Chief of Claims, and Chief of Adverse Actions. He obtained his certification under Article 27 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as a U.S. Air Force Military Trial and Defense Counsel. During his military service, Judge Smith was appointed as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney to prosecute civilian crimes in the Middle District of Florida and the Western District of Texas.
After his service in the Air Force, Judge Smith practiced at a Florida state-wide law firm. There he represented contractors and homeowners involved in lien and contract disputes. He also handled product liability, retail hospitality and other construction cases involving significant personal injuries and/or property damage, as well as other commercial litigation and banking and finance matters. In 2014, Judge Smith obtained his board certification in construction law by the Florida Bar, a certification he held until assuming his position on the bench. Also in 2014, he received the Heroes at Work Award for community impact as a veteran by the Tampa Bay Business Journal.
In 2017, Judge Smith was appointed to the county bench by Governor Rick Scott, and he was elected in 2018 by Hillsborough voters in a contested election. Judge Smith served in county civil court, county criminal court, and domestic violence court. In 2019, Judge Smith was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis to the circuit bench where he served in the Unified Family Division. In 2022, he was appointed by Governor DeSantis to the 6th District Court of Appeal.
Published by the Sixth District Court of Appeal on this judge's own profile page and reproduced verbatim — BenchPath does not write or paraphrase judicial biographies. Read it on the court's site →
Verified 2026-08-03: this court's own judge page was rendered and publishes no portrait for this judge; when one is posted the appellate harvester attaches it. A court fact, not a harvest gap.
Captured verbatim from the court's own published pages and orders during circuit verification. Chambers practices change without notice — confirm anything time-critical with the judicial assistant. Procedural information only; not legal advice.
30-day recheck scheduled with the source monitor. | Biography captured 2026-08-03 from this officer's own page on the court's site; family sentences removed per BenchPath's published-professional-record rule.
This tab lists judge-and-division rules only, and this judge's division publishes its practice at the county, circuit, and statewide layers instead — 0 verified requirements still govern this courtroom. The Full Premium Report assembles every one of them, cited.
See all 0 in the Full Premium Report →No judge-level deadline on record runs shorter than a statewide deadline with the same trigger. The sentinel compares quoted timing across every published rule scoped to this judge on each visit — a clean result today is re-earned tomorrow.
No judge-scoped deadlines on this tab. Deadlines are extracted only when the source rule text states them — we never infer or calculate dates the rule does not explicitly contain.
Timing shown here is quoted from the rule text. Compute your actual date against the court's calendar and the rule itself — not legal advice.
No verified ruling summary yet. BenchPath generates ruling summaries from opinion and docket corpora (CourtListener where covered) and publishes them only after human review — fabricated judicial analytics are exactly what this platform refuses to ship.
Use the live case-law search below to see what exists for this judge today.
How Florida’s appellate courts disposed of the 12 opinions in BenchPath’s corpus (December 27, 2019–March 22, 2023) that name this judge as the lower-tribunal judge — the courts’ own disposition labels, counted verbatim. This is a census of the appellate record we hold, not a complete case history, an affirmance rate, or a performance rating.
Florida appellate and Supreme Court opinions naming this judge as the lower-tribunal judge, taken verbatim from each court’s official slip opinion (source-hashed). Descriptive record, not a rating.
JESSE T. HEARN, JR. vs BETTY HEARN a/k/a BETTY L. HEARN
Second District Court of Appeal · Hillsborough County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed in Part/Reversed in Part
No rule-level sources registered yet — judge-level provenance is listed in the Overview tab.
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No source changes detected for this judge yet — when the underlying court pages move, it shows up here first.
DORIAN CHILDS vs LETICIA CRUZ - CHILDS
Second District Court of Appeal · Hillsborough County
Disposition (court’s label): Denied
BARBARA PAVANATI vs NICHOLAS JACKSON
Second District Court of Appeal · Hillsborough County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
ANDREW F. DROTLEFF, I I I vs TANIA S. DROTLEFF
Second District Court of Appeal · Hillsborough County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
ANTHONY M. DANIEL vs BLAIRE S. DANIEL, A/ K/ A BLAIRE S. BROWN AND FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE
Second District Court of Appeal · Writ of Certiorari to the Circuit Court for Hillsborough County
Disposition (court’s label): Denied
JOSEPH RONALD PLIEGO, I I, ESQ. vs MICHELLE PLIEGO
Second District Court of Appeal · Hillsborough County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
IN THE INTEREST OF: JANE DOE vs
Second District Court of Appeal · Hillsborough County
Disposition (court’s label): Reversed
MARK STEPHEN LEFCOURT vs ADRIENNE MICHELLE KILPATRICK
Second District Court of Appeal · Hillsborough County
Disposition (court’s label): Dismissed
SHARON C. BRITTON vs BRENT BRITTON
Second District Court of Appeal · Writ of Certiorari to the Circuit Court for Hillsborough County
Disposition (court’s label): Denied
BREANNA JEAN JOHNSON vs JOSEPH BRENDAN JOHNSON
Second District Court of Appeal · Hillsborough County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
BREANNA JEAN JOHNSON vs JOSEPH BRENDAN JOHNSON
Second District Court of Appeal · Hillsborough County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
BREANNA JEAN JOHNSON vs JOSEPH BRENDAN JOHNSON
Second District Court of Appeal · Hillsborough County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
Answer three quick questions. The platform pulls Jared E. Smith's full public case-law record from the source, newest first — your matter never narrows the pull; it directs the relevance ranking and the dual-AI analysis. Every hit comes back Bluebook-cited with the opinion's own words quoted verbatim. The scan takes the time precision takes.
Case-law search
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