When a house is not a home

A Florida mother and daughter who violated their land sale contract by building a$100,000 house on their 10-acre plot will be able to use it as a barn or a pig sty, but not as a home, according to a Manatee County circuit judge.

Mosaic Phosphate had sold 7,000 acres of agricultural land 11 years ago, retaining mining rights and providing specifically that buyers could not build homes on the property.  Four years ago Alice and Yvonne Cislo bought the property, with notice of the restriction.  She went ahead and built her home in 2003.  Mosaic sued.

Judge Marc Gilner ruled for the phosphate company, issuing a permanent injunction prohibiting the Cislos from getting a certificate of occupancy for the home.  He refused to rule that the building be torn down, holding that it could be turned into an “agricultural structure.”