DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

FOURTH DISTRICT

CSC SERVICEWORKS, INC., a Delaware corporation,

Appellant,

v.

BOCA BAYOU CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION, INC., a Florida 

corporation and COMMERCIAL LAUNDRIES, INC., a Florida 

corporation,

Appellees.

No. 4D17-0974

[March 7, 2018]

Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, Palm 

Beach County; David E. French, Judge; L.T. Case No. 

502016CA011456XXXXMBAJ.

Monica Tirado of Reiner & Reiner, P.A., Miami, for appellant.

Lilliana M. Farinas-Sabogal and Howard Perl of Becker & Poliakoff, 

P.A., Coral Gables, for appellee Boca Bayou Condominium Association, 

Inc., a Florida corporation.

Rodney W. Bryson II, West Palm Beach, for appellee Commercial 

Laundries, Inc., a Florida corporation.

DAMOORGIAN, J.

Appellant, CSC Serviceworks, Inc., appeals a final judgment entered in 

favor of Boca Bayou Condominium Association, Inc. (“the Association”) 

and Commercial Laundries, Inc. (“Commercial”) (collectively “the 

Defendants”) in its unlawful detainer lawsuit. For the reasons discussed 

below, we affirm the final judgment.

By way of background, Appellant, a self-service laundry equipment

provider, entered into a seven year written laundry space lease (“the 

Lease”) with the Association in September of 2000. The Lease provided 

that Appellant would furnish and install commercial washers and dryers 

in each of the Association’s twenty-six laundry rooms. The Lease also 

included a right of first refusal clause which survived for one year after the 
2

expiration of the Lease. Prior to the expiration of the initial Lease, the 

parties elected to extend the Lease for an additional seven years. When 

the extended written Lease expired in October of 2014, Appellant 

continued to occupy the laundry rooms and pay the Association rent on a 

month-to-month basis. This arrangement continued for nearly two years 

before the Association began receiving various complaints from the 

residents.

In 2016, the Association began to solicit bids for the lease of the laundry 

rooms. Appellant actively participated in the bidding process; however,

the Association ultimately selected Commercial as its new laundry service 

provider. On August 16, 2016, the Association sent Appellant a letter 

canceling the Lease and asking when it could expect Appellant to remove 

its machines. Shortly thereafter, on August 25, 2016, Commercial also 

contacted Appellant and inquired as to when the machines would be 

removed. Appellant’s representative responded that she would “schedule 

something.” The following day, Commercial emailed the same 

representative advising that its machines would be arriving on September 

21, 2016 and asking that Appellant remove its machines by September 27, 

2016. Appellant’s representative did not respond to the email. On August 

31, 2016, Commercial again contacted Appellant’s representative to 

schedule a definite removal date. The representative responded that she 

would contact an installation technician about scheduling something and 

would follow-up after she made some progress. Appellant’s representative 

never followed-up as promised.

During a September 19, 2016 meeting with the Association and 

Commercial, Appellant’s representative informed the parties that 

Appellant intended to enforce its right of first refusal. That same day, the 

Association’s attorney emailed Appellant advising that the right of refusal 

had been rejected. When Commercial arrived to install its machines as 

scheduled on September 27, 2016, Appellant’s machines were still 

connected to the laundry rooms’ water and electric hook-ups. With the 

Association’s approval, Commercial disconnected each one of Appellant’s 

machines and moved them aside. At no point in time were Appellant’s 

machines removed from the laundry rooms and none of the machines were 

damaged. Appellant was never denied access to the unlocked laundry 

rooms nor to its machines. On October 3, 2016, the Association sent 

Appellant a pre-suit demand letter advising that if Appellant did not 

remove its machines from the laundry rooms within fifteen days, the 

Association would commence a tenant eviction action. Appellant complied 

and removed its machines before any formal eviction proceeding was 

commenced.
3

Appellant thereafter sued the Defendants, alleging causes of actions for 

breach of the lease agreement, tortious interference, conversion, and 

unlawful detainer.1 After Appellant successfully moved to sever its claims 

and try the unlawful detainer claim separately, the matter proceeded to a 

jury trial. At the close of evidence, Appellant moved for a directed verdict, 

arguing that by disconnecting its machines without legal process or 

Appellant’s knowledge and consent, the Defendants undisputedly ousted 

Appellant of possession of the laundry rooms. The court denied the motion 

and the jury ultimately rendered a verdict in favor of the Defendants. This 

appeal follows.

