Case Name: John W. CORN, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee
Court: Florida Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: Florida
Decision Date: 1976-03-19
Citations: 332 So. 2d 4
Docket Number: No. 46922
Parties: John W. CORN, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
Judges: OVERTON, C. J., and ADKINS and SUNDBERG, JJ.; and SHOLTS, Circuit Court Judge, concur.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 332
Pages: 4–12

Head Matter:
John W. CORN, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee.
No. 46922.
Supreme Court of Florida.
March 19, 1976.
Rehearing Denied June 4, 1976.
Herman W. Goldner of Goldner, Marger & Davis, St. Petersburg, for appellant.
Robert L. Shevin, Atty. Gen., and Richard G. Pippinger, Asst. Atty. Gen., for ap-pellee.

Opinion:
ROBERTS, Justice.
This cause is before us to review the decision of the County Court in and for Pi-nellas County which upholds the constitutionality of Section 821.01, Florida Statutes. We have jurisdiction pursuant to Article V, Section 3(b)(1), Constitution of Florida.
Appellant was informed against for violation of Section 821.01, Florida Statutes, providing:
"Trespass after warning. — Whoever willfully:
(1) Enters into the enclosed land and premises of another or into any private residence, house, or building of another, having been forbidden so to enter by the lawful occupant;
(2) Not having previously been forbidden, is warned to depart therefrom and refuses to do so;
(3) Having departed, reenters without the previous consent of the lawful occupant; or
(4) Having departed, remains about in the vicinity, using profane or indecent language shall upon conviction be punished as provided in § 821.38."
in that on September 13, 1974, he willfully entered onto the premises of The Gateway Mall, after having previously been forbidden to enter and after having been warned to depart. He pled nolo contendere and the trial court adjudicated him guilty of violating Section 821.01(3), Florida Statutes, and fined him $100.00 plus $27.00 court costs. In his order, the trial court determined that Section 821.01, Florida Statutes, is constitutional, that the State of Florida has established a prima facie case, and ordered that since the defendant has challenged the constitutionality of Section 821.-01, Florida Statutes, the question of constitutionality is preserved for defendant's appeal.
The record before us clearly supports the trial judge's conclusion that the State has made a prima facie case for violation of Section 821.01, Florida Statutes, by the defendant. His activity is clearly within the purview of that conduct sought to be prohibited by the statute. He carried on in the Mall in a boisterous manner and after having been asked to leave and having been instructed that if he returned he would be prosecuted for trespassing, he did shortly thereafter return and told the officers to go ahead and arrest him because he was trespassing. His attack on the constitutionality of the statute is limited to an argument of unconstitutionality on the sole basis of violation of his right to equal protection under the law. However, in the same argument, he concedes that he was not discriminated against by being asked to leave the Mall or by subsequently being arrested for trespass, because of race, color, religion or national origin or on the basis of any arbitrary classification. In fact, he does not show how his right to equal protection is violated by the statute. The act in question does not apply arbitrarily and discriminatorily to appellant. Lasky v. State Farm Insurance Company, 296 So.2d 9 (Fla. 1974); Erwin v. State, 262 So.2d 677 (Fla. 1972); Jackson v. Consolidated Government of City of Jacksonville, 225 So.2d 497 (Fla. 1969); McKee v. State, 203 So.2d 321 (Fla. 1967); Finlayson v. Conner, 167 So.2d 569 (Fla. 1964); Insurance Co. of Texas v. Rainey, 86 So.2d 447 (Fla. 1956); and DiLustro v. Penton, 106 Fla. 198, 142 So. 898 (1932). He contends that the questioned statute appropriately applies to family residences and other buildings where the public is not invited but should not apply to public or quasi-public places because to the extent that a property owner, for his own financial advantage, opens his premises to the public, the more his ownership rights become limited, and urges that a strict construction of the statute and application of ejusdem ge-neris require that the Mall not be included within the meaning of the statutory language.
