In what has been dubbed a milestone in U.S. legal history, a lake has filed a lawsuit against a developer in Orange County, Florida. Lake Mary Jane is suing property developers Beachline South Residential in Florida state court over the developer’s plans to construct a new development on the north side of the lake, converting 1,900 acres of wetlands and forests into a mixed-use residential, commercial, and office development.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the lake by attorney Steven Meyers, claims that the development would “adversely impact the lakes and marsh who are parties to this action,” causing injuries that are “concrete, distinct, and palpable.” As a deep-dive article in The New Yorker notes, the case marks the first time that an inanimate slice of nature has sued an entity in a U.S. courtroom, sparking a debate over the extent to which natural objects have rights.
The proposed development, named Meridian Parks Remainder, would see the construction of townhouses, apartments, and commercial space, part of the broader Meridian Parks master plan which will deliver 4,400 residential units to serve the nearby city of Orlando. The lawsuit claims that the filling and altering of 100 acres of wetlands as part of the development would restrict the natural flow from the streams into the lake, thus destroying the local ecology and the lake’s right to exist.
While the case marks the first example of a lawsuit filed on behalf of an inanimate natural object, there have been several successful lawsuits filed in the U.S. by animals and species. As The New Yorker also cites, a dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Justice William Douglas in 1972 noted that “A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. A corporation, too, is a ‘person’ for purposes of the adjudicatory processes… So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life.”
There is also ample precedent for inanimate or speechless entities being represented in court, including corporations, states, estates, or universities. “We make decisions on behalf of, and in the purported interests of, others every day,” wrote the late USC law professor Christopher Stone, who advocated for the granting of rights to inanimate natural objects. “These ‘others’ are often creatures whose wants are far less verifiable, and even far more metaphysical in conception, than the wants of rivers, trees, and land.”
Despite the intrigue generated by the lawsuit, Lake Mary Jane’s efforts seem likely to fail. As The New Yorker notes, a 2020 bill by the Orange County charter commission which sought to give rights to waterways was fought against by business lobbyists who successfully added an amendment that prohibited local governments from granting legal rights to any part of the natural environment. The developer behind Meridian Lake is hence seeking to have Lake Mary Jane’s case dismissed on the grounds that the lake cannot invoke or be granted rights.
“We’re realistic,” attorney Meyers told The New Yorker. “We’re trying to make new law, and that’s always hard. But it’s like Michael Jordan said: You miss a hundred per cent of the shots you don’t take.”
6 Comments
How the f--- something that is not a 'legal person' file or hold standing in any court? It is not the lake that is suing, it is the attorney and if I was a Judge, I would throw it our before it even gets into the state of having a hearing as an incomplete application where there is not an actual applicant. Land is not a person or legal person and only a natural person or an organizational entities ultimately owned by natural persons can be a party to a lawsuit and file a lawsuit as a plaintiff. While an attorney may represent them, they must be in a contractual relationship with a client which must be a legal person and land is not sentient life. The lawyer can sue representing himself and file a claim against developers for violating laws that are to protect the lake and its life and ecosystem within the parameters of environmental protection laws and other like related laws but a lake can not sue. It sounds like the attorney is psychologically delusional and mentally ill if he sees the lake as a actual client where he can have an actual dialogue with. I think the way it sounds by the title and some description, the attorney would be deemed psychologically unfit to be an attorney and require psychological therapy or needs to readdress this case with a little more sensibility. Yes, corporations are constructs in themselves but they ultimately represent actual flesh & blood people after all. Living beings. Perhaps you can represent the interest of animal life. Sure. There you have that basis. There is also other tracks to initiate a case. The way it is being presented, it should be laughed out of court as not even a lawfully compliant filing the way it is written. This is not an argument to say there isn't paths to filing a case against developers to protect the lake. Just like any lawsuits that are filed by organizations like Columbia Riverkeepers and others that challenges development interest that may harm the ecological welfare of life on the Columbia river. Therefore, following a similar model for filing lawsuits against a developer would be a legally more sound way to pursue a lawsuit against developers on the basis of protecting the welfare of the life and ecological ecosystem of the lake and immediate area around the lake. Now that, you would have precedents. Right now, it sounds like a really wacky approach for a lawsuit.
You are neither an architect, lawyer, or judge. You're welcome to your opinion but they mean exactly nothing. Your detached-from-reality-walls-of-text are getting worse again by the day. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but maybe you need your meds adjusted?
Yeah, but every life form knows you have to be a legal person to be plaintiff or a defendant in a case for there to be a court case... to have a standing. A fucking rock doesn't have any legal standing to file a case. Living lifeforms do but they have to be sentient to even be considered of legal capacity to make decisions relating to a court and a lawyer can not enter into contract with someone who is legally incapacitated. A lake like a rock are the ultimate of legally incapacited because it has absolute zero capacity to think, process, or anything that requires some form of a brain. A flea or ant is more sentient than a rock or water filling a low spot in the landscape ( a lake, a pond, etc.). If you are a sentient life form then I can rationalize you as a legal person. A corporation is a legal person by proxy because its basically a tradename and legal construct that represents a person or group of persons. How is the lake itself, life? The lake itself is not living or is life itself. It may be inhabited by life. That life are residents and that life may have certain inalienable rights and that can be a case argued and there is to some extent precedents for that like every court case ever that involved environmental protection laws. All of them sets a whole slew of precedents often in connection with non-human life and their rights... such as salmon habitat protection, for an example.
corporations are people blah blah….but I think that a simpler solution is to extend some degree of liberties and rights to non-human life. trust me, I’m a libertarian.
I can support certain liberties and rights that exists as they fall into things like "environmental protection" laws and similar related law but unless life is sentient, it really can't be suing anything but it doesn't mean a sentient life can't bring a case and represent that of life that is also non-sentient or even if sentient, is not able to directly file the cases on their own but a lake is just a pit in the ground filled with water, in and of itself but there may be life that is in that ecosystem and that I do support and if you read what I wrote, I already alluded to that as a valid way to bring a case before the courts and that also is encompassed in the laws that we have in Federal and various state levels to protect the environment and ecosystems so said non-human life can be protected. This is what organized environmentalist groups are often formulated to establish. It may take a person to file a claim with the courts and the attorney can represent them and they ultimately are representing the protection of the liberties/rights of animals and their rights to live and their environment and ecosystems they depend on from being utterly destroyed or intoxicated with toxic substances, etc. We established such precedents for cases like that and that would have been the appropriate precedent this attorney should have been using in my opinion. The way this attorney appears to be going about it, I would be WTF? If I was the judge, I would be compelled to commit that attorney to psychological evaluation. Surely, there is ways to present cases of this nature and challenge developers. There are ways to go about it.
Lake Mary Jane. Mary Jane... why does that sound familiar?
I know... I'll sue!
Wait... what was I mad about...?
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