Opinion ID: 3189206
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Actions by federal employees

Text: Second, F.E.B. points to subsequent actions by various federal employees appearing to affirm Florida’s ownership of Wisteria Island: For instance, a 1956 internal memo by the Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks to the Chief of Naval Operations opined, “[i]t would appear that . . . the Navy would have a difficult time in proving that this island was built up for Federal use,” and accordingly recommended condemning the island for subsequent federal use (Doc. 67-1); a 1957 letter by the Navy’s District of Public Works Officer requested condemnation appraisals of the island; and 1961 court documents condemning an adjacent island (which may have been created during the same dredging operations that created Wisteria Island) acknowledged that Florida owned and held legal title to the adjacent island prior to the condemnation. It is, however, well-established that internal agency memos or other informal statements by subordinate government employees are not sufficient evidence of abandonment. See Rio Grande, 599 F.3d at 1187 (“[I]ntra-office memoranda, and similar intra-governmental communications do not bind the government, such that they can . . . stop the QTA’s limitations clock.”) (internal quotation marks omitted); Kingman, 541 F.3d at 1200-01 (agreeing that documents 16 Case: 15-11771 Date Filed: 03/28/2016 Page: 17 of 25 evincing only “confusion and mistake on the part of some government employees, as to whether the United States ultimately possessed an ownership interest,” did not show abandonment); Spirit Lake, 262 F.3d at 740-42, 44 (“[T]he QTA limitations period does not stop when government action simply compounds a preexisting cloud on title.”); Cheyenne Arapaho, 558 F.3d at 598. So, too, here: Nothing in the documents F.E.B. identifies amounts to a “clear and unequivocal” abandonment of the United States’ claim, and, even if something did, there is no indication that the authors possessed the authority to dispose of government property. See California I, 332 U.S. at 40 (“[O]fficers who have no authority at all to dispose of Government property cannot by their conduct cause the Government to lose its valuable rights by their acquiescence, laches, or failure to act.”). Not only that, but there is no indication that F.E.B.’s predecessors-in-interest were aware of, let alone relied on, the internal government documents identified by F.E.B. See Rio Grande, 599 F.3d at 1184-85 (disregarding government statements of which the plaintiffs were not aware because “they certainly could not have led [them] to believe that the United States had abandoned its claim”). Finally, the remainder of the government actions on which F.E.B. relies— such as the 2004-2006 licensing agreements to use the island for Navy training exercises—were undertaken long after the statute of limitations had run, and are 17 Case: 15-11771 Date Filed: 03/28/2016 Page: 18 of 25 therefore irrelevant. See id. at 1185 (finding actions taken after the limitations period to be irrelevant). For all of those reasons, the actions of subordinate federal employees did not abandon the United States’ claim to Wisteria Island.