It's not often that we get to report on a true landmark court decision, but this week, a federal appeals court in Florida handed down a ruling that is sure to be even more controversial than the upcoming Supreme Court ruling on the Obamacare mandate.  It's an issue that divides Americans more than any other-- more than taxes, health care, guns, or religion.  If you are a red-blooded American, chances are you have a strong feeling one way or another on this issue.  The issue, of course, is speed bumps.

The vast majority of Americans fall into one of two warring camps on speed bumps.  On the one side are the speeders.  Speeders feel that posted speed limits are merely guidelines, mostly intended for poor drivers, i.e. drivers other than themselves.  Speeders feel that they should be allowed to drive any speed at which they can keep all four tires on flat pavement, children at play be damned-- that's what watchful parents and backyards are for, according to speeder logic.  On the other side are sticklers.  For sticklers, 25 means 25, and they will let the be known, often to their long-suffering spouse from the passenger seat (sorry Dad, I'm talking about you here).  When sticklers tire of their neighborhood vigils to make sure that speeders are punished to the fullest extent of the law, they often invite other sticklers to community meetings and plot to install speed bumps, or in stickler parlance, the "traffic calming devices".  These impediments infuriate speeders as they can no longer make their fifteen mile morning commute in the ten minutes they have allowed for it.

If there is anything more likely to cause conflict among neighbors than speed bumps, it is driveway easements-- examples here, here, here, and here.  Driveway easements involving sharing rights to property, and in general, Americans do not embrace sharing.  To most Americans, sharing is an artificial concept invented by politically correct parents to trick their small children into affording them a moment of peace and quiet.  Since sharing is framed as punishment by these parents, there is little wonder that their children are quick to abandon the concept as soon as they start to gain a little independence.  So for those aged seven and up, the dominant American concept is the same as for those three and under: "mine", not "share". 

In the case at issue, Adrian and Charline Wingate owned property in Santa Rosa County Florida. In 1999, the Wingates granted a driveway easement to Adrain's relative Freddie Wingate and his then wife Peggy Ann Wingate, to access their adjacent property.  Peggy Ann died, and Freddie remarried, to Gloria Dianne Wingate.  Maybe Gloria Dianne was a speeder... at any rate, by 2009, Adrian and Charline had apparently tired of the cars zooming across their property, and installed speed bumps on the driveway, along with concrete barriers alongside the drive to prevent cars from avoiding the speed bumps.

This caused a rift that could not be resolved within the family.  Freddie and Gloria Dianne filed suit to force Adrian and Charline to remove the speed bumps and concrete barriers, claiming that their right to use the easement was "substantially diminished", and that the speed bumps posed a danger to drivers, their passengers, and their vehicles.  Adrian and Charlene countered that the speed bumps were needed to protect small children in the area, since drivers had routinely ignored posted speed limits on the drive and zoomed across their property at high rates of speed.  They claimed that the speed bumps were not dangerous.

The language of the easement neither explicitly granted Adrian and Charline the right to place speed bumps, nor Freddie and Gloria Dianne the right to ingress and egress free of speed bumps. So the justice system was tasked with deciding the reasonableness of the speed bumps.  The judge in the trial court case, likely a speeder or at least a speeder sympathizer, basically ruled that any speed bumps were an unreasonable interference with Freddie and Gloria Dianne's right to ingress and egress, and ordered their removal.  But this week, the appeals court overturned that ruling, finding that the reasonableness of the speed bumps would depend on "the number of speed bumps, their height, the spacing between speed bumps, the necessity for their placement in the particular area, and their effect on vehicles and traffic flow."

So, at least in some circumstances, there is current legal precedent that property owners can place speed bumps across driveway easements that cross their properties.  Score a big win for the sticklers!