Challenge to Florida’s Unclaimed Property Law Revived on Appeal

A Florida couple will get a second chance to challenge the constitutionality of a state law that doesn’t entitle an owner to the earnings that accrued on “presumed unclaimed” property after it’s taken into state custody, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

A district court wrongly concluded that Alieda and Lawrence Maron failed to state a claim and that their insurance premium refund of $26.24 was “effectively abandoned,” and so it was no longer their property, Judge Andrew L. Brasher wrote for the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The appeals panel vacated a lower court’s dismissal of ...