Review of his brief reveals no convincing argument on his behalf that his freedom of speech rights were violated. In Adderley v. Florida, 385 U.S. 39, 87 S.Ct. 242, 17 L.Ed.2d 149 (1966), the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the constitutionality of another portion of our trespass statute, Section 821.18, Florida Statutes (1968), and expressly stated:
"The State, no less than a private owner of property, has power to preserve the property under its control for the use to which it is lawfully dedicated. For this reason there is no merit to the petitioners' argument that they had a constitutional right to stay on the property, over the jail custodian's objections, because this 'area chosen for the peaceful civil rights demonstration was not only "reasonable" but also particularly appropriate . . . .' Such an argument has as its major unarticulated premise the assumption that people who want to propagandize protests or views have a constitutional right to do so whenever and however and wherever they please. That concept of constitutional law was vigorously and forthrightly rejected in two of the cases petitioners rely on, Cox v. Louisiana, supra, [379 U.S. 536] at 554-555 [85 S.Ct. 453, at 464 and 480, 13 L.Ed.2d 471] and [379 U.S.] 563-564 [85 S.Ct. 476, 13 L.Ed.2d 487]. We reject it again. The United States Constitution does not forbid a State to control the use of its own property for its own lawful nondiscriminatory purpose."
All natural persons have the inalienable right to acquire, possess, and protect their property. Article I, Section 2, Constitution of Florida. It has long been recognized that the rights in property are basic civil rights. Lynch et al. v. Household Finance Corp., 405 U.S. 538, 92 S.Ct. 1113, 31 L.Ed.2d 424 (1972). The original of private property is founded in nature. 1 Blackstone 138. In Wilkinson v. Leland et al., 27 U.S. 627 at 657, 7 L.Ed. 542 (1828), the Supreme Court of the United States emphasized the importance of the right to private property as basic to the foundation of our democratic system of government in the following language:
"The fundamental maxims of a free government seem to require, that the rights of personal liberty and private property should be held sacred."
Cf. State v. City of Stuart, 97 Fla. 69, 120 So. 335 at 346-347 (1929). The right of property has been characterized as a sacred right, the protection of which is an important object of government. 16 Am. Jur.2d, Constitutional Law Section. Relative to the significance of this right, the Supreme Court of Texas in Spann v. City of Dallas, 111 Tex. 350, 235 S.W. 513 at 515 (1921), explicated:
"To secure their property was one of the great ends for which men entered into society. The right to acquire and own property, and to deal with it and use it as the owner chooses, so long as the use harms nobody, is a natural right. It does not owe its origin to constitutions. It existed before them. It is a part of the citizen's natural liberty — an expression of his freedom, guaranteed as inviolate by every American Bill of Rights.
"It is not a right, therefore, over which the police power is paramount. Like every other fundamental liberty, it is a right to which the police power is subordinate.
"It is a right which takes into account the equal rights of others, for it is qualified by the obligation that the use of the property shall not be to the prejudice of others. But if subject alone to that qualification the citizen is not free to use his lands and his goods as he chooses, it is difficult to perceive yuherein his right of property has any existence.
"The ancient and established maxims of Anglo-Saxon law which protects these fundamental rights in the use, enjoyment and disposal of private property, are but the outgrowth of the long and arduous experience of mankind. They embody a painful, tragic history — the record of the struggle against tyranny, the overseer-ship of prefects and the overlordship of kings and nobles, when nothing so well bespoke the serfdom of the subject as his incapability to own property. They proclaim the freedom of men from those odious despotisms, their liberty to earn and possess their own, to deal with it, to use it and dispose of it, not at the behest of a master, but in the manner that befits free men.
"Laws are seldom wiser than the experience of mankind. These great maxims, which are but the reflection of that experience, may be better trusted to safeguard the interests of mankind than experimental doctrines whose inevitable end will be the subversion of all private right." (emphasis supplied)
Cf. Miller v. McKenna, 23 Cal.2d 774, 147 P.2d 531 (1944).
John Adams said in "A Defence of the Constitutions," Coker, Democracy, Liberty and Property, at 125-6, that property is surely a right of mankind as truly as liberty. As a new country, we could have selected any form of government — socialism, communism, fascism or any other ism, but our leadership, with divine guidance, selected for this fledgling nation a system of free enterprise with a profit incentive, believing as they did and as we do now that a nation is stronger when its citizens are guaranteed the right to earn decent wages, acquire, possess and protect property, risk capital, and venture for additional profits.
