News Reedy Creek Improvement District and the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District

Chi84

Chi84

Premium Member
mikejs78 said:
Appeals courts can also overturn findings of fact, but that is not common and only done when the finding of fact is clearly wrong.
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That's true, but where a case is dismissed on the pleadings - as it was here - the trial court must accept as true the facts alleged by the party opposing the motion to dismiss. The facts are not at issue at this stage, which is why the appellate court will not have to defer in any respect to the decision of the district court. It can merely substitute its judgment for that of the lower court on how the law is to be interpreted. The nature of appellate review changes based on how far the case got before the trial court ended it.
 
mikejs78

mikejs78

Premium Member
Chi84 said:
That's true, but where a case is dismissed on the pleadings - as it was here - the trial court must accept as true the facts alleged by the party opposing the motion to dismiss. The facts are not at issue at this stage, which is why the appellate court will not have to defer in any respect to the decision of the district court. It can merely substitute its judgment for that of the lower court on how the law is to be interpreted. The nature of appellate review changes based on how far the case got before the trial court ended it.
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Just out of curiosity and not related to this dismissal - does the nature of appellate review differ in a jury trial vs a bench trial?
 
castlecake2.0

castlecake2.0

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
83ABE98F-983D-4BE1-B648-BD71651D6889.jpeg

Garcia when he realizes he can’t rename Reedy Creek Energy Services to “district energy services” because it’s fully owned by Disney
 
Chi84

Chi84

Premium Member
mikejs78 said:
Just out of curiosity and not related to this dismissal - does the nature of appellate review differ in a jury trial vs a bench trial?
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The nature of review is tied more to how a decision is made than who makes it. In a bench trial the judge acts as the trier of fact instead of the jury.

For example, if there is witness testimony, the jury (or the judge acting as fact finder in a bench trial) has the advantage of seeing the witness and is therefore better positioned to decide who is telling the truth. In that case, a reviewing court will defer to the fact finder and there is a high standard that needs to be met before overturning fact findings.

But if the decision is based only on the law, there is no deference to what happens in the lower court because the appellate court is presumed to know the law just as well as the trial court and has authority to overturn its rulings based on law.

This is an interesting article on how few trials actually take place in the country.
judicature.duke.edu

Going, Going, But Not Quite Gone: Trials Continue to Decline in Federal and State Courts. Does it Matter?

There were 20,581 trials in federal district courts in 1997 and 11,754 in 2016. By this measure, trials diminished by approximately 43% in just under 20 years.
judicature.duke.edu judicature.duke.edu

It’s a bit old but you get the idea.
 
Stripes

Stripes

Premium Member
Brian said:
According to Foglesong, yes.

Imho, this does strike me as a political question and not a legal one. Disney would be wise to pressure DeSantis and the legislature by withholding future development, and mounting a public relations campaign against them, in order to bring him to the negotiating table.

That's how this gets resolved, in my mind. Disney may have a case against CFTOD for monetary damages, but there wouldn't be a remedy to revert things back to the old RCID.
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There’s no turning back now. DeSantis will never negotiate with Disney after how much he has publicized this feud.

Politically, the worst thing he could do is reach some deal with Disney. It would look like he was caving and the headlines would be humiliating.

If he loses in court, he can still claim that he “never backed down.”

Between the two headlines below, which do you think DeSantis would prefer?

”DeSantis caves, makes deal with Disney”

”Supreme Court rules against DeSantis in Disney lawsuit”
 
Stripes

Stripes

Premium Member
Chi84 said:
As another poster pointed out, the governor was so eager to start a fight with Disney for political purposes that he was willing to make the retaliatory law broad enough to cause collateral damage.
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It’s not clear to me how the governor caused collateral damage. The fact of the matter is that although the bill stripped voting rights from all landowners in the district, practically speaking the only vote that was stripped was Disney’s. Disney had well over 51% of the voting power within the district, which effectively gave them total control over the vote and made everyone else’s vote meaningless. Hence, the only property owners to even show up for the annual landowner meetings were Disney and their subsidiaries. The other property owners were smart enough not to waste their time.

