Texas Co. v. Town of Miami Springs
| Decision Date | 03 March 1950 |
| Parties | TEXAS CO. v. TOWN OF MIAMI SPRINGS. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Herbert S. Sawyer, O. B. Simmons, Jr., and Evans, Mershon, Sawyer, Johnston & Simmons, Miami, for appellant.
Thomas H. Anderson, Miami, for appellee.
It seems important at the outset to give a chronology of the pleadings and orders in this case.
The appellant, plaintiff in the euqity court, brought suit for a declaratory decree and injunction, representing that it had acquired two lots by warranty deeds in the latter part of 1945 and the early part of 1946 for the lone purpose of erecting on them gasoline service stations. During negotiations for the purchase of the property it was ascertained from appellee that there was no existing ordinance prohibiting construction or operation of such stations at the particular locations, and before the deeds to the tracts were delivered, appellant submitted to appellee plans and specifications for the proposed buildings and received permits to construct them.
Possessed of this information and the permits, appellant consummated the deals for the purchase of the property. It was not possible immediately to construct the buildings, however, for the sole reason that permission could not be obtained from the Civilian Production Administration of the United States Government. Because of this obstacle and the resultant delay, the appellant applied to the appellee for renewals of the two permits, and these were granted in September, 1946.
Despite the commitments on behalf of the appellee, the town council the following month, October, 1946, passed an ordinance that no gasoline filling station should be erected within 850 feet of another station. The ordinance was declared to be an 'emergency measure,' and inasmuch as a station was already in existence within 850 feet of each of the sites owned by the appellant it would, if enforced, prevent fulfilment of the appellant's plan.
Upon petition for a temporary restraining order, the chancellor found that the buildings could not then be erected because of lack of permission from the Civilian Production Administration, and he observed in his order that the renewals would expire within a few months; so he denied the petition without prejudice to present it again when this authority had been granted, and he also 'extended' the renewals.
About four months afterward an amended bill apprised the court that the restrictions were no longer imposable by the Civiliam Production Administration and there was no obstacle, therefore, to building the stations except, of course, the ordinance, and the appellant renewed its prayer that enforcement of the ordinance be enjoined.
The temporary injunction was entered 19 July 1947.
Nearly a year went by before the appellee filed its its answer, and motion to dismiss, containing the ground that the bill as amended was devoid of equity, and another seven months passed before the bill was dismissed and the injunction dissolved. Then the court allowed the filing of an amended bill, containing the principal allegations, besides those already appearing in the original bill and in the first amendment, that in reliance on the information and permits obtained from the city, the appellant had expended the sum of $12,500 in the purchase of the property and, inasmuch as no answer had been filed for fifteen months after the filing of the original bill and eleven months after the injunction was entered, it had completed the construction of the filling stations at great cost. The appellee moved to dismiss this bill, too,...
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