by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
Here’s an accidental accomplishment that won’t be duplicated.
During the last two weeks of March, Jim Facciolo argued the last civil jury trial in Jacksonville’s old federal courthouse. It was an admiralty case in which he was partnered with Jim Moseley Jr., president of the Jacksonville Bar Association.
On May 5, he argued the first civil jury trial in the new U.S. Courthouse at Jacksonville.
Facciolo declined to provide many details about that case. The broad outline is it involved a diversity of jurisdictions in a motor vehicle accident. The plaintiff was from Nassau County. The defendants were a foreign corporation and a Mexican national.
Facciolo got the verdict, but not the amount sought.
“The technology in the new courthouse is excellent,” said Facciolo, who maintains offices downtown and in Fernandina Beach. “As far as I know, it’s state of the art. At least, I haven’t heard of it being better anyplace else.”
Facciolo began practicing law in Jacksonville in 1974. He predominantly represents health care providers and “a lot of land use cases” in Nassau County.
“Being the last and the first was very peculiar, purely fortuitous,” he said. “It was not something I would have expected because I don’t do that many cases in the federal courthouse.”
Facciolo tried his first case in the old courthouse around 1975.
Over time, the level of comfort enjoyed by attorneys, judges and jurors in the courthouse had a lot to do with which courtroom was in use.
“They didn’t have large enough rooms for significant trials,” said Facciolo. “They could have no more than three going on at the same time. The other courtrooms weren’t available for large trials.”
Circulation was not what it might have been in the old courthouse, either.
“In the smaller courtrooms, the temperature could become somewhat of a problem,” said Facciolo. “Not much air.
“It also could be really crowded at the counsel table with all the people backed into a small space. There wasn’t room to spread out much.”
The new courthouse is better for everyone involved, he said.
“In the new courthouse, each judge and each magistrate has a dedicated courtroom and an adjacent chamber,” said Facciolo. “It was designed in modules, centered around each jurist.
“It’s a much better working environment for them.
“And there is a separate area for the jurors, the area where they’re sequestered.
“It’s a significantly better area, with a microwave and a refrigerator. It’s a very pleasant environment.”
There are 301,279 square feet of occupiable space at the new courthouse, on the west side of Hemming Plaza.
Security from Facciolo’s point of view seems to be just as tight now as it was before. He’s also reasonably sure he hasn’t seen everything.
“I would be very surprised if, in designing a courthouse, they didn’t consider a mechanism for transporting prisoners and the accused in a way that minimizes risk to others,” he said. “I’m sure there are routings by which a prisoner never gets in the public area.”
The building’s 17 courtrooms include: one Circuit Court of Appeals, one Special Proceedings District Courtroom, four Magistrate Judge’s Courtrooms, four Bankruptcy Courtrooms and seven District Courtrooms.
There are also 23 Magistrate Judge’s chambers, four Circuit Court chambers, three Visiting Circuit Court chambers, six District Court chambers, one Visiting District Court chamber, four Magistrate Judge’s chambers and four Bankruptcy Court chambers.
“The acoustics in this one are very good,” said Facciolo. “And there is computer modem access at every table.”
Computer readers at the counsel tables digitally feed scanned images to a projector and then to a screen.
“This is so much better,” he said. “It saves the lawyer from having to traipse in, carrying all that projection equipment, stumbling over cables. This is very nice. Much more elegant.”