Disney had total control over the selection of the RCID board. For Winsor to argue that the law didn‘t pinpoint Disney boggles the mind and it defies simple logic.
 
M

mmascari

Well-Known Member
Stripes said:
It’s not clear to me how the governor caused collateral damage.
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The collateral damage from the law isn't the other land owners in RCID, it is the other districts besides RCID also impacted by the law. Presumably, those districts had nothing to do with Disney or the governor, yet their structure was impacted just the same.

Stripes said:
Disney had total control over the selection of the RCID board. For Winsor to argue that the law didn‘t pinpoint Disney boggles the mind and it defies simple logic.
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The logic in the ruling was that the law didn't say it was specifically for one district, but that it impacted a bunch of districts. Since it impacted a bunch generically, it wasn't targeted.

The implication is that if you're willing to impact enough others beyond your target (collateral damage) you can get away with targeting them, since it would not technically be "targeted".

Possibly, if you can just state the law with enough generic conditions and not specifically name the target, that would also negate the targeting. Even if those conditions select one a specific entity.
 
Stripes

Stripes

Premium Member
mmascari said:
The collateral damage from the law isn't the other land owners in RCID, it is the other districts besides RCID also impacted by the law. Presumably, those districts had nothing to do with Disney or the governor, yet their structure was impacted just the same.
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That was the judge’s reasoning for Senate Bill 4C. And I think that reasoning is actually defensible. Of course, SB 4C didn’t actually dissolve any districts. It just said they would be dissolved if they weren’t reconstituted. Nonetheless, I don’t think any judge will decide in Disney’s favor on SB 4C. I also don’t think Disney cares. They wouldn’t mind being regulated by Bay Lake/Lake Buena Vista and Orange/Osceola counties. I mean they asked the judge to strip CFTOD of all of its powers, which would’ve been more or less the same as dissolving the district. Furthermore, the bond debt is still an issue.

I posted the judge’s reasoning for House Bill 9B which defies logic and sense, and that’s the reasoning Disney’s appeal will be focused on.
 
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J

Just JBC

New Member
I agree. I don't think that the bill that would have dissolved the district is a problem. They did a blanket shot for all of the really old districts. Had they stopped there, the only problem they might have had would be if they then reconstituted every district except Disney. I worked for Government briefly. There was an employee that it would have been too much effort to fire for cause (she was bad, but she wasn't that bad). So they eliminated all people in her position, of which there was only her. The layoff then became a budget decision rather than a personnel action.

The problems became when they reconstituted the district into one that is actively adversarial to the major landowner. I haven't looked to see if any other districts were also reconstituted, but if they were, I'm guessing that their names weren't changed to "... oversight district." By not just letting the district dissolve (and having the state absorb Disney's debts), it sure seems that they went from a neutral law that affected Disney to a targeted bill that retaliated against Disney. Especially when one of the requirements to serve on the board is that they can't have recent theme park experience?

I had expected DeSantis to meet with Disney, mutually agree to get rid of the things that Disney wasn't using/probably would never use (i.e. their own airport, ability to have a nuclear power plant, etc), and then have his press conference declaring victory. I remain disappointed that the decision was made to opt for scorched earth instead.
 
GrumpyFan

GrumpyFan

Well-Known Member
Just JBC said:
I had expected DeSantis to meet with Disney, mutually agree to get rid of the things that Disney wasn't using/probably would never use (i.e. their own airport, ability to have a nuclear power plant, etc), and then have his press conference declaring victory. I remain disappointed that the decision was made to opt for scorched earth instead.
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There was a rumor that Disney tried to meet with the governor's staff before everything went to the legislature. Supposedly, the governor's people told Disney to "pound sand".
It is quite disappointing considering what Disney has done for the state for so many years.
 

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