Appellant argues that the court erred in denying its motion for directed 

verdict because the undisputed evidence at trial established that while 

Appellant was in possession of the laundry rooms, the Defendants

disconnected its machines and, for all intents and purposes, retook 

possession of the laundry rooms without legal process. For much of the 

same reason, Appellant also argues that the jury’s verdict is not supported 

by competent substantial evidence. The Defendants counter that the court 

correctly denied the motion because Appellant’s machines were never 

physically removed from the laundry rooms and the act of “disconnecting” 

is not equivalent to “dispossessing.” We agree with the Defendants.

Section 82.02, Florida Statutes, provides that “[n]o person who enters 

without consent in a peaceable, easy and open manner into any lands or 

tenements shall hold them afterwards against the consent of the party 

entitled to possession.” § 82.02(1), Fla. Stat. (2017).

The entry and detainer action is designed to compel the party 

out of actual possession, whether the real owner and as such 

entitled to the Ultimate right of possession, or not, to respect 

the actual Present possession of another, wrongful though it 

might be, by requiring him, in order to obtain the possession 

he claims to be his, to resort to legal channels, such as a suit 

for ejectment, or trespass to try title, or removal of tennant 

proceedings under Sec. 83.20 et seq.

Floro v. Parker, 205 So. 2d 363, 367 (Fla. 2d DCA 1967) (citations omitted). 

The salient questions in an unlawful detainer action, therefore, are 

whether: (1) plaintiff was in peaceful possession of the property; (2) plaintiff 

was ousted of actual possession of the property; and (3) defendant 

withheld possession of the property from plaintiff without consent or legal 

process. See id.

 

1 Only the unlawful detainer action is before this Court.
4

We hold that the Defendants’ act of disconnecting the machines and 

moving them to the other side of the laundry rooms did not have the effect 

of ousting Appellant of its possession of the laundry rooms as 

contemplated under the unlawful detainer statute. Any connection rights 

that Appellant may have had were related to its leasehold interest which, 

as acknowledged by Appellant, was not at issue in the unlawful detainer 

action. See § 82.05, Fla. Stat. (2017) (providing that “[n]o question of title, 

but only right of possession and damages, is involved in the action” of 

unlawful detainer); Se. Fid. Ins. Co. v. Berman, 231 So. 2d 249, 251 (Fla. 

3d DCA 1970) (reiterating that “[t]he gist of an action for unlawful detainer

is the unlawful withholding of possession by the defendant,” and holding 

that an unlawful detainer action “is not the proper remedy where it is 

obvious to the trial judge that plaintiff is substantially seeking an 

adjudication of title”).

Appellant nonetheless maintains that the holding in R. Bodden Coin-Op 

Laundry, Inc. v. Brandychase Condominium Ass’n, 557 So. 2d 663 (Fla. 2d 

DCA 1990), which involved a dispute between a laundry service provider 

and a condo association regarding the possession of laundry rooms, 

supports reversal in this case. We disagree. Unlike in the instant case, 

Bodden involved a situation where an association removed the plaintiff’s

machines from the laundry rooms, transported them to a warehouse, and 

refused to release the machines to the plaintiff for a period of time. Id. at 

664. The holding in Bodden, therefore, is not applicable to the facts in 

this case as Appellant’s machines were not removed from the laundry 

rooms.

Our holding is further supported by the historical context within which 

the unlawful detainer action originated. As explained by the court in Floro, 

the unlawful detainer action has its origins in an English criminal statute:

which denounced as a crime the practice of subverting actual 

possession by the employment of force, even though the 

possession of the one forcibly displaced was itself wrongful. 

The reason for the original statute, as well as the later English 

statutes, was to prevent breaches of the peace which arose 

when one person would enter upon the land of another and, 

frequently by sheer physical power, oust the other from 

peaceful, albeit wrongful, possession.

205 So. 2d at 366. In other words, unlawful detainer actions are, and have 

always been, about actual physical dispossession of real property, not 

constructive or useful dispossession.
5

Accordingly, we hold that the trial court correctly denied the motion for 

directed verdict because the evidence did not support the plaintiff’s claim 

for unlawful detainer.

Affirmed.

WARNER and MAY, JJ., concur.

* * *

Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.