## Facts

- The City of Miami sued to quiet title to land and adjacent submerged lands on the north side of the Miami River near Biscayne Bay.
- In 1845, Florida obtained title to lands beneath navigable waters from the United States.
- In 1898, Henry M. Flagler executed and recorded a warranty deed conveying mainland property and purportedly “riparian rights and submerged lands appertaining thereto” to Florida East Coast Hotel Corporation.
- Flagler did not own at least part of the submerged lands he purported to convey, making that portion of the 1898 deed a “wild” (interloping) deed as to those lands.
- In 1919, a special act granted the City rights in certain submerged lands but excluded lands previously “lawfully granted” by the State to others.
- In 1944, Florida East Coast Hotel Corporation conveyed the property (including the disputed submerged area) by recorded warranty deed to St. Joe Paper Co.; St. Joe later recorded a plat that the City approved.
- More than 30 years after the 1944 deed, the City brought suit, asserting St. Joe’s chain could not rely on the 1898 wild deed as a valid root of title.
- The City did not record a statutory notice to preserve its claim under the Marketable Record Title Act (MRTA), ch. 712, Florida Statutes.

## Issues

1. Whether MRTA is constitutional as applied to extinguish the City’s claim to submerged lands when the City failed to record a statutory preservation notice.
2. Whether a recorded wild (interloping) deed can qualify as a “root of title” under MRTA.
3. Whether a municipality is treated as the “state” or a protected “state agency” under MRTA’s exceptions for sovereign interests.

## Decision

- The Florida Supreme Court upheld MRTA’s constitutionality and approved dismissal of the City’s quiet-title complaint.
- The Court held that a properly recorded wild deed may serve as a MRTA “root of title” if it is the recorded title transaction from which the claimant’s chain is derived and is at least 30 years old.
- The Court held the City is not the “state” for MRTA’s sovereign exception; the City’s interests were subject to extinguishment like private claims.
- Because the City neither recorded a preservation notice nor timely asserted its claim within MRTA’s framework, its claim was extinguished, and dismissal on the face of the complaint was proper.

## Legal Principles

- MRTA may constitutionally extinguish interests and claims predating a qualifying 30-year root of title when the claimant fails to preserve the interest by the statute’s notice procedure.
- A “root of title” under MRTA is defined by the existence of a recorded title transaction from which the asserted chain of record title runs; MRTA does not require that the root instrument be historically valid against all prior interests.
- A recorded wild (interloping) deed can function as a MRTA root of title and, after the statutory period, can cut off inconsistent prior claims not preserved by notice.
- Municipalities are not the “state” or “state agencies” for MRTA’s sovereign-interest exceptions unless the statute expressly provides otherwise.

## Conclusion

The court held that MRTA constitutionally extinguished the City’s unpreserved claim, that a recorded wild deed can serve as a root of title under MRTA, and that a municipality is not protected by MRTA’s state-interest exception; therefore, dismissal of the City’s quiet-title action was affirmed.


City of Miami v. St. Joe Paper Co., 364 So. 2d 439 (Fla. 1978)