Knight v. City of Miami

• Decision Date: 29 March 1937
• Citation: 173 So. 801,127 Fla. 585
• Parties: KNIGHT et al. v. CITY OF MIAMI et al.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

173 So. 801

127 Fla. 585

KNIGHT et al. v. CITY OF MIAMI et al.

Florida Supreme Court

March 29, 1937

Rehearing Denied May 1, 1937.

Suit by Daniel R. Knight and Letty S. Knight, joined by her husband and next friend, Daniel R. Knight, against the City of Miami and others. From a decree for defendants, complainants appeal.

Reversed and remanded. Appeal from Circuit Court, Dade County; Worth W. Trammell, judge.

COUNSEL

Shutts & Bowen, L. S. Julian and Hollis Rinehart, Jr., all of Miami for appellants.

J. W Watson., Jr, and Mitchell D. Price & Charles W. Zaring, all of Miami, for appellees.

OPINION

DAVIS Justice.

This controversy originated in a suit brought by appellants against appellees in the court below seeking to restrain the city of Miami and certain of its officers from acting in a summary manner in accomplishing the destruction of fifty-three small dwelling houses owned by appellants and occupied by their tenants. The cause proceeded to final hearing upon bill, answer, and testimony taken, but the chancellor in announcing his decree decided the case as being one of legal, and not equitable, cognizance and jurisdiction. So the appeal presents here the primary question whether or not the bill was maintainable as one for equitable relief by injunction because of the absence of any plain, complete, and adequate remedy at law for the wrongs and injuries complained of.

The allegations of the bill of complaint are in substance as follows: That the plaintiff, a man seventy years of age, was owner of certain property in the city of Miami upon which he had constructed fifty separate small dwelling houses to be rented out; that he was acting as landlord of the premises and had as tenants people of small means to whom the houses he had constructed were being rented and by whom they were being occupied; that at the time the houses were built, their construction was in conformity to all building ordinances and regulations of the city and that proper permits had been procured therefor; that the houses were in good condition and are so constructed that they are neither unsafe nor dangerous although they are of cheap design typical of the neighborhood in which they have been built that the group of houses in question is not a tourist camp, but the occupants and tenants thereof are poor families who are year round inhabitants of Miami; that the city of Miami, acting upon a petition of voters of the city whose esthetic sensibilities disapprove of the existence of plaintiffs' rental enterprise, had served notice on plaintiffs advising them that their houses were 'unsafe and dangerous' and demanding that plaintiffs correct the condition by tearing down and removing all of said houses by January 10, 1936; that the order and notice so given was one of absolute destruction and permitted no repairs to be made in lieu thereof; that under the ordinances of the city of Miami under which its officials were proceeding and threatening to destroy the plaintiffs' properties, no notice or hearing is provided for or allowed, but it is contemplated that orders made and served by the building inspector pursuant to them must be promptly obeyed or summary action by the city will be taken to carry out the destruction of plaintiffs' property without any notice or opportunity to plaintiffs to be heard as to whether or not the houses are nuisances in fact and subject to destruction as such; that, in addition, plaintiffs are being held subject to prosecution and imprisonment for failure to obey the city's aforesaid summary order, and under the terms of the ordinances plaintiffs are being threatened with fifty separate prosecutions with aggregate fines of $10,000 and aggregate imprisonments exceeding eight years, should they fail to surrender up their asserted properties rights to be destroyed by the city's agents at plaintiffs' cost and expense; that equitable relief is necessary in the premises to forestall irreparable injuries such as are being threatened by defendant city of Miami and its officials, and which will be accomplished unless an injunction against the same shall issue.

There was equity in the bill and it was error for the court below to have dismissed the same at final hearing, without considering the cause on its merits, on the ground that plaintiffs had failed to establish such a cause of action that the court could take equitable jurisdiction thereof, and on the further ground that the plaintiffs had a plain, complete, and adequate remedy at law, as recited in the final decree.

The...