Real Estate & Property Law

We're Going To Nominate The 11th Circuit's "Porn Dorm" Case For A 2010 ZiPLeR Award

By Robert Thomas (inversecondemnation.com)

Our colleague Dwight Merriam reminds us that last year, a case related to a decision we posted about a couple of days ago was awarded a ZiPLeR.

Now in its thirteenth year, the award is presented by the Zoning and Planning Law Report for the "strangest, or at least more dramatic" land use cases each year. For an example of the awards edition of ZPLR, see here.

In 2009 it was the district court's decision in Flava Works, Inc. v. City of Miami, that merited an award. According to Dwight's write-up:

The We-Are-Just-Working-Girls Award, in yet another enforcement case, goes to cocodorm.com, which operates a website offering pornographic video over the internet for a fee. Thank you, Lora Lucero, for this nomination. Patricia Salkin also reported on it on her Law of the Land blog.

This isn?t the first enforcement case of this type. There was one earlier involving voyeurdorm.com, in which the court held that having attractive young women parading around a house wearing little or no clothing was not a home occupation or business use requiring any zoning approval in a residential zone, because all of it was conducted on the Internet. You should know I do arduous fact checking for these awards, including thoroughly checking out these sites to investigate the content. The voyeurdorm.com site is still up. Unfortunately, my stick-in-the-mud I.T. people have blocked access so I can?t complete my research.

The city of Miami issued an enforcement order against the cocodorm.com operation. Residents of the house are paid, with free room and board, to engage in sexual activities that are picked up by webcams and put out on the Internet. As with voyeurdorm.com, you can subscribe to the internet feed and buy magazines and DVDs shipped by the U.S. Postal Service or other carriers. The servers and the related equipment for the recorded video feeds are not in the house, and the address of the house is not on the website. No customers or vendors visit the house, and all of the business aspects are conducted elsewhere.

Given these facts, the federal district court ordered the enforcement order to be withdrawn. Good news for all of you readers looking to start up a home business and make a little extra cash during these tough times.

Maybe we could do zoningdorm.com (the domain name is available) with live webcam feeds showing lawyers pouring over zoning maps and preparing a variance application to allow a homeowner to bake and sell baklava from a residence, or crafting a slope easement for a turning lane on a subdivision map.

Now, you?re talking excitement.

Rather than revoke the previously-awarded ZiPLeR because the 11th Circuit reversed the district court's decision and concluded that cocodorm was operating a "business" in a residential district, we're going to nominate the 11th Circuit's opinion for one of this year's awards. Maybe the "TMI" or "Too Much Flava" Award for telling us more than we ever wanted to know about the inner workings of porn dorms.

Oh, and we are totally down with Dwight's "zoning dorm" concept, provided it meets all state and local government permitting regulations, of course. Or maybe we'll just wildcat it and locate our dorm in Houston, a city with no zoning code.

Zoningdorm.com located in a city with no zoning: how's that for irony?

Full post as published by inversecondemnation on June 28, 2010 (boomark / email).