As far as lawsuits go, it was rather brief, only four pages. In broad strokes, Steven laid out the history of Dark Isle, beginning with the Franco-Spanish struggle dating back to 1565 and leading up to 1740 when the Spanish claimed sovereignty over the region after ruling it for two hundred years. Dark Isle was considered part of Camino Island, and it first appeared on a map in 1764 when the British seized the territory. Then they lost it to the French, who in turn lost it again to the Spanish. The three countries sparred for a few decades, each winning land and then losing it, often making individual land ownership impossible to determine. Native tribes still occupied most of the land, but that would soon change. In 1821, America cut a deal with the Spanish and got all of Florida. By then, Dark Isle had been a refuge for runaway slaves for almost a hundred years and no one else really wanted it. Florida was admitted to the Union as a slave state in 1845.
The plaintiff, Lovely Jackson, claimed to be a direct descendant of slaves who’d lived on Dark Isle since the early 1700s. She was born there in 1940, to Jeremiah and Ruth Jackson. Her father died in 1948 of typhoid, leaving Ruth and Lovely as the only two survivors on the island. They barely managed to survive for a few years, then left for Santa Rosa in 1955, the last residents of Dark Isle.
Like those before her, there was no official record of her birth. She had been delivered by a midwife, same as everyone else. There were no records of the births and deaths of her parents, or grandparents.
Her claim of ownership was based on the legal principle of adverse possession. She and her ancestors had lived on the island “openly” and “notoriously” and without interference or interruption for over two hundred years. Florida law required only seven. Though she was forced to leave in 1955, she did not abandon her ancestral home. For decades, she and a friend or two traveled by boat to the island several times each year to tend to the graves of her people. They walked the island from north to south looking for trespassers and squatters. They found none. Then Hurricane Leo did enormous damage to Dark Isle. It destroyed what was left of the settlement where she and her ancestors lived. It washed away centuries’ worth of artifacts and ruins.
Attorney Mahon requested a hearing within thirty days, as required by the statute, though he knew it would take months. As a courtesy, he sent a copy of the petition to the in-house counsel for Tidal Breeze in Miami. He also sent a copy to a contact in the Attorney General’s office in Tallahassee. The state of Florida would be party to the lawsuit.
One of many rumors swirling around the Panther Cay project was that the state would claim ownership, as it had for hundreds of other uninhabited islands, and then, once cleared, quickly sell it to Tidal Breeze for a fair price and get out of the way. The skids had been greased in Tallahassee. The politicians and bureaucrats were in line.
Steven walked up the stairs to say hello to Judge Lydia Salazar, the presiding chancellor. He’d met her once at a bar lunch but rarely appeared before her. Steven’s cases kept him in federal court and he seldom ventured into local courthouses. However, under Florida law, land and title disputes were the sole jurisdiction of chancery court, to be decided without juries. Thus, Judge Salazar would have enormous power over the future of Dark Isle. She enjoyed a solid reputation as a firm and fair jurist, though one lawyer had told Steven over coffee that she was known to talk too much about her cases. Out of school. Over drinks at cocktail parties. Loose lips sink ships and all that.
Steven just wanted to say hello, but her secretary said she had the day off.
His downtown stroll continued to the offices of
