Rule 3.920.Purposes and conditions for appointment of referee

Chapter 2 opens with the boundaries on the court's own power to order a reference. Unlike a section 638 reference, which starts with the parties' agreement, a section 639 reference can be ordered by the court itself, so Rule 3.920 makes clear that power is not open-ended. A court may order the appointment of a referee under section 639 only for a purpose that section lists by name; it cannot invent a new category of dispute to send to a referee just because doing so would be convenient.

Two further limits follow. A court must not use the section 639 reference procedure to appoint someone to conduct a mediation, keeping the reference mechanism separate from mediation, which operates under its own rules elsewhere in the Rules of Court. The Advisory Committee Comment to this rule clarifies that the mediation bar is not meant to stop a court from appointing a referee to run a settlement conference in a complex case, or from later asking someone who served as referee to mediate once the reference itself has wrapped up; the concern is a reference used as a stand-in appointment for mediation, not any overlap between the two roles. And for discovery referees specifically, the rule sets a heightened bar: a court must not appoint one under section 639(a)(5) unless the exceptional circumstances of the particular case require it, a standard meant to keep discovery disputes from being routinely handed off rather than resolved by the court.