Here we have a situation of property privately owned but utilized for monetary gain and hence opened to the 'public, property "quasi-public" in the nature of its use. In a sense an invitation is extended to the public to shop in the Mall to the financial advantage of the owners of the stores contained therein and consequently to the advantage of the Mall owner. The lobby of a commercial mall is a privately owned building to which the public has been invited to come, to look and to buy. The invitation presupposes that the conduct of persons coming there will be in keeping with such purposes. However, reasonable nondiscriminatory restrictions pertaining to the use of the Mall may be placed on the users of such Mall, such as the requirement that shoes be worn. As any invitation, it can be limited and, upon abuse, be withdrawn or revoked. This can be analogized to the lobby of a hotel where people come to rent rooms, buy food, and trade with shops located in the hotel. There would be nothing unreasonable about providing that swimming attire would not be permitted in the lobby; or, in a fine restaurant, the owner would have a right to require shirts, ties and jackets, so long as the regulation applied uniformly to all persons. Reasonably incident to the control and ownership of the Mall, a screaming, yelling, boisterous person could be asked to leave the premises. The trespass statute in question could certainly cover such a situation as this where one is causing such a disturbance in the Mall lobby as to warrant his being asked to leave and asked not to re-enter until the following day. It would certainly be to the financial detriment of all the store owners in the Mall to have someone causing a disturbance in the Mall lobby to the extent that it might keep would be customers from going into the Mall lobby if those causing disturbances therein could not be asked to leave. Once again, we must emphasize that no argument has been made by appellant that his freedom of speech right has been violated. Amalgamated Food Employees Union Local 590 v. Logan Valley Plaza, Inc., 391 U.S. 308, 88 S.Ct. 1601, 20 L.Ed.2d 603 (1968), which involved the peaceful picketing of a business enterprise located within a shopping center is not applicable sub judice.
The statute in question was passed by the Legislature to assist the property owner in the protection of his property. Under the facts of the instant cause, the statute did not apply arbitrarily or discrim-inatorily to appellant. While we have many regulatory measures protecting civil rights of citizens, we also have constitutional duty to protect rights of property and the business community.
This court is committed to the fundamental principle that it has the duty if reasonably possible, and consistent with constitutional rights, to resolve doubts as to the validity of a statute in favor of its constitutional validity and to construe a statute, if reasonably possible, in such a manner as to support its constitutionality —to adopt a reasonable interpretation of a statute which removes it farthest from constitutional infirmity. By placing the foregoing construction on Section 821.01, Florida Statutes, we see no constitutional infirmity under the present attack made by appellant on the statute.
Accordingly, we find that appellant's activities did fall within the language of Section 821.01, Florida Statutes, that said statute has not been unconstitutionally applied to appellant, and that he has not been deprived of his right to equal protection under the law.
It appears, however, that the judgment of the lower court failed to expressly adjudicate that appellant was guilty of the crime charged. The sentence (fine) not being anchored to a correct judgment of conviction must be vacated. The cause is, therefore, remanded for the purpose of entering a proper judgment; and upon such judgment being entered, the judgment will stand affirmed.
It is so ordered.
OVERTON, C. J., and ADKINS and SUNDBERG, JJ.; and SHOLTS, Circuit Court Judge, concur.
ENGLAND, J., concurs with an opinion.
HATCHETT, J., dissents with an opin-10n-
. "The right of 'acquiring, possessing, and protecting property' is anchored in the first section of the first article of our Constitution. This right is as old as Magna Charta. It lies at the foundation of our constitutional government, and 'is necessary to the existence of civil liberty and free institutions.' Billings v. Hall, 7 Cal. 1, 6."
. Cragin v. Ocean & Lake Realty Co., 101 Fla. 1324, 133 So. 569, 135 So. 795 (1931), appeal dism. 286 U.S. 523, 52 S.Ct. 494, 76 L.Ed. 1267; Haworth v. Chapman, 113 Fla. 591, 152 So. 663 (1933); Hanson v. State, 56 So.2d 129 (Fla.1952); Overstreet v. Blum, 227 So.2d 197 (Fla.1969); Hancock v. Sapp, 225 So.2d 411 (Fla.1989); Rich v. Ryals, 212 So.2d 641 (Fla.1968).
. Burns v. State, 97 Fla. 232, 120 So. 360 (1929); Kuhn v. State, 98 Fla. 206, 123 So. 755 (1929); Ellis v. State, 100 Fla. 27, 129 So. 106 (1930); Anderson v. Chapman, 109 Fla. 54, 146 So. 675 (1933); State ex rel. House v. Mayo, 122 Fla. 23, 164 So. 673 (1935); Finch v. Mayo, 137 Fla. 762, 189 So. 27 (1939); and Hart v. State, 60 So.2d 489 (Fla.1952). Rule 3.650, Florida Criminal Rules of Procedure.
. Hart v. State, 60 So.2d 489 (Fla.1952).