South Cutler Bay, Inc. v. Metropolitan Dade County, Fla.

• Decision Date: 27 October 1972
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 72-1668.
• Parties: SOUTH CUTLER BAY, INC., a Florida corporation, Plaintiff, v. METROPOLITAN DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA, a political division of the State of Florida, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida

349 F. Supp. 1205

SOUTH CUTLER BAY, INC., a Florida corporation, Plaintiff, v. METROPOLITAN DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA, a political division of the State of Florida, et al., Defendants.

Civ. No. 72-1668.

United States District Court, S. D. Florida, Miami Division.

October 27, 1972.

Neil Flaxman, Miami, Fla., for plaintiff.

Stuart Simon, Dade County Atty., Robert L. Krawcheck, Asst. County Atty., Miami, Fla., for defendants.

ORDER DENYING APPLICATION FOR TEMPORARY INJUNCTION

JAMES LAWRENCE KING, District Judge.

The plaintiff, South Cutler Bay, Inc., a Florida corporation, owns approximately 80 acres of land in Dade County, Florida. On May 4, 1972, pursuant to the authority of Ordinance No. 72-18¹ of Metropolitan Dade County, the County Manager, R. Ray Goode, ordered a Building Moratorium on the plaintiff's property. The Moratorium was limited to the property of the plaintiff only.

On June 20, 1972, the Metropolitan Dade County Commissioners passed a Resolution continuing the moratorium for 120 days and directed the County Manager to investigate the possibility of a roll-back rezoning of the property. On the date of the scheduled expiration of the building moratorium, October 18, 1972, the County Commissioners ordered the County Manager to take steps to submit a proposal for rezoning of the plaintiff's property to the Zoning Appeals Board of Dade County, Florida.

The plaintiff instituted these proceedings on October 19, 1972, contending that its civil rights had been violated. The plaintiff alleges that in reliance upon the current zoning pertaining to the 80 acre parcel in effect at the time the plaintiff acquired the property, it entered into a $5,500,000.00 land acquisition and development loan contract as well as certain agreements and contracts with attorneys, architects, engineers and others. The interest on the loan is approximately $20,000.00 per month and the professional fees, which the plaintiff has agreed to pay, subject the plaintiff to an additional $15,000.00 per month in expenditures. It is alleged that the actions of the County Commission and the County Manager of Dade County have placed into serious jeopardy the $5,500,000.00 land acquisition and development loan in that the lender is threatening revocation of its loan commitment.

The jurisdictional issues and the application for temporary restraining order were heard in an emergency hearing October 20, 1972. Briefs supplied by the parties on October 24, 1972, expanded on the jurisdictional issues. Plaintiff asserts that this Court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1343(3) and (4) to hear the merits of his claims under 42 U.S.C. §§ 1983, 1985(3) and the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution.

The first issue raised by the parties is whether the Civil Rights Act permits federal relief where a property right rather than a personal right is at stake. A long line of cases since 1939 have echoed Chief Justice Stone's opinion that the Civil Rights Act protects only those rights "inherently incapable of pecuniary valuation." Hague v. CIO, 307 U.S. 496, 530, 59 S.Ct. 954, 83 L.Ed. 1423 (1939) (Stone, C. J., concurring). Plaintiff argues that the property rights asserted here are just as much civil rights as a man's right to free speech or association, and deserve the same federal protection under the Civil Rights Act. We wholeheartedly agree.

The rights to life, liberty and property, as well as those to free speech, a free press, and freedom of worship and assembly, were established as fundamental legal principles by the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. No one of them is more important than any other, and all must be cherished and protected as the foundation upon which our nation was conceived and built. To relegate any of these basic rights to a status inferior to that of another could only undermine the Constitution and lay waste to 200 years of increasingly secure democracy.

As each of these rights should be accorded equal status, so must all be applied equally to every economic and social group: to rich and poor, black and white, young and old, moderate and extremist, law-abiding and mischievous —in short, to all Americans.

Our courts have worked tirelessly to protect the meek and the outspoken in their quest for equality under the law. These efforts, however, must not be misunderstood by the general public to imply that only certain groups have civil rights. By protecting the rights of some, we safeguard the foundations of the liberties essential to all.

The public must recognize that although all Americans have equal civil rights, not everyone finds his rights equally in need of protection. A welfare recipient will not ordinarily need federal relief from discriminatory zoning laws affecting his home. Likewise, a middle American will not normally be discriminated against in employment, housing or public accommodations. Nor will the political moderate be likely to find himself arrested without due process for participating in a lawful demonstration. But should the tables ever turn, each will have protected the civil rights of the other.

