Michael L. Feinstein, P.A. issued the following announcement on July 19.
During the course of your business, you will more than likely come into contact with one or more federal or Florida agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration whose responsibilities are to enforce rules and regulations. If you end up dealing with these agencies, you may find yourself needing to engage in the administrative law process.
This process is different from ordinary civil courts, but even among agencies, differences exist. Due to the sheer number of agencies, you may discover that each agency has its own administrative processes to handle the enforcement of rules and regulations and the resolution of disputes.
Some commonalities among agencies exist
Even though there may be substantial differences among how agencies enforce their rules and regulations and resolve disputes, there are some things that may be consistent among them such as the following:
Each agency receives the power from Congress or the state legislature to create, monitor and enforce rules and regulations.
Each federal agency follows the Administrative Procedure Act.
Each Florida agency follows the state's Administrative Procedures Act of 1974.
Each agency has a hearing process in which you may submit arguments and evidence to an administrative law judge who makes a decision regarding your issue.
Each agency has at least one administrative law judge who hears disputes regarding an agency's regulations and rules.
The federal government publishes the Federal Register daily to keep you apprised of proposed or final regulations for each agency.
The federal government also publishes the Code of Federal Regulations once a year that includes all of the regulations enacted in the past year.
Many state and federal agencies provide you with other ways to resolve an issue without going before an administrative law judge. You may want to make use of those options prior to allowing a judge to make a decision that affects you and/or your business. By working your way through the "chain of command," you may gather necessary evidence should you ultimately end up in front of an administrative law judge during those processes.
Obtaining assistance
Even though the administrative law processes of several agencies share some commonalities, they also have significant differences. Unless you deal with a specific agency often, you more than likely are not familiar with each agency's regulations or administrative law processes. Successfully navigating through them often requires the experience of an attorney who routinely deals with this area of law since it does depart from the normal civil court process.
Original source can be found here.