Fixel, Maguire & Willis
Eminent Domain –
Condemnation Attorneys
Decades of experience serving Florida's property owners and businesses
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Fixel, Maguire & Willis
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Decades of experience serving Florida's property owners and businesses |
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TOLL FREE: (800) 848-7535 |
TOLL FREE: (888)
216-6870 |
INTRODUCTION
TO FIXEL, MAGUIRE & WILLIS
Eminent Domain – Condemnation is the process used by government and utility companies to acquire private property for a "public purpose." The first step of this process occurs when property owners are initially notified that their property may be needed. In Florida, this process triggers property owners’, and some businesses’, rights to compensation and legal assistance.
Fixel, Maguire & Willis has for many years limited its practice solely to, and specialized in, eminent domain - condemnation. Presently, it is the only law firm located from Gainesville to Pensacola to do so and one of only a few such firms with offices located in the central Florida area. This is a key distinguishing strength of Fixel, Maguire & Willis.
The firm’s offices are located in Orlando and Tallahassee. However, the firm regularly represents many property owners and businesses far beyond where its offices are located, because Fixel, Maguire & Willis serves as the eminent domain referral destination for hundreds of other law firms throughout Florida.
The firm has developed a unique and very sophisticated eminent domain case management system. This client-oriented system, together with Fixel, Maguire & Willis’s decades of extensive experience in condemnation, underscores its commitment to providing clients with high quality legal assistance in its only area of practice. It is on this basis that Fixel, Maguire & Willis has established its reputation as a foremost eminent domain firm in Florida.
Fixel, Maguire & Willis and each of its attorneys have received the highest possible marks from the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, the largest and most comprehensive rating document of lawyers in the world. The firm’s and all of its lawyers’ "AV" ratings are based on confidential recommendations to the publisher from lawyers and judges. The "A" portion indicates a "very high to preeminent" rating for legal ability, while the "V" is a general recommendation rating that that indicates faithful adherence to ethical standards, professional reliability, diligence and other relevant factors.
The Martindale-Hubbell Bar Register lists only distinguished law practices – those that have achieved the highest "AV" rating in the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory.
Through their decades of concentrated eminent domain practice, the attorneys of Fixel, Maguire & Willis have handled in excess of 2,000 property claims throughout Florida.
Fixel, Maguire & Willis’s practice of eminent domain law primarily involves the representation of property owners and businesses whose property is sought to be acquired by governmental authorities and utility companies. The firm has represented all types of property. Examples of the property uses which the firm has represented in eminent domain include agricultural tracts, apartment complexes, billboards, car dealerships, concrete block and ready mix plants, churches, condominiums, convenience stores, development tracts, financial institutions, groves, homeowners’ associations, industrial plants, insurance agencies, lumber operations, medical facilities, mobile home parks, mobile homes sales centers, motels, office buildings, petroleum marketers, plant nurseries, recycling plants, repair shops, retail stores, restaurants, service stations, shopping centers, single family residences, subdivisions, telecommunications facilities, and vacant land.
The firm’s representation of property owners has included acquisitions by a variety of condemning authorities, including cities, counties, school boards, utility companies, expressway authorities, the Florida Department of Transportation, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and the federal government.
Florida counties in which firm lawyers have practiced while handling condemnation cases include: Alachua, Bay, Bradford, Brevard, Broward, Charlotte, Citrus, Clay, Collier, Columbia, Dade, DeSoto, Duval, Escambia, Flager, Franklin, Gadsden, Gilchrist, Glades, Hardee, Hendry, Hernando, Highlands, Hillsborough, Holmes, Indian River, Jackson, Jefferson, Lafayette, Lake, Lee, Leon, Levy, Liberty, Madison, Manatee, Marion, Martin, Monroe, Nassau, Okaloosa, Okeechobee, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Putnam, Santa Rosa, Sarasota, Seminole, St. Johns, St. Lucie, Sumter, Suwannee, Taylor, Union, Volusia, Wakulla, Walton, and Washington.
FIRM’S ROLE AND OBJECTIVES:
Fixel, Maguire & Willis’s role, together with that of the experts it works with, simply stated is: Put each client whose property has been targeted for acquisition or who is confronted with condemnation in a position to make the best fully informed decisions. The nature of these decisions often relates to determining appropriate responses to any offers that have been, or ultimately will be, made by the condemning authority. The final decision will be the client’s, with the firm’s function being to use its decades of extensive eminent domain experience and expertise to advise and recommend.
Fixel, Maguire & Willis’s overall objective is to obtain the most desirable result under the particular facts and circumstances presented during the eminent domain process. That may mean preventing the condemning authority from taking the property. If that is not desired by Fixel, Maguire & Willis's client or if preventing the taking is not possible, it means obtaining for the property or business owner the compensation the client is entitled to by law. This compensation includes being paid fairly for the value of the property taken and for damages to any remainder property. Compensation may also include, where applicable, business damages incurred when a business is adversely affected.
Without an experienced eminent domain team working on behalf of the property owner, most negative impacts to remaining property will not be revealed until the public project is built and completed. These adverse impacts can be very serious and are usually permanent. Just a few examples of these negative impacts include unfavorable drainage consequences, driveway connection problems, and detrimental grade changes.
Generally, the condemning authority’s focus is on designing its project to serve its purpose, not on identifying, disclosing, and fully taking into account these types of significant negative consequences to remaining property and businesses. If these negative impacts to remaining property are not taken into account before a settlement is concluded with the condemning authority, it is very unlikely damages caused by these impacts will ever be acknowledged or paid for by the condemning authority.
Fully taking into account negative impacts to remaining property and businesses is where Fixel, Maguire & Willis, together with the experienced eminent domain specialists it works with, can especially assist the property owner or business tenant. Some of these specialists include condemnation appraisers, engineers, land planners, surveyors, business damage accountants, machinery and equipment valuation experts, and general contractors.
In appropriate cases, non-monetary solutions, such as construction plan changes to preserve suitable access, realign roadways, restore adequate drainage facilities and other such items, are secured in lieu of money damages. Other times the solution is securing those compensation elements to which the client is entitled.
One final and very important objective of Fixel, Maguire & Willis is to secure for its clients a written enforceable right to claim additional damages in the event the condemning authority builds something different than it has represented it plans to build and this change causes unanticipated negative impacts to clients’ remaining property.
Fixel, Maguire & Willis accepts the statutorily formulated fees Florida condemning authorities must pay as payment for the services Fixel, Maguire & Willis provides its property owner clients for pursuing and securing property claims during the eminent domain process, except in three particular circumstances. This is clearly set forth in Fixel, Maguire & Willis's Responsibility for Fees section of this web page and in the Fixel, Maguire & Willis Property Owner Retainer Agreement which will be made available to you upon request.
For other frequently sought information about Fixel, Maguire & Willis, its practice, its attorneys, and eminent domain see Common Prospective Client Questions and Answers.
©(2006) Fixel, Maguire & Willis, all rights reserved.
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