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Not content to tangle with its residents over ownership of the five boathouses in the Palmer Park lagoon, the Town of Windermere earlier this month filed a second lawsuit against them, seeking to determine who is responsible for maintaining the submerged lands beneath the century-old structures and the narrow strip of grass along Pine Street that must be crossed to access them.
According to the lawsuit, filed June 10, when the Ninth Circuit Court ruled in October that the boathouses belonged to the residents — a verdict the town has appealed to the Sixth District Court of Appeal — it did not specify who owned the submerged lands around the boathouses.
That verdict has created “ambiguity” about ownership of the lagoon and grassy area,” according to the town, and it's now claiming it is “in doubt concerning its rights and obligations …” That ambiguity, the town maintains, is creating a “significant issue of public safety.”
The town states that it has maintained the lagoon and the grassy area and paid property taxes on the grassy area since the mid-1990s — verified through tax payments recorded by the Orange County Property Appraiser and Tax Collector office.
But in its filing, the town claims that the boathouse owners “purport to own … the land on which [their] boathouse[s] [are] situated.”
Without resolving who has the obligation or right to maintain the areas, “the property is likely to fall into disrepair, creating a public nuisance or hazard,” according to the lawsuit.
The owners of the boathouses have never claimed to own the submerged land beneath the boathouses nor the grassy area along Pine Street.
Five additional defendants have been added to the new lawsuit, including Michael and Deanna Lee, parents of Jessica Lee who ran unsuccessfully for Windermere Town Council in 2025 on a platform of accountability for the boathouse litigation.
Prior to this new lawsuit, filed by the town’s ancillary law firm, Shutts & Bowen, which was hired for the boathouse appeal, Town Manager Robert Smith told VoxPopuli the town had spent $800,000 on the boathouse litigation.
Asked for comment Thursday, Daniel Langley of the Winter Park law firm Fishback Dominick, which represented the boathouse owners in the original lawsuit, told VoxPopuli that he was not officially representing the boathouse owners in this second lawsuit and had not seen it. He said he’d first learned about the complaint when the Orlando Sentinel called him seeking a statement.
The defendants were issued summonses Friday. They have 20 days to respond to the lawsuit. The pre-trial conference is currently set for Nov. 2, 2027, followed by a non-jury trial date beginning Dec. 6, 2027.
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Norine Dworkin contributed reporting.
