Non-evidentiary criminal and civil proceedings before United States magistrate judges in the Fort Myers Division are digitally recorded unless the court, in its discretion, arranges for a court reporter to transcribe a particular proceeding. For this reason, counsel and pro se litigants appearing for non-evidentiary proceedings must take care to speak clearly into the microphones provided at counsel table or at the lectern when addressing the court during any such proceedings.

Before filing, counsel are encouraged to utilize the bookmarking function in Adobe Acrobat or comparable software to bookmark every section, point heading, and subheading contained within any electronically filed document.

The court requires that the original, fully executed plea agreement be provided to the court at the time of any change-of-plea hearing. Moreover, every page of the original plea agreement must be initialed by the defendant.

Judge McCoy prefers that, whenever possible, counsel use Westlaw database citations when citing to unreported cases or other electronically accessible legal authorities. If counsel chooses to include non-Westlaw citations, Judge McCoy requires that counsel also include parallel Westlaw database citations or otherwise explain in a parenthetical or footnote that a parallel Westlaw database citation is not available.

Counsel may call the assigned law clerk or the courtroom deputy, as appropriate, to inquire generally about the status of a pending matter or for other general procedural information.

However, chambers staff will not provide legal advice, interpret the Federal or Local Rules, provide time estimates for the court's written rulings, or discuss the merits of any case ex parte. When contacting chambers, counsel and pro se litigants must notify the opposing party to avoid any appearance of ex parte communications.

When filing motions and related materials electronically, it is not necessary to submit a courtesy copy to chambers unless the motion, including exhibits and attachments, exceeds 25 pages in length. Unless ordered to do so by the court, counsel and unrepresented parties are strictly prohibited from hand-delivering (either in person or by third-party courier) courtesy copies to Judge McCoy's chambers. Instead, courtesy copies should be mailed to Judge McCoy's chambers or hand-delivered to the clerk's office for further routing. To avoid confusion, any courtesy copy of a document provided to the court should be clearly and conspicuously labeled as a copy on the first page of the document.

Generally, counsel may remain at counsel table when addressing or presenting oral argument to the court. Alternatively, counsel may choose to stand at the lectern when presenting oral argument. However, the court requires all counsel to stand when addressing the court unless counsel affirmatively requests and obtains leave to remain seated for a medical or other compelling reason. The court also requires all counsel to speak clearly into the microphones provided at counsel table or at the lectern when addressing the court or when examining testifying witnesses.

Counsel are encouraged to make use of the technology presently available in Judge McCoy’s courtroom in connection with hearings or trials. However, counsel are advised that technological facilities vary significantly from courtroom to courtroom and certain technology may not be available to counsel for administrative reasons on the date of the hearing or trial. Therefore, counsel should contact chambers at least one full week in advance of any scheduled hearing or one full month in advance of any trial date to confirm what technology will be available for use during the hearing. Counsel should also contact the courtroom deputy clerk to schedule sufficient time in advance of any hearing or trial to visit the courtroom, to consult with the court’s technology support staff, to observe the layout of the courtroom, and to perform a test run of the available courtroom technology and connections before the date of the hearing or trial. The court will not grant continuances of hearings or trials to accommodate technological difficulties experienced by counsel who failed to plan in advance for technology needs.

Before filing motions and legal memoranda, counsel are encouraged to utilize available third-party applications to insert viable hyperlinks to cited court decisions and other legal authority available electronically on WestlawNext. In doing so, counsel should confirm before filing that each inserted hyperlink is valid and that it links to the cited material as intended. Counsel should also confirm prior to filing that the conversion of the wordprocessing file to a PDF file format does not inadvertently remove the inserted hyperlinks or render them unusable in the PDF version of the document.

Many answers to frequently asked questions are found in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the Federal Rules of Evidence, the Local Rules for the Middle District of Florida, the Middle District of Florida's Case Management/Electronic Case Filing (CM/ECF) Administrative Procedures for Electronic Filing, and the Middle District of Florida Handbook on Civil Discovery Practice.  The Court expects counsel and pro se litigants to know and follow these authorities. Frequent review of the rules is recommended as they are often amended.

The court may schedule oral argument on motions upon the written request of the parties or by order of the court without the request of the parties. When a discovery motion is filed, the parties should expect that the court could schedule—and frequently does schedule—a hearing on the motion on short notice. If the court schedules a hearing on any discovery motion, counsel for the parties and any unrepresented parties involved in the discovery dispute are required to convene a telephone conference call at least three business days before the date of the hearing for the purposes of:

If the court schedules a hearing on a discovery motion, counsel must be prepared to address all issues raised or implicated by any motion pending at the time of the hearing, including case management deadlines and other scheduling matters. In-person appearances are preferred, but telephonic appearances at hearings will be permitted in non-evidentiary civil hearings upon a showing of necessity. Telephonic participation in a hearing using a cellular telephone is strictly prohibited. If telephonic appearance is requested and permitted, then all parties participating in the hearing will be required to appear telephonically. In other words, if any party appears by telephone, then all other parties must also appear by telephone. Witnesses and other evidence are generally not permitted at oral argument unless permission to present evidence is obtained from the court before the hearing.

When possible, all documents filed through Case Management/Electronic Case Filing (CM/ECF) should be scanned with optical character recognition (OCR) and rendered text-searchable. OCR is available in most document-scanning and PDF-creation software packages. OCR is most effective on primarily text-based documents and is generally not beneficial for maps, photographs, charts, graphs, and other non-text documents.

Judge McCoy will conduct settlement conferences only in cases for which he is not the assigned magistrate judge and only at the request of the presiding trial judge.

If the court schedules an evidentiary hearing on a motion to suppress evidence in a criminal case, the court requires—without exception—the moving defendant(s) to be present during the entire hearing.