Northwest Baptist Church of Cocoa, Inc., Brevard Baptist Association, Inc., and Surfside Community Fellowship, Inc. v. Trustee Corporation of the King Street Baptist Church, Inc.
The Fifth District reversed a summary judgment that had voided two quitclaim deeds and awarded a writ of possession to a predecessor-in-title church, holding the plaintiff lacked standing at the inception of the case. The 1997 warranty deed left King Street Baptist with no ownership, possessory, or reversionary interest, and post-filing assignments from seventeen 'minority members' could not retroactively create standing. The court further held that even facially sufficient assignments would not help, because deciding whether the assignors were the 'true congregation' would require resolving a doctrinal controversy barred by the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine.
Key facts
- In October 1989 the Carltons conveyed a Brevard County parcel to King Street Baptist by warranty deed containing a 'reverter clause' vesting title in adhering minority members, then in Brevard Baptist Association, and then in the Florida Baptist Convention, if the congregation strayed from missionary Baptist doctrine.
- In May 1997 King Street Baptist deeded the property to Northwest Baptist Church under a substantially identical reverter clause that made no provision for the property ever to return to King Street Baptist.
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Holdings
- A grantor who conveys the entire fee retains no legally cognizable interest supporting standing where the operative deed's reverter clause provides no path for title to return to that…
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Why it matters
This opinion is a significant standing and jurisdiction decision well beyond the church-property context. It reaffirms in emphatic terms that standing is fixed at filing and that a post-suit assignment cannot be… — full analysis with a trial
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