Edward G. Guedes, Susan L. Trevarthen and Jamie A. Cole teamed together to prepare and file an amicus curiae brief on behalf of the Florida League of Cities at the Florida Supreme Court. The case pending before the Supreme Court – City of Palm Bay v. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. – is one of the most important municipal law cases to come before the Court in the last decade.
The case presents the certified question of whether a municipality has the home rule authority to enact an ordinance that gives priority to its code enforcement liens over earlier recorded mortgages. In today’s economic climate where municipalities are forced to deal with and correct code violations at abandoned or about-to-be-foreclosed properties, municipalities often represent the last bastion against deterioration of neighborhoods from neglect. They have little incentive to do so, however, if there’s no chance of their recovering fines or the costs of abatement of the code violations.
The trial court and the Fifth District Court of Appeal concluded that the City of Palm Bay lacked the authority to confer super-priority on its code enforcement liens because such an ordinance would conflict with section 695.11, Florida Statutes, which states that instruments recorded earlier in time have priority over those recorded later. The Weiss Serota team has argued that the Fifth District’s decision should be reversed on, among other grounds, that municipal home rule authority is broad enough to modify the common law principle of “first in time, first in right,” which the Fifth District believed was codified in section 695.11.
You can read a copy of the Amicus Curiae Brief here.
Author(s): Edward G. Guedes
