A federal judge has ruled against a property owner who alleged that the Town of Palm Beach wrongfully took his privately owned area of the beach for public access.
The dispute arose after the town in 2021 declined to enforce trespass rules on the privately owned portion of beach after determining that the public’s longstanding recreational use of it entitles the public to customary access under Florida law.
In his June 23 ruling, U.S. District Judge William P. Dimitrouleas found that the town was entitled to a judgment in its favor on property owner Leslie Daniels’ claim of a Fifth Amendment taking.
Palm Beach presented testimony from town officials and residents stating the area of Atlantic Ocean shoreline between Wells Road and Sunrise Avenue, including the Daniels-owned beach, had been continuously used by the public for recreation since at least the 1950s.
In addition, the town asserted its statutory right to replenish sand on the beach to battle erosion. The periodic beach renourishments were funded with public tax dollars.
“The court concludes that the Town established by a preponderance of the evidence that the public’s use of the restored beach has been ancient, reasonable, without interruption, and free from dispute and the public’s right to customary use therefore established,” Dimitrouleas said.
Daniels, who resides seasonally at his beachfront property at 100 Everglade Avenue, sued the town in 2025 for declaring his private, dry-sand beach to be available for public use.
Dimitrouleas’ ruling followed an April 6-10 bench trial wherein Daniels unsuccessfully sought $6.5 million in damages against the town for the alleged taking.
In February, Dimitrouleas issued a pre-trial judgment in favor of Daniels’ claim that the town violated his free-speech rights by prohibiting him from erecting “private property” signs on his beach land.
In 2004, Daniels and his company, 100 Everglades LLC, bought his 1.2-acre property at 100 Everglade Avenue for $11 million. The property is divided by North Ocean Boulevard, with a home on the west side of that road. East of the road is a parcel that includes an improved area with a beach cabana and a cobblestone patio above and landward of a seawall.
The Daniels property also includes an unimproved beach area that runs 167 feet along the Atlantic Ocean, and that extends about 75 feet seaward of the seawall to an Erosion Control Line (ECL) designated by the State of Florida in 2002. The ECL is the legal boundary between the Daniels-owned beach and the state-owned public beach.
Town attorney Joanne O’Connor, of Jones Foster PA, said the town never disputed that Daniels owns the dry-sand beach upland of the ECL.
“The question is whether the public acquired the right to use that beach for traditional recreational purposes,” O’Connor told the Palm Beach Civic Association. “The judge is saying the public can continue to do those recreational activities and neither the private property owners nor the town can tell them to leave.”
The Daniels beach lies within a .4-mile stretch of restored beach east of North Ocean Boulevard and bounded by Wells Road to the north and Sunset Avenue to the south.
Town witnesses testified that the restored beach is unique among the roughly 13 miles of beachfront in the town because it historically appears as an unguarded public beach, even though it is not. The witnesses testified that, until 2020, there were no gates, fences or barriers that restricted public access to the restored beach at any of several east-west streets. The restored beach attracted the public because of the historic availability of public parking and accessibility.
“We renourish beaches in a lot of places throughout town,” O’Connor said. “This is a unique area of beach, from Wells to Sunrise, where the homes are across the street from the beach and for decades the beach always presented like it was open to everyone.”
Even when hedges, improved landscaping and cabanas began to appear over the last 15 years or so, the public continued to make use of this beach area, O’Connor said.
No one objected to the public use of the restored beach until 2019 and 2020, a period when activity in outdoor recreational areas intensified because of the Covid-19 pandemic, she said.
Florida law contains a doctrine that recognizes customary use of a beach after more than 20 years of continuous public use. The town argued that customary use of the beach was established prior to Daniels’ purchase of the property in 2004.
“Customary use rights had arisen,” O’Connor said. “Then the town added publicly funded sand upland on the privately owned beach and another statutory use right was created.”
