Here’s one from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit joining the growing number of cases holding that government cannot satisfy due process with gestures that look like notice, but aren’t reasonably calculated to actually notify anyone.
In Warner v. Hillsborough County Clerk of Courts, No. 24-10748 (Aug. 17, 2026), the court concluded that although the ordinance which deems abandoned property forfeited if the government provides notice isn’t facially unconstitutional, the Clerk nonetheless failed to take step reasonably calculated to provide actual notice (the notices were published in a limited-circulation Spanish language newspaper), and thus any claim by the government to funds on deposit (but apparently abandoned) would be a taking.
The case started as an eviction. The tenant (Warner) deposited $3,600 into the court registry as required by Florida law. Years later, after the eviction case had been dismissed and no one had claimed the funds, the clerk treated the money as abandoned under Florida Statutes § 116.21 and transferred it to the county’s fine-and-forfeiture fund after sending a letter to an address the clerk knew was stale because thirteen return-to-sender notices had come back from mail previously sent there. The clerk also published notice in La Gaceta, a local primarly-Spanish newspaper, even though he had access through Florida’s e-filing system to Warner’s email address, telephone number, and another mailing address where he actually received mail. The district court concluded publication notice was enough, and deemed the deposited funds forfeited.
The Eleventh Circuit disagreed in part. It affirmed the district court’s ruling that the Florida forfeiture statute was facially invalid because it allows forfeiture without notice. The court concluded there are circumstances in which publication notice alone would be sufficient, such as when the owner of property is unknown. The constitutional defect was not the statute itself, but how it was applied.
Relying heavily on the classic procedural due process cases Mullane and Jones v. Flowers, the court reiterated the familiar rule: imputed notice after publication is generally a last resort, not a first choice. When the government has reasonably available means of contacting a known person, procedural due process requires more than running a notice in the legal advertisements section:
We hold that the Clerk’s use of La Gaceta violated the Due Process Clause in this instance because other means reasonably calculated to notify Warner were available.
Slip op. at 18.
And it didn’t save things that the clerk continued sending notices to an address that it already knew wasn’t working. Under Jones, once the government learns that its chosen method of notice has failed, it must take additional reasonable steps if practicable. Here, the court concluded, sending yet another letter to the same bad address wasn’t a reasonable step. Due process was not satisfied.
But the more interesting part of the opinion may be the court’s takings analysis. The county argued that once the money became “abandoned,” it could be escheated to the government without compensation because abandoned property has no owner. That’s generally correct, and the Supreme Court has long recognized the power of states to take custody of genuinely abandoned property. You snooze, you lose.
The Warner majority concluded, however, that the deposited funds were never validly deemed abandoned because the only evidence of abandonment was his failure to respond to notices he never constitutionally received, because county cannot bootstrap its own due process violation into proof of abandonment:
But the Clerk cannot premise abandonment on notices that were constitutionally deficient and that Warner never received.
In fact, an inference of abandonment in these particular circumstances would be constitutionally invalid as it would allow the government to take property because of its own failure to provide due process.
Slip op. at 26.
Because there was no valid basis to infer abandonment, the county’s appropriation of the money for public use amounted to a taking of private property without just compensation, and the clerk violated the Fifth Amendment when it transferred Warner’s deposit to the county’s forfeiture fund.
Second, the takings holding is notable because it links due process and property rights in a way courts do not always do. The majority refused to allow the government to characterize property as abandoned based on an owner’s failure to respond to constitutionally inadequate notice. No notice, no abandonment; no abandonment, no escheat; no escheat, and the government’s acquisition of the property looks a lot like a taking.
In sum, the government cannot “create” abandonment by failing to provide constitutionally adequate notice and then treating the owner’s silence as evidence that he intended to give up his property.
Warner v. Hillsborough County Clerk of Courts, No. 24-10748 (11th Cir. Aug. 17, 2026)
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