The Florida property owners are fighting back after the city of Largo seized and sold a multi-unit rental property smaller than the inflated code enforcement fine.
The lawsuit challenges a system that is increasingly used to impose excessive fines and fines that generate revenues to raise funds and resolve budgetary issues at the expense of asset rights and legitimate procedures.
Case is LLC v, Largo, Florida. City DJB rental. It centers around Don Bourgeois. His lawsuit alleges that city Largo officials violated the federal constitution’s ban on excessive fines when they were fined $250 a day. Worse, his due process rights were violated because they were limited by unreasonable time constraints (only 30 days) to challenge the claim.
The former owner of a small, multi-unit rental property has filed a federal lawsuit today. A recent report from the Miami Herald shows that Florida cities may be using similar fines to seize property and fill budgets.
<
In addition to excessive fines, the bourgeoisie is also suing an unreasonable deadline that Floridians must challenge such penalties from just 30 days after the order to impose daily fines. In other words, under Florida law, bourgeois could only challenge an overload of nearly $600,000 fines if the total fine was still only $7,500.
“We should not lose our entire property in small matters. The Constitution makes it clear that fines cannot be against the crimes that have been bailed out,” said Johanna Talcott, lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation. “The short time to challenge such a fine in Florida adds humiliation to injuries. 30 days are an incredibly short window to protest the fines that can occur for years and wipe out the savings of your life.”
The bourgeois was originally cited in 2015 for minor code violations, including missing pieces of roofing, inoperable heaters within the unit, inoperable vehicles on the property, and a few other issues. By the time the city was collected on massive debt in 2022, all code violations had been fixed.
