CORNER LAND, LLC

v.

ANNEX INDUSTRIAL PARK, LLC

Third District Court of Appeal State of Florida

Opinion filed June 26, 2019. Not final until disposition of timely filed motion for rehearing.

________________

No. 3D18-2124 Lower Tribunal No. 14-23118 ________________

Corner Land, LLC, Appellant,

vs.

Annex Industrial Park, LLC, Appellee.

An Appeal from the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, Mavel Ruiz, Judge.

Taylor Espino Vega & Touron, PLLC, and Alejandro Espino, and Vanessa A. Van Cleaf, for appellant.

Armas Bertran Pieri, and J. Alfredo De Armas, and Eduardo Bertran, for appellee.

Before SALTER, LINDSEY, and HENDON, JJ.

LINDSEY, J.

I.

BACKGROUND

Annex Industrial Park, LLC and Corner Land own adjacent properties in Hialeah, Florida. Three roads border the combined properties. Both parcels lie north of N.W. 138th Street, west of N.W. 102nd Avenue, and east of N.W. 105th Avenue. At issue in this case is a strip of land on the southern boundary of Corner Land’s property, which runs parallel to N.W. 138th Street. At the time Corner Land filed suit, that strip provided the only access to the Annex Property. There was a time, however, when that strip was not the only means of access to the Annex Property. Annex originally had direct access to its property from N.W. 138th Street.² When Annex acquired its property in 2005, a bridge connected N.W. 138th Street to the Annex Property, providing for direct access from the south. In 2008, the City of Hialeah requested Annex to deed 35 feet along the southern edge of its property to the City for a right of way. The City sought to widen the canal between the Annex

1 Corner Land does not challenge the compensatory damages award.² The Annex Property was additionally accessible from a dirt road immediately north of the property. However, in 2008, Annex and the prior owners of the Corner Land Property deeded the northern 35 feet of their respective properties to the City of Hialeah.

II.

STANDARD OF REVIEW

The admissibility of evidence lies in the sound discretion of the trial court and trial court decisions on the matter will be affirmed absent a showing of abuse of discretion. See, e.g., Beerman v. Rollar, 710 So. 2d 93 (Fla. 4th DCA 1998); see also Carter v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 778 So. 2d 932, 943 (Fla. 2000)

3 A redacted version of the injunction order was also allowed to be introduced into evidence.

III.

ANALYSIS

Corner Land argues on appeal that the trial court erred in admitting the redacted stay orders because they were unfairly prejudicial and constitute inadmissible hearsay. Corner Land relies on BDO Seidman, LLP v. Banco Espirito Santo, International, 38 So. 3d 874 (Fla. 3d DCA 2010) and Rubrecht v. Cone Distributing, Inc., 95 So. 3d 950 (Fla. 5th DCA 2012), in support of its argument. That reliance is misplaced. In those cases, the error was not in admitting the court orders themselves, but rather the judicial factual findings contained within the court order. See BDO Seidman, 38 So. 3d at 880 (citing United States v. Sine, 493 F. 3d 1021, 1036 (9th Cir. 2007) (“A court judgment is hearsay ‘to the extent that it is offered to prove the truth of the matters asserted in the judgment.’ . . . It is even more plain that the introduction of discrete judicial factfindings and analysis underlying the judgment to prove the truth of those findings and that analysis constitutes the use of hearsay.” (internal citations omitted))). Here, there is no such issue. The stay orders were heavily redacted to remove any factual findings. All that remained was a signature, the date, and length of the stay or extension. Cf. Velcofski v. State, 96 So. 3d 1069, 1072 (Fla. 4th Dist. App. 2012) (“While the probative value of this evidence may have been minimal, so was any danger of unfair prejudice because the

IV.

CONCLUSION

Accordingly, based on the foregoing reasons, we affirm the trial court’s final judgment.