The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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Avon Park in the Florida Supreme Court, 1928 to 1934

Avon Park was the subject of a string of Florida Supreme Court decisions between 1928 and 1934, six in all, every one of them now readable in full, free, through the Caselaw Access Project’s bulk files.[cap-fla]

The six cases

Citation Date What it was
96 Fla. 494, 118 So. 223 16 Oct 1928 A bond issue struck down[fla-96-494]
104 Fla. 389, 139 So. 899 2 Mar 1932 The quo warranto begins[fla-104-389]
108 Fla. 640, 144 So. 306 10 Nov 1932 The city’s answer held bad on demurrer[fla-108-640]
108 Fla. 419, 146 So. 188 3 Feb 1933 A recall election forced on the city council[fla-108-419]
108 Fla. 641, 149 So. 409 10 Mar 1933 The main opinion on the annexation[fla-108-641]
117 Fla. 556, 151 So. 701; 117 Fla. 565, 158 So. 159 22 Dec 1933; 11 Dec 1934 The last two orders in the same cause[cap-fla]

The oddity in the citations is real and correct. Two decisions four months apart, 108 Fla. 640 (10 November 1932) and 108 Fla. 641 (10 March 1933), stand on consecutive pages of the Florida Reports. That is because the November order is a two-paragraph ruling on a demurrer and the March opinion is the decision in the same cause, printed immediately after it.[fla-108-640][fla-108-641]

1928: the city tries to issue bonds and is stopped

The City of Avon Park attempted to issue bonds under a general act, Chapter 11855, Acts of 1927, effective June 6, 1927, relating to the issue of municipal bonds. The Circuit Judge validated the bonds. An appeal was taken. Chapter 12514, Acts of 1927, a special act, effective June 6, 1927, relating to the incorporation and to the powers and privileges of the City of Avon Park, contains materially different provisions for the issue of bonds by that city, which provisions were not followed in attempting to issue the bonds. Under Sec. 24 of Article III of the State Constitution the provisions of the special law are applicable to the exclusion of inconsistent provisions in the general law. … Reversed.[fla-96-494]

Three things come out of eleven lines.

Chapter 12514 is confirmed and dated. The 1927 special act “relating to the incorporation and to the powers and privileges of the City of Avon Park” took effect 6 June 1927.

The city was trying to borrow again in 1928 and was told it had used the wrong statute.

And J. M. Lee was the city’s lawyer. Counsel were M. R. McDonald for the State and J. M. Lee and Gary Alexander for the city.[fla-96-494] The J. M. Lee who sat for Highlands County in the Florida House in 1927 and 1929 and became Comptroller of the State of Florida was a practicing attorney at Avon Park.

1933: the citizens recall their city council

City Council of the City of Avon Park v. State ex rel. Oscar Wolfe is not about bonds at all.

The writ of error herein was taken to a final order awarding a peremptory writ of mandamus commanding members of the city council of the City of Avon Park to call an election pursuant to paragraphs 8, 9 and 10 of Section 22, Chapter 12514, Acts of 1927, the charter of the City of Avon Park. … the final order awarding a peremptory writ is affirmed.[fla-108-419]

Those paragraphs are the charter’s recall provisions. A citizen named Oscar Wolfe got up a recall petition against the council, the council would not call the election, he went to the circuit court for mandamus and won, the council took a writ of error, and on 3 February 1933 the Supreme Court affirmed. Chief Justice Davis added a concurrence explaining the mechanics: petitions signed before the city clerk at the city hall become binding once enough names are on them, the council’s duty to call the election within fifteen days is mandatory, and a signer can withdraw only while the petitions are still in the clerk’s hands.[fla-108-419]

Counsel: F. T. Haskins and S. C. Pardee for the council; J. M. Lee and Thos. A. McNicholas for Wolfe.[fla-108-419] Lee had acted for the city in 1928 and was acting against it in 1933.

There was a recall movement against the Avon Park city council in the depths of the Depression, and it won in the Supreme Court of Florida. What the grievance was, who else was in it, whether the election was held and what it did are all unknown, and all findable in the local record.

1932-34: thirty-six square miles, and the landowners who wanted out

The long case is a quo warranto brought by the Attorney General “joined by numerous co-relators, who are owners of unoccupied or unimproved lands in the municipality,” to have the city declared to be “unlawfully usurping … the functions, privileges, powers and franchises of a municipality over described rural lands.”[fla-108-641]

Justice Whitfield’s opinion recites the facts, and they are the clearest statement anywhere of Avon Park’s boom-time expansion:

  • The Town of Avon Park was incorporated by Chapter 6662, Acts of 1913, covering “approximately 1,440 acres, less water.”
  • The State census of 1925 shows a population of 1,534 in Avon Park.
  • By Chapter 10320, Acts of 1925, enacted after the State census was taken, the corporate limits of Avon Park, then designated as a city, were extended to include a total of 36 sections of 640 acres each — a total of 23,040 acres — “a large portion of which … are rural lands.”
  • The newly added territory was made liable for the debts and liabilities of the city.
  • The Federal census of 1930 shows 3,355 inhabitants in the City of Avon Park, including the added territory; “the population in the original municipality being 890 in 1920 and 1,534 in 1925.”[fla-108-641]

A town of 1,440 acres became a city of 23,040 acres — sixteen times its area — in a single act of 1925, on the strength of a population of 1,534. That is the land boom in one sentence, and it is why the owners of the annexed pasture sued.

