Palm Beach County has settled a lawsuit alleging it improperly collected interest and collection fees from companies and individuals cited for code enforcement violations. The cost to taxpayers: more than $2 million.
Circuit Court Judge Joseph Curley ruled that the county’s practice of adding interest and collection fees to code enforcement liens was illegal. In his written opinion, he said the county could only impose those penalties if a law had been enacted to allow it. Such a law was never passed.
County attorneys told commissioners at an Aug. 19 meeting it had to issue refunds, stop the practice and pay legal fees to the lawyers who filed the lawsuit since the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs.
“We are very pleased that we were able to prevail and obtain relief for our clients,” said Louis Silber, one of the lawyers involved in filing the class action lawsuit. “The county had no authority to do what it did.”
Nearly 200 property owners will receive refunds from the county totaling $490,000 and another 1,489 will not have to pay interest or collection fees. The refund amounts range from as little as $10 to more than $50,000.
Silber of West Palm Beach and his fellow attorneys, James Green and Gary Dunkel, also of West Palm Beach, will receive a payment of $1.5 million from the county to compensate them for their time spent pursuing the case.
County lawyers acknowledged they had to be reimbursed, as the plaintiff had prevailed on all counts in the lawsuit. And they will also be seeking additional funds from the county to compensate them for the costs of distributing the funds to their clients.
Silber noted that filing a class action lawsuit involves months of research. The case was filed more than six years ago and three law firms were involved. All of that made the litigation costly, he added.
The lawsuit never challennged the county’s right to impose code enforcement fines and penalties on the property owners. The only issue was the imposition of interest and collection fees. Interest was compounded at rates above prevailing rates, sometimes resulting in the interest exceeding the daily fines imposed by the county.
B&B Properties brought the initial lawsuit
B&B Properties initially brought the lawsuit, a company saddled with a $97,152 bill, and $91,248 of it consisted of interest and collection fees.
According to O’Neal Bates, B&B’s president, he offered to pay off the county lien, but the county refused to release the lien when he objected to paying interest and daily collection fees. That is when he hired lawyers to file the lawsuit.
B&B Properties was charged in 2007 with improperly storing a double-wide trailer without a permit on land off Okeechobee Boulevard west of Florida’s Turnpike. The violation went on for 506 days, resulting in a $100 daily fine for a total of $50,600, which has not been contested.
In court papers, the county argued that the code violators voluntarily agreed to pay what the county requested and, therefore, could not challenge the payments. Curley ruled, however, that the argument was not valid if the payments were made to avoid severe consequences.
Mike Diamond is a journalist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. He covers Palm Beach County government. You can reach him at mdiamond@pbpost.com. Help support local journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach County taxpayers to pay $2M for illegal charges levied on code enforcement liens
Reporting by Mike Diamond, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
