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John M. Harris
Dca Judge · Fifth District Court of Appeal
High confidence· verified August 3, 2026
Dca Judge · Fifth District Court of Appeal
What applies in this courtroom
0 verified requirements govern practice before Judge John M. Harris across the judge, division, county, circuit, and statewide layers.
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Judge — Fifth District Court of Appeal
Judge John M. Harris was appointed to the Fifth District Court of Appeal by Governor Rick Scott in July, 2018. Prior to his appointment to the appellate court, Judge Harris served sixteen years as a trial court judge in the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit (Brevard and Seminole Counties). Judge Harris served in every division of the circuit court, served as administrative judge of the criminal, civil, probate and appellate divisions of the circuit court, and was twice elected to serve as Chief Judge of the Eighteenth Circuit, first in 2013 and then again in 2017. Appointed to the county court bench by Governor Bush in 2002, Judge Harris served in the traffic, civil and criminal divisions of the county court. In 2006, Judge Harris was appointed to the circuit court bench, again by Governor Bush, and served primarily in the civil, felony and probate/guardianship divisions. He has also served as Chairman of the Brevard County Canvassing Board and is a Florida Supreme Court Certified Judicial Mentor.
Judge Harris graduated from Oklahoma University with a degree in Psychology and Criminal Justice in 1988. He then obtained his Juris Doctor degree from Florida State University College of Law in 1991. After graduating from law school, Judge Harris began his legal career in private practice in Brevard County, where his practice included business and commercial litigation, appeals, and representation of local governments.
Published by the Fifth 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 →
Service July 2018–present.
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 32 opinions in BenchPath’s corpus (December 10, 2007–October 1, 2019) 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.
LISA ZELNICK vs MARILYN EAKIN, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS TRUSTEE OF THE EAKIN REVOCABLE LIVING TRUST DATED FEBRUARY 9, 1989 AND RESTATED JANUARY 3, 2014, RICHARD A. GATZA, THOMAS R. GATZA, ET AL.
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
RICHARD W. BASS vs JEFFREY BASS
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.
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
J. SCOTT LANFORD, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS NOMINATED TRUSTEE OF THE TESTAMENTARY TRUST OF MARY L. DILLARD vs ROBIN PHEMISTER, PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ESTATE OF MARY L. DILLARD AND AS TRUSTEE OF THE TESTAMENTARY TRUST OF MARY L. DILLARD
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
Holmes v. City of Palm Bay
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Pelican Creek v. Pulverenti
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Marlon L. Sapp v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Goersch v. City of Satellite Beach
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Rhoades v. Rodriguez
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Certiorari Review of Order from the Circuit Court for Brevard County
Charles Hughes v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Sedgwick v. Feller
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Certiorari Review of Decision from the Circuit Court for Brevard County
Geico v. Feller
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Certiorari Review of Order from the Circuit Court for Brevard County
CRYSTAL L. MADDOX vs FLORIDA FARM BUREAU GENERAL, ETC., ET AL.
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed in Part/Reversed in Part
Maddox v. Florida
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Heylin v. Gulfstream Property
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Karr v. Vitry
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Rudnick v. Federal Trust
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
CRYSTAL L. MADDOX vs FLORIDA FARM BUREAU GENERAL, ETC., ET AL.
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed in Part/Reversed in Part
Futrell v. Sunshine
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Maddox v. Florida Farm Bureau
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Futrell v. Sunshine
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Kenneth Dawson v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Michael Olive v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Jason Quarles v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
Johnny Hoskins, A/K/A Jamile Alle v. State of Florida
Supreme Court of Florida · Brevard County
Franklin Canales-Ordonez v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
Edgardo Colorado v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Timothy Combs v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
David Canada v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Mark Rozier v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
Robert Rabedeau v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Alfredo Roca-Moreno v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
John Barrick v. State
Fifth District Court of Appeal · Brevard County
Disposition (court’s label): Affirmed
Answer three quick questions. The platform pulls John M. Harris'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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