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Melanie Dale Surber
Circuit Judge · Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court · Palm Beach County, Florida
High confidence· verified September 17, 2026
- verified requirements
- 138
- verified requirements
- rule deadlines
- 6
- rule deadlines
- sources cited
- 56
- sources cited
- reviewed insights
- 0
- reviewed insights
- verified rulings
- 0
- verified rulings
Verification profile
- High · 126
- Medium · 12
- Low · 0
- Unverified · 0
Report generated October 25, 2026 · benchpath.ai/reports/judge/melanie-dale-surber
01 Division & assignment
Juvenile — Division JS
Chambers & practice notes
- Division
- JS — Juvenile, South County
- Judicial assistant
- William Rivera
- Phone
- 561-274-1455
South County Courthouse — 2W-115 / courtroom 4
Delinquency over 15 minutes and dependency over ten minutes require special set; 72 hours notice where required; orders within three days; judicial-review and permanency materials five days ahead.
Verified 2026-08-03: the 15th's own judges grid publishes assignment and phone facts but no biography prose. 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.
02 Live Case-Type Intelligence Scan
Live case-type intelligence scan
● LiveAnswer three quick questions. The platform pulls Melanie Dale Surber'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.
- 1. Case area & type
- 2. Refine
- 3. Review & scan
Case-law search
CourtListener · free connector · liveCoverage note: CourtListener is strongest for federal and state appellate courts; Florida circuit-court opinions are sparsely represented.
Research connectors
CourtListener
● liveFree Law Project
Free. Opinions, dockets, RECAP, judge metadata. Powering the case-law search on this page.
Westlaw
○ bring your licenseThomson Reuters
Bring your firm's license — enterprise connector queries your judge and related cases inside Westlaw. Phase 2.
LexisNexis
○ bring your licenseRELX
Bring your firm's license — enterprise connector for Lexis+ research tied to your matter. Phase 2.
BenchPath never scrapes licensed databases. Westlaw and LexisNexis connect only through your firm's own credentials and entitlements when the enterprise connectors ship.
03 Division intelligence
Appellate exposure
Appeals from this courtroom go to the Fourth District Court of Appeal (West Palm Beach).
● LiveThat court's published bench (11): Alan O. Forst, Burton C. Conner, Caroline Shepherd, Cory J. Ciklin, Johnathan D. Lott, Jonathan D. Gerber, Mark W. Klingensmith, Melanie G. May, Robert M. Gross, Shannon K. Shaw, Spencer D. Levine
Jurisdiction per § 35.043, Fla. Stat. (six-district alignment eff. Jan. 1, 2023).
04 Appellate record (20)
05 Procedural requirements (138)
06 Deadline table
07 Ruling intelligence
No verified ruling summary yet — summaries publish only after human review of a real opinion/docket corpus. The live scan at the top of this report covers what public sources hold today.
08 Source appendix (56)
- 15th Cir. — Division JS Instructions (Judge Surber)Healthychecked October 24, 2026
- 15th Circuit — Administrative Orders (faceted ledger)Healthychecked October 3, 2026
- 15th Cir. — Division U Instructions (Judge Collins)Healthychecked October 24, 2026
- 15th Circuit — Administrative Order library (Palm Beach)Healthychecked October 24, 2026
- Florida Rules of Court Procedure — The Florida Bar rules index (floridabar.org/rules/ctproc/)Healthychecked October 22, 2026
09 Recent change events
- September 10, 2026Monitor could not safely verify the registered source.
- August 6, 2026Monitor: content changed at PBC County Court — Division KK1 Instructions (Judge Casanova). Review before republishing dependent rules.
- August 6, 2026Monitor: content changed at PBC County Court — Division RJ Instructions (Judge Mullinax). Review before republishing dependent rules.
- August 6, 2026Monitor: content changed at PBC County Court — Division RA Instructions (Judge Alijewicz). Review before republishing dependent rules.
- August 6, 2026Monitor: content changed at PBC County Court — Division RF Instructions (Judge DiGangi). Review before republishing dependent rules.
- August 6, 2026Monitor: content changed at 15th Cir. — Division AI Instructions (Judge Curley). Review before republishing dependent rules.
10 Contribute ground truth
Intelligence skills executed on this report
Procedural FingerprintConferral Stack AnalyzerDeadline Matrix BuilderAI-Filing Policy DetectorEx Parte & Motion-Calendar DecoderProposed-Order Protocol ExtractorRuling Corpus ScannerDivision Peer DeltaReassignment & Vacancy RadarSource Freshness AuditorChambers Access CardAppellate Exposure MapperAttorney Ground-Truth IntakeLocal-Rule Conflict Sentinel
This report compiles procedural information and public-record research from the official sources cited above, with per-item verification status. It is not legal advice, contains no outcome predictions, is not a substitute for the advice of an attorney, and creates no attorney–client relationship. Items below high confidence must be verified against the official source before relying on them. Print with your browser for a clean PDF.