Opinion ID: 1881821
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: City of Miami v. Keshbro

Text: Petitioner, Harish Gihwala, has owned and operated the Stardust Motel, a fiftyseven-unit building located at 6730 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami, Florida, since 1988. On October 16, 1992, the City of Miami Nuisance Abatement Board (NAB) ordered the Stardust closed for one year as a drug- and prostitution-related public nuisance in violation of sections 46-1(a) and (c) of the City of Miami Code and section 893.13(1), Florida Statutes (1991). [3] Thereafter, the Stardust reopened in 1993; however, the problems soon resurfaced. On December 10, 1996, the NAB served Gihwala with a notice of hearing again charging the Stardust as a drug-and prostitution-related public nuisance. The notice cited at least eight arrests involving drug and prostitution activity within the Stardust and its curtilage in the preceding six months. Gihwala then entered into a stipulation with the NAB pleading no contest to a finding that the Stardust constituted a public nuisance and agreeing to a partial closure of the Stardust. [4] Four months later, on March 4, 1997, following a status report hearing, the NAB ordered the closure of seven additional rooms for six months based on additional incidents of drug-and-prostitution-related nuisance activity. [5] Finally, on June 30, 1997, the NAB, after hearing additional evidence of nuisance activity including three arrests involving the sale of cocaine, ordered the complete closure of the Stardust for six months. The order provided as follows: Ordered and Adjudged that the Stardust Motel is in violation of this Board's Order declaring public nuisance and further that the Stardust Motel shall be closed for the duration of this Board's jurisdiction, or until February 12, 1998. Respondents are ordered to remove all guests within five days of the date of this Order. The premises shall be secured within five days of the date of this order. Gihwala responded by filing suit against the City of Miami and the NAB in Dade County Circuit Court for declaratory and injunctive relief and inverse condemnation, claiming that the NAB's complete closure of the Stardust for six months constituted a taking requiring compensation. The circuit court granted Gihwala's motion for summary judgment on the inverse condemnation claim and the city appealed. On appeal, the Third District reversed the circuit court's grant of summary judgment under the authority of Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 112 S.Ct. 2886, 120 L.Ed.2d 798 (1992), finding that while the NAB's closure order denied Gihwala all economically beneficial uses of the Stardust, no compensation was required because the uses prohibited by the order, i.e., that of a brothel and drug house, had no tradition of protection at common law nor did they inhere in the property rights of Gihwala at the time he acquired title. City of Miami v. Keshbro, Inc., 717 So.2d at 604-05. In so ruling, the Third District distinguished the Second District's decision in City of St. Petersburg v. Bowen by noting the extent to which the nuisance activity had become intertwined with the operation of the Stardust: It is for this reason that we do not certify conflict with City of St. Petersburg v. Bowen ; i.e., Bowen does not include any discussion of inextricable intertwining of proscribed uses with other, valid uses. Keshbro at 604 n. 8. In Bowen, the Second District applied Lucas and found a compensable taking where the St. Petersburg NAB ordered an apartment complex closed for one year as a nuisance based on purported drug use by tenants. The Bowen court found the NAB's one-year closure of the apartment complex one of the most invasive methods of abating the purported nuisance that was available. 675 So.2d at 629. The Second District further stated: If the City of St. Petersburg wants to wage a war on drugs in part by means of this type of temporary taking then the City will be required to pay landowners just compensation. Id. at 632.