It doesn’t matter much now. On Tuesday, Ninth Circuit Court Judge John E. Jordan ruled in favor of the boathouse owners on all counts in their motion for summary judgment, affirming that they unequivocally own the boathouses while denying the town’s motion for eviction and breach of contract.

“My clients own the boathouses, the town has no rights, and the judge said that nothing is fair about what the town was attempting to achieve,” Langley, a partner in the Winter Park law firm Fishback Dominick, which is representing the group of boathouse owners, told VoxPopuli in a Tuesday phone interview.

“I’m happy for my clients. I’m so proud of them for sticking together,” Langley said. “It’s been three years. It’s not fun fighting city hall. The town picked this fight. To force residents to fight and defend themselves is absurd.”

But in a twist worthy of O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi, to continue the legal fight, Fanelli sold her beloved boat and the home she bought with the boathouse so she could be on the water. She no longer even lives in Windermere. She’s relocated to Winter Garden.

“I had to end up selling my boat, selling my house to stay in this lawsuit, but I felt like it was important,” Fanelli said. “We stood by for what was right. You don’t just take somebody’s property away from them.”

That was exactly how the judge saw it. The town’s argument had always been that the boathouse owners signed a lease in 1986, which was renewed in 2001 and again in 2011, stipulating that the boathouses be turned over to the town at the lease end in 2021.

But in a blistering ruling, Jordan lambasted Windermere for attempting to oust the boathouse owners, writing that the original lease agreement was based on a “mutual mistake” and that town never had the right to enter into such a lease that would charge the owners to access their own property.

The judge emphasized the ownership aspect, citing the boathouses’ construction prior to the town’s existence; their private ownership through the last 115 years; the owners’ quit claim deeds and continued maintenance; the town’s lack of deeds, titles or possession of the structures; and leases that specifically stated the structures belong to the boathouse owners.

“There is nothing equitable or fair about the goal Plaintiff is trying to achieve or the manner in which it is trying to achieve it,” Jordan wrote in his ruling. “… It would be grossly inequitable and shock the public conscience if a government body would take away a citizen’s private property rights by virtue of the fact that those citizens were effectively coerced to pay nominal rent to have access to their own private property.”

The “mutual mistake” Jordan refers to in his ruling is the belief that the land beneath the boathouses is owned by the state of Florida.

In 2001, former Windermere Town Attorney Bob Pleus wrote a letter to the town council stating, “…the town probably owned the land where the boathouses were located up to the mean high water mark. The exact location of the mean high water mark had not been determined, but everyone assumed the boathouses were either on town property or if on submerged property owned by the state, the town had riparian rights.” (Italics mine.)

Riparian rights are the rights to use the water that abuts one’s property.

The boathouse owners, backed by expert testimony from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), argued that the submerged land under the boathouses was never owned by the state, but privately owned. The land, according to an 1848 government survey, was marshland, and the lagoon itself was “dug out and connected to Lake Butler by a dredged canal.”

That meant, Jordan wrote in his ruling, that the town has no rights that would allow it to claim possession or determine access.

Ironically, when the town first moved to take the boathouses in March 2022 by terminating the month-to-month leases it had extended to the boathouse owners while a town councilman and an owners' representative tried to work out another lease agreement — which the town council ultimately voted down— that cut off any claim the town might have had to structures.  

“Having deliberately terminated the Lease Agreements, the Town (sic) lost any right to demand that the boathouses be vacated,” Jordan wrote. “It cannot rely upon rights it may have had in agreements that no longer exist.”

Reached by text on Wednesday, Mayor Jim O’Brien told VoxPopuli said he didn’t have any comment “until I’ve met with our attorneys and discussed options.”

Town attorney Nick Dancaescu of the Orlando law firm GrayRobinson did not return a request for comment.

Langley said it would be “a shame to waste more [tax-payer money] to appeal” the judge’s ruling, adding that he would be seeking attorneys’ fees from the town for his clients. While Langley declined to name a dollar figure, he said that if the town spent close to half a million dollars, his clients spent more. He said that it would be up to the judge to grant attorneys fees and determine the amount.

“It shocked me what the town did,” Langley said. “Why would they spend so much money on these boathouses? It never made any sense.”

“It was very trying financially, emotionally, because these people loved the town of Windermere. They were all longtime, staunch residents,” Windermere resident Judy Black told VoxPopuli by phone Tuesday.  A realtor who brokered many of the real estate deals involving the boathouses, Black wasn’t named in the law suit but her husband, George Poelker, is one of the defendants and owns a slip in the only boathouse that accommodates two boats.

“ I'm just so pleased with the residents that stood up for their rights and just wouldn't give up," she said. "It’s hard that it couldn’t have been worked out without all this process. But I am happy. I’m glad it will soon be over.”

The case will not formally conclude until the judge enters his final judgment. A pre-trial conference is still on the calendar for Oct. 13.