North Miami, Florida v. Meredith

• Decision Date: 23 June 1941
• Docket Number: No. 9824.,9824.
• Citation: 121 F.2d 279
• Parties: NORTH MIAMI, FLORIDA, v. MEREDITH et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

121 F.2d 279 (1941)

NORTH MIAMI, FLORIDA, v. MEREDITH et al.

No. 9824.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

June 23, 1941.

R. H. Ferrell, of Miami, Fla., for appellant.

D. C. Hull, Erskine W. Landis, and Francis P. Whitehair, all of DeLand, Fla., for appellees.

Before SIBLEY, HOLMES, and McCORD, Circuit Judges.

SIBLEY, Circuit Judge.

On bonds and coupons issued by North Miami, Brown-Crummer Investment Company obtained judgments in the District Court in 1931 and 1937, and H. T. East one in 1936, on which fifas have been returned nulla bona. These judgments have been assigned to the appellees here, who in the District Court obtained by summary judgment, based on the pleadings and admissions, a mandatory order against the town and its officers for the levy and collection of a special tax to pay the judgments against all property within the limits of the town when the bonds were issued, except certain lands east of Biscayne Bay excluded from the town by a judgment of ouster on quo warranto.

The town's pleaded contentions are that its nonexistence de jure and de facto was established by the decree of ouster, rendered pursuant to Mahood v. State, 101 Fla. 1254, 133 So. 90, and was again adjudged between Brown-Crummer Investment Company and the town in Ocean Beach Heights v. Brown-Crummer Investment Co., 5 Cir., 87 F.2d 978; Id., 302 U.S. 614, 58 S.Ct. 385, 82 L.Ed. 478; that one of the bond issues involved was void in whole or in part because in excess of a statutory limitation to ten percent of the assessed value of property within the city at the time of issue; and that the tax required is inequitable because imposed wholly on west side property when reliance was put by all concerned also on taxation of the east side property; and because it would be impossible to collect so much tax from the west side.

North Miami, originally called Miami Shores, was self-incorporated under a statute which permits the inhabitants of a hamlet or village to establish for themselves a municipal government, Comp.Gen. Laws, § 2935, and following. In this instance the hamlet was on the west of Biscayne Bay, but the designated boundaries included a large and valuable territory across the Bay. The bonds were issued, validated by court decree and sold, and the proceeds used principally in improving the west side. Thereafter the right under the statute to include the east side lands, separated by three miles of water, was contested, and on quo warranto on Dec. 18, 1931, it was adjudged that the town's officers and the town of North Miami "be and they each are hereby ousted, excluded and prohibited from exercising the offices, franchises and privileges of a municipality and of the Mayor or Councilmen, Tax Collector, Clerk and Town Marshal thereof, under the purported license or incorporation and Charter of the town of North Miami over or upon the following described lands (describing the east side of the Bay). It is further ordered and adjudged that the lands above described, which constitute all that portion of the purported town east of Bay Biscayne and between said Bay Biscayne and the Atlantic Ocean, are not and never were legally incorporated in said town * * * and that their attempted inclusion therein was illegal, null and void and without warrant or authority of law."

This judgment did not purport to nullify the municipality or oust its officers wholly, but only as to the part of the town east of the Bay. The municipality west of the Bay has continued to function ever since, and has repeatedly been recognized by the legislature and the courts as an existing municipality. A careful reading of the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in Ocean Beach Heights v. Brown-Crummer Co., 302 U.S. 614, 58 S.Ct. 385, 82 L.Ed. 478, discloses that no more was there adjudged than that the east side property was never lawfully included in the town and could not be taxed by it. We carefully considered the status of the municipality in Horigan v. Heyward, 5 Cir., 98 F.2d 433, 434, and said: "We understand by...