Wise v. City of Lauderhill
| Decision Date | 13 July 2016 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 15-60686-CIV-GAYLES |
| Parties | ROSE WISE, Plaintiff, v. CITY OF LAUDERHILL, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida |
THIS CAUSE comes before the Court on Defendant City of Lauderhill's (the "City") Motion for Summary Judgment [ECF No. 38], and Plaintiff Rose Wise's Motion to Remand, which is contained within her opposition to the City's motion for summary judgment [ECF No. 43]. In this action, the Plaintiff brings claims for trespass and inverse condemnation relating to alleged unlawful uses of her property and destruction of a house she owns by the City. The Court has carefully considered the briefs, the record, and the applicable law. For the reasons that follow, the Plaintiff's motion to remand shall be denied and the City's motion for summary judgment shall be granted.
Plaintiff Rose Wise is the owner of a parcel of real property located at 8080 Northwest 44th Court in the City of Lauderhill, Florida (the "Property"), which itself is a subdivision of Broward County (the "County"). In 1997, Wise had a fire in a house on the Property, which she did not completely repair until six years later. In 2004, the house was damaged by a second fire. Wise made and collected on an insurance claim, which paid an amount sufficient to make repairs. In December 2004, Wise obtained a demolition permit from the City. She then began tearing down and removing the damaged portions of the house. Between February and May 2005, the City conducted several inspections, before declaring the house an "unsafe structure" in May 2005. The matter was then referred to the Broward County Unsafe Structures Board (the "Board").1
On July 5, 2005, the Board issued a Notice of Violation for Unsafe Structures, which indicated that the house met the criteria for demolition under the governing provision of the Florida Building Code. On July 18, 2005, the matter went before the Board for a public hearing. The Board found that, pursuant to Florida Building Code § 111.2.2.1, "the cost of completion, alteration, repair and/or replacement of [the] unsafe structure exceed[ed] 50% of its value," and thus "such building shall be demolished and removed from the premise." Def.'s Mot. Ex. A. The Board issued an order stating that Wise had Id.
On August 15, 2005, Wise attempted to renew her permit with the City, but the City denied the permit, stating that her most recent permit had expired over 5 months prior, and denied Wise's request to reconsider that denial. On that same day, the Board held a second public hearing regarding the Property. On September 2, 2005, it issued a second order. It made the same findings as it did in the July 18 order and ordered that Wise had thirty days to renew her demolition permit; if she failed to do so, Broward County would issue a demolition order and proceed with the demolition.2 Wise appealed the Demolition Orders on October 3, 2005, but abandoned the appeal. Def.'sStatement of Undisputed Material Facts ¶ B.3 Wise never renewed her permit as ordered by the Board, so the City demolished the house on January 7, 2006.4
Prior to the demolition, while the house was still considered an unsafe structure, Wise alleges that she received a call from a neighbor who informed her that the City was conducting SWAT training on the Property. She also alleges that, during this same time, the City had "plans to construct a street wall" along 44th Street, which "would have encroached on [her] property." Am. Compl. ¶ 21.
Wise filed an action in the Circuit Court of the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in and for Broward County, Florida, on March 12, 2007. She alleged that the City violated her state procedural due process rights by wrongfully demolishing her home. Notably, the parties have provided very little statements or evidence regarding what, if anything, transpired in the litigation over the previous eight years before Wise filed an Amended Complaint on March 23, 2015. In it, she alleged for the first time that the City violated her federal substantive due process rights. She also asserted a claim against the City for trespass, alleging that the City trespassed on her Propertywhen it allowed the SWAT team to use the Property as a training ground and when it entered onto the Property to demolish the house. And she asserted an inverse condemnation claim against the City, arising from the demolition.
The City removed the case to this Court on April 3, 2015. On October 8, the Court granted the City's motion to dismiss Wise's substantive due process claim, and denied the motion as to the trespass and inverse condemnation claims. After the close of discovery, the City filed the instant motion for summary judgment on May 19, 2016. Within her opposition to that motion, Wise moved to remand this case to state court.