The 1927 charter had already conceded part of the argument: Chapter 12514 declared the added territory not liable for bonds issued before 1 January 1926, while leaving it liable for municipal expenses and for debts incurred since.[fla-108-641]

The court was careful. It noted that some inhabitants of the added territory had voted in city elections, that the city had made some improvements and given some police and fire protection there, and that bondholders — who were not parties — could not be affected by the judgment. It set out the principle that “all reasonable doubts as to the validity of a statute … shall be resolved in favor of the legislative enactment,” and framed the question as “whether the intent of Section 8 of Article VIII of the present State Constitution is to give to the Legislature unlimited power to establish municipalities.”[fla-108-641] The cause ran on through two more orders, in December 1933 and December 1934.[cap-fla]

Who brought the case, and how it ended

The co-relators are a roll of boom-era Avon Park. The 1932 order names them: the Attorney General Fred H. Davis, joined by the Avon Florida Citrus Corporation, the Pine Crest Lakes Country Club, the Pine Crest Lakes Company, the Avon Manufacturing Company, and John Henry Smith, Norton T. Smith, Henry L. Meade and others.[fla-104-389] These were the owners of the annexed land: two of the corporations behind the Pinecrest golf and country club development, a citrus corporation, a manufacturing company, and a group of individuals. The Avon Manufacturing Company is the crate mill: the Sanborn map of November 1920 labels its two mill buildings “Avon Mf’g Co. Crate Mill” on the Atlantic Coast Line spur south-west of Walnut Street, beside the Mutual Crate Company and the Flint Lumber Company, with a “Mill” street named for it — so the citrus box-maker was among the landowners suing to get out of the city.[sanborn-1920]

The case turned on a procedural problem and then vanished. On 2 June 1933 a divided court overruled the relators’ demurrer to the city’s amended answer and held that the answer raised issues of fact that the parties were entitled to have tried by a jury — and that “this Court is without facilities for impaneling juries and conducting jury trials.” It therefore dismissed the cause “without prejudice to the parties to institute like proceedings in the circuit court.”[fla-117-565] A petition for rehearing was denied; an extraordinary petition filed in November 1933 was refused on 22 December 1933 on the ground that the term had expired and the court had lost jurisdiction.[fla-117-556]

Then it changed its mind. On a supplemental petition arguing that starting again in the circuit court would prejudice the relators, the court reinstated the cause on 8 January 1934, and on 11 December 1934 ordered that the further proceedings be in the Supreme Court after all — and, since it could not impanel a jury, that a commissioner take the evidence:

It is therefore ordered that Circuit Judge W. J. Barker, of Sebring, Florida, be and he is hereby appointed as the Commissioner of this Court … to take such testimony and evidence as the respective parties to this cause may submit on the issues of fact … such evidence to be taken as promptly as may be at such suitable place in the City of Avon Park, and at such time or times, as said Commissioner shall designate … the same to be reported in full and returned to and filed in this Court, together with his findings of fact.[fla-117-565]

And there the reports stop. A search of every Florida Supreme Court decision from 1935 to 1950 turns up no further opinion in the cause.[cap-fla] So there was a hearing held in Avon Park itself, before a circuit judge sitting as a commissioner of the Supreme Court, with a transcript filed in Tallahassee — and no reported judgment. Either the parties settled, or the case was dropped, or it ended in an unreported order.

That transcript is worth finding. Evidence taken in Avon Park in 1935 on whether thirty-six sections of the city were “actually or potentially needed or useful for municipal purposes” would be a description of the town and its hinterland from the mouths of the people who lived there. It should be in the Supreme Court of Florida’s own case files at the State Archives.

Census Population Figures in the Record

The 1930 federal census returned Avon Park’s population at 3,355, which the Florida Supreme Court recited as an established fact of record in its 1933 opinions.[fla-108-641][census-1930-t16]

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
single-source — One source. Treat as reported, not established.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. Sanborn Map Company, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Avon Park, Highlands County, Florida, November 1920, sheet 4 (1920)
  2. Supreme Court of Florida, Division B, per curiam, State v. City of Avon Park, 96 Fla. 494, 118 So. 223 (16 October 1928) (1928)
  3. Supreme Court of Florida, State ex rel. Davis v. City of Avon Park, 104 Fla. 389, 139 So. 899 (2 March 1932) (1932)
  4. Supreme Court of Florida, per curiam, State ex rel. Attorney General v. City of Avon Park, 108 Fla. 640, 144 So. 306 (10 November 1932) (1932)
  5. Supreme Court of Florida, Division B (Brown, J.), State ex rel. Davis v. City of Avon Park, 117 Fla. 556, 151 So. 701 (22 December 1933) (1933)
  6. Supreme Court of Florida, En Banc (Brown, J.), State ex rel. Davis v. City of Avon Park, 117 Fla. 565, 158 So. 159 (11 December 1934) (1934)
  7. Supreme Court of Florida, Division B, per curiam, City Council of the City of Avon Park v. State ex rel. Oscar Wolfe, 108 Fla. 419, 146 So. 188 (3 February 1933) (1933)
  8. Supreme Court of Florida (Whitfield, J.), State ex rel. Attorney General v. City of Avon Park, 108 Fla. 641, 149 So. 409 (10 March 1933, on re-argument 2 June 1933) (1933)
  9. Caselaw Access Project, Harvard Law School Library, Florida Reports, Caselaw Access Project static bulk data — volume metadata and case text (2026)
  10. United States Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Population, Volume III, Part 1, Florida, Table 16 (1932)

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