This Circuit has been in the forefront of those honoring the proposition that civil rights are not just for the meek or the outspoken. The Fifth Circuit has ruled that District Courts have jurisdiction under the Civil Rights Act to protect, from the discriminatory application of state and local laws, a land owner whose land had been seized and was to be sold by the state, McGuire v. Sadler, 337 F.2d 902 (1961), a woman whose application for a retail liquor store operators license had been denied for no reason, Hornsby v. Allen, 326 F.2d 605 (1964), an owner of a garbage business about to lose his franchise, Mansell v. Saunders, 372 F.2d 573 (1967), and an apartment tenant who came home one night to find that her property was seized by her landlord without due process, Hall v. Garson, 430 F.2d 430 (1970). Significantly, the Fifth Circuit has expressly refused to adopt the personal rights-proprietary rights distinction. Compare Bussie v. Long, 383 F.2d 766 (1967) with Atlanta Bowling Center, Inc., v. Allen, 389 F.2d 713, 715 n. 9 (1968).

The Fifth Circuit's view was vindicated late last term when the Supreme Court explicitly rejected the distinction limiting Civil Rights Act protection to personal rights, declaring:

"Property does not have rights. People have rights. The right to enjoy property without unlawful deprivation, no less than the right to speak or the right to travel, is, in truth, a `personal' right, whether the `property' in question be a welfare check, a home or a savings account. In fact, a fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. Neither could have meaning without the other. That rights in property are basic civil rights has long been recognized. . . . Congress recognized these rights in 1871 when it enacted the predecessor of §§ 1983 and 1343(3). We do no more than reaffirm the judgment of Congress today." Lynch v. Household Finance Corp., 405 U.S. 538, 552, 92 S.Ct. 1113, 1122, 31 L.Ed.2d 424 (1972) (citations omitted).

Consequently, it is clear that far from preventing this Court from hearing an action involving property rights, the Civil Rights Act invests us with jurisdiction under § 1343(3) and (4) to hear § 1983 and § 1985(3) claims.

But defendants object that plaintiff, a corporation, is not a "person" entitled to seek relief under either § 1343(3) or § 1983. If the question was once in doubt, the weight of modern authority favors the view that corporations may bring suit under these sections. McCoy v. Providence Journal Co., 190 F.2d 760 (1st Cir.) cert. denied 342 U.S. 894, 72 S.Ct. 200, 96 L.Ed. 669 (1951); Adams v. Park Ridge, 293 F.2d 585 (7th Cir. 1961); cf. Park View Heights Corp. v. City of Black Jack, 467 F.2d 1208 (8th Cir. 1972). Contra, Erlich v. Glasner, 274 F.Supp. 11 (D.C. Cal.), affirmed 418 F.2d 226 (9th Cir. 1967). Moreover, the logic of Lynch v. Household Finance Corp. compels this conclusion. Compare 405 U.S. 538, 92 S.Ct. 1113, 31 L.Ed.2d 424 with Hague v. CIO, 307 U.S. 496, 59 S.Ct. 954, 83 L. Ed. 1423 (1939).

Defendants next contend that even if the Civil Rights Act permits us to take jurisdiction over cases of this sort, we may not take jurisdiction here because there is no "case or controversy," a prerequisite to judicial action under Article III of the Constitution. They argue that because the rezoning process under the ordinance challenged here has not yet been completed, it is still possible that the rezoning may never take place, in which case the constitutional issues raised by plaintiff would never materialize. But defendants mistake the thrust of plaintiff's complaint. The injury alleged results not from the rezoning, but from the county's freeze on building permits, allegedly the result of unconstitutional procedures authorized by the ordinance. Thus, we conclude that the controversy before us is a "real and substantial" one "admitting of specific relief" and is far from presenting a mere "hypothetical" state of facts. Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Haworth, 300 U.S. 227, 57 S.Ct. 461, 81 L.Ed. 617 (1931). Neither Coastal Petroleum Co. v. Collins, 234 F.2d 319 (5th Cir. 1956), nor Manila Investment Co. v. Trammell, 239 U.S. 31, 32, 36 S.Ct. 12, 60 L.Ed. 129 (1915), is to the contrary: no contractual relationship exists between plaintiff and defendants here.

Defendants proceed to argue that the Court may not take jurisdiction because plaintiff has not exhausted his state administrative and judicial remedies. But the general rule is well settled that exhaustion is not required in civil rights cases. McNeese v. Board of Educ., 373 U.S. 668, 83 S.Ct. 1433, 10 L. Ed.2d 622 (1963); Monroe v. Pape, 365 U.S. 167, 81 S.Ct. 473, 5 L.Ed.2d 492 (1961); Moreno v. Henckel, 431 F.2d 1299 (5th Cir. 1970); Gilmore v. James, 274 F.Supp. 75 (D.Tex.1968), affir...