At the outset, the Court addresses Wise's motion to remand. She seeks remand pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3), arguing that the only claim over which this Court had original jurisdiction (the federal substantive due process claim) has been dismissed, leaving only state claims that should be adjudicated in the first instance by the state court.
"The doctrine of supplemental jurisdiction . . . permits 'federal courts to decide certain state-law claims involved in cases raising federal questions' when doing so would promote judicial economy and procedural convenience." Ameritox, Ltd. v. Millennium Labs., Inc., 803 F.3d 518, 530 (11th Cir. 2015) (quoting Carnegie-Mellon Univ. v. Cohill, 484 U.S. 343, 348-49 (1988)). This doctrine, codified at 28 U.S.C. § 1367, "grants federal courts the power to exercise jurisdiction over claims 'that are so related to claims in the action within such original jurisdiction that they form part of the same case or controversy under Article III of the United States Constitution.'" Id. at 531 (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a)). While Section 1367 "mandates that district courts—at least initially—exercise jurisdiction over those supplemental claims that satisfy the case or controversy requirement," id., district courts have the authority to dismiss state law claims if, inter alia, "the district court has dismissed all claims over which it has original jurisdiction," 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c)(3).The U.S. Supreme Court has stated that "if the federal claims are dismissed before trial, . . . the state claims should be dismissed as well," United Mine Workers of Am. v. Gibbs, 383 U.S. 715, 726 (1966), but this rule is not mandatory: "The statement simply recognizes that in the usual case in which all federal-law claims are eliminated before trial, the balance of factors to be considered under the pendant jurisdiction doctrine—judicial economy, convenience, fairness, and comity—will point toward declining to exercise jurisdiction over the remaining state-law claims," Cohill, 484 U.S. at 350.
Wise contends that the case should be remanded because "[t]his case has progressed little since its commencement almost one year prior." Pl.'s Opp'n at 9. But this contention is, at least, misguided and, at most, disingenuous. This case has been proceeding before this Court for more than a year. The Court has ruled on a substantive motion to dismiss, the parties have undergone the entirety of the discovery period, interrogatories have been exchanged, the plaintiff's deposition has been taken, and trial is set to begin in approximately two months. This alone militates against remand. Compare Casey v. City of Miami Beach, 805 F. Supp. 2d 1361, 1362 (S.D. Fla. 2011) (), with Clarke v. Two Is. Dev. Corp., No. 15-21954, 2016 WL 659580, at *3 (S.D. Fla. Feb. 18, 2016) (). What's more, the claims in this action have been unchanged since October 8, 2015, when the Court dismissed Wise's sole federal claim; from that point forward, all that remained were the state law trespass and condemnation claims. Yet Wise has provided no explanation as to why she has chosen her opposition to the City's motion for summary judgment to move for remand, rather than at any other point over the previous eight months.
The Court has considered the relevant factors and finds that they weigh heavily against remand. Most critically, remanding the case at this time would be extraordinarily unfair to the City. This case has been pending, in some form or another (and in some forum or another), for nearly a decade. Requiring the City, this close to trial, to restart the litigation yet again would be tantamount to penalizing it for Wise's failure to request remand sooner. The Court will not permit this and shall, therefore, retain jurisdiction over this action. Accordingly, Wise's motion to remand is denied.
Summary judgment, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(a), "is appropriate only if the movant shows that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Tolan v. Cotton, 572 U.S. —, 134 S. Ct. 1861, 1866 (2014) (per curiam) (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a)) (internal quotation marks omitted). "By its very terms, this standard provides that the mere existence of some alleged factual dispute between the parties will not defeat an otherwise properly supported motion for summary judgment; the requirement is that there be no genuine issue of material fact." Anderson v. Liberty...
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