Sand nourishments
Just prior to 2003, the town shoreline from Midtown Beach northward to the area near Wells Road was deemed “critically eroded,” which qualified it for periodic state-funded sand nourishments with public tax dollars. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection issued the town a permit for a 2.4-mile Midtown Beach expansion and nourishment project that included the restored beach where Daniels’ beach is located.
In 2002, a prior owner of the property at 100 Everglade Avenue granted the town a temporary construction easement over the area of beach where the Daniels beach is now located to “construct, implement and maintain” the Midtown renourishment.
Dr. Michael Jenkins, a coastal engineer with West Palm Beach-based Applied Technology & Management and a coastal consultant to the Town of Palm Beach, testified that the 2003 Midtown sand nourishment extended the dry sand beach more than 150 feet from the seawall, including the full nourishment of the 75-foot Daniels-owned beach.
Additional nourishments of the restored beach, including the Daniels beach, were performed in 2006 and 2015. Town witnesses testified that the public continued to use the beach for recreational activities.
Conflict over easements
In 2018, the Midtown sand nourishment project became federally authorized and funded. In 2019, the town requested that Daniels and other beach parcel owners along the restored beach execute perpetual easements required by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Daniels testified that he and some of his neighbors took issue with the perpetual nature and public-use language included in those easements.
The restored beach, including the Daniels beach, was nourished again in 2020 as part of the federal Midtown project after Daniels and other property owners agreed to grant temporary easements to the Army Corps under a compromise agreement between the Corps and the town.
But that arrangement was not repeated in 2026, when the Corps insisted on perpetual easements from private beach owners for the Midtown restoration completed on May 25. The Corps eliminated the beach from Wells Road to Root Trail from the renourishment plan after Daniels and other owners refused to grant perpetual easements.
Signage and trespass
In 2019 and 2020, Daniels and some of his neighbors began complaining of increased public use of the beach by non-residents and asserted that they had exclusive use rights to the dry-sand portion of the restored beach.
The town responded by posting municipal beach rule signage, installed gates at public accesses, and adopted ordinances closing those beach accesses at night. The town reduced public parking in the neighborhood by converting east-west streets to resident-only parking and by converting spaces on North County Road to Sunrise Avenue from free to paid parking.
For the first time, the town, at the request of the private beach owners, also issued trespass warnings to members of the public using the restored beach.
In late summer 2020, wooden posts were installed in the dry sand – something that had never happened along the restored beach. This led members of the public to complain of being denied their longstanding recreational use.
In 2021, the town sought and received a legal opinion from the Akerman law firm, which said there is a “strong argument” that private property owners do not have a right to deny the public access to a restored beach whenever there is an established ECL and traditional public use. Town Manager Kirk Blouin testified he understood the Akerman opinion to mean the public had acquired a right to use the restored beach. Palm Beach police stopped enforcing trespass law on the beach in October 2021.
Dimitrouleas noted in his findings that Daniels, in his testimony, acknowledged the beach’s public use and did not dispute that he benefited from the sand renourishments.
In addition to Daniels, Jenkins and Blouin, witnesses who testified at the trial include Police Chief Nicholas Caristo, Palm Beach Public Works Director Paul Brazil and Town Engineer Patricia Strayer, and residents of the area between Wells Road and Sunrise Avenue. Among them was Michael Pucillo, a lifelong Palm Beach resident and former Town Council president who is now chairman of the Palm Beach Civic Association.
“Hopefully, as a result of this decision, the town and the residents in the area can find a way to come to an agreement that will result in this section of beach being part of the next renourishment program,” Pucillo said during an interview for this article. “If the Civic Association can be helpful in any way toward achieving that goal, we’re ready to do so.”
In addition to O’Connor, the town was represented at trial by Roberto Vargas and Lainey Francisco of Jones Foster PA.
Daniels and 100 Everglades LLC are represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation and by Joseph P. Kenney and Timothy W. Weber of Weber Crabb & Wein PA of St. Petersburg.
Daniels has 30 days from the date when Dimitrouleas’ decision is entered into the record to appeal it to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Attempts to reach Daniels and the attorneys representing him in this case to comment for this article were not immediately successful.
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