Once-Obscure 'Hyperlocal' Dispute Between City & Ex-Marine Over Now-Destroyed $17K Houseboat Reaches U.S. High Court Threatening To Turn Nation's Entire Maritime Industry Inside Out

In Riviera Beach, Florida, The Palm Beach Post reports:

• Made of plywood with three sets of French doors, the squat two-story building tied up to a dock at the Riviera Beach Marina didn’t look like your average boat. So, perhaps it is fitting that the battle over Fane Lozman’s $17,000 floating home has spawned a nationwide and potentially far-reaching debate over exactly what constitutes a vessel.
  
  But no one saw it coming.
  
  At the beginning, it appeared to be yet another in a long line of petty disagreements between Riviera Beach officials and the former U.S. Marine turned financial trader turned self-styled corruption fighter — a city newcomer who was regularly hauled out of commission meetings for accusing elected officials of all manner of wrongdoing.
  
  But during the legal battle, both sides inadvertently unleashed uncertainty in a centuries-old area of law that affects everything that floats and anyone who makes their living in the multibillion-dollar maritime industry.
  
  So, when the U.S. Supreme Court sits Monday to hear Fane Lozman v. The City of Riviera Beach, hundreds of people with millions of dollars at stake will be watching.
  
  “It impacts everything in maritime law,” said Michael McLeod, a Boca Raton lawyer who is chairman of the Admiralty Law Committee of the Florida Bar. “It’s huge in South Florida because we live in the yachting capital of the world, but there’s humongous ramifications for the entire industry.”
  
  The list of groups that have joined the fight is impressive. There’s the National Marine Bankers Association, the American Gaming Association, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, and Floating Home Associations in Seattle, Wash., and Sausalito, Calif.
  
  Not to be overlooked, the U.S. solicitor general has weighed in, claiming the high court’s decision could have ripple effects for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Coast Guard and myriad other federal agencies that could be forced to change policies and possibly increase manpower if the definition of vessel is changed.
  
  Some of the claims are dramatic.
  
  If Lozman convinces the high court that his floating home is not a vessel, boats no longer could be used as collateral for loans, marine bankers claim in briefs filed with the court. The impact would be catastrophic for their industry and costly for anyone buying a boat. “The recreational boating industry would be crippled,” their attorneys claim.
  
  If the city wins its argument that if it floats it’s probably a boat, blackjack dealers on casino barges could be turned into federally protected seamen, which would have huge and expensive consequences, counters the gaming association, whose members operate 61 neon-covered barges across the nation.
  
  Stanford University law Professor Jeffrey Fisher, who will be making his 18th appearance before the high court when he argues Lozman’s case, laughed when asked how what began as a hyperlocal dispute about a floating house at a city marina could attract such widespread interest.
  
  It’s the “funny reality” that most Supreme Court cases are “plucked out of obscurity,” he said. While everyone understands the import of a decision on the Affordable Health Care Act or other such momentous cases as Roe v. Wade, “the bread and butter of the Supreme Court docket” are cases that highlight inconsistencies in what is supposed to be the law of the land. Often, the law of unintended consequences produces landmark decisions.

For more, see U.S. high court decision in ‘hyperlocal’ Riviera Beach case could help rewrite national maritime law.

See also, The Miami Herald: Floating home or vessel? South Florida man’s case going before U.S. Supreme Court (When Riviera Beach seized and later destroyed Fane Lozman’s floating home, no one expected it would create a legal battle that will have profound implications for the nation’s maritime industry).

For the Federal appeals court ruling currently under U.S. Supreme Court review, see City of Riviera Beach v. That Certain Unnamed Gray, Two-Story Vessel Approximately Fifty-Seven Feet In Length, 649 F.3d 1259 (11th Cir. 2011).