The exclusive jurisdiction of equity extends to and embraces, (1) all civil cases in which the primary right violated or to be declared, maintained or enforced is purely equitable and not legal, and (2) all civil cases in which the adjudication sought involves a right, estate, title, or interest created by equity, and not by law. This class of cases, of course, includes the equitable concepts of unjust enrichment and constructive trust and the interest in property created by a court of equity by application of the doctrine of constructive trusts. This class of cases falls under equitable jurisdiction alone, because of the nature of the primary or substantive right to be established, redressed, maintained, or enforced and not because of the nature of the remedies to be granted. Although in most such instances, the remedy is also equitable, it need not be necessarily so, such as, where, as in this case, the right to possession of a specific automobile is involved. Pomeroy states the proposition controlling this case, as follows:

“It is a proposition of universal application that courts of law never take cognizance of cases in which the primary right, estate, or interest to be maintained, or the violation of which is sought to be redressed, is purely equitable, unless such power has been expressly conferred by statute; and if the statutes have interfered and made the right or the violation of it cognizable by courts of law, such right thereby becomes to that extent legal.”

This "proposition of universal application" is no "hyper-technical view."

The exclusive jurisdiction of equity includes all civil cases based upon or relating to equitable estates, interests, and rights in property as the subject-matter of the action. Chief among these are cases involving the recognition of trusts arising by operation of law from the conduct of parties. Constructive trusts are one such species and are raised by equity for the purpose of working out right and justice, where there was no intention of the party to create a trust relationship. All instances of constructive trusts may be referred to what equity denotes as fraud, either actual or constructive, including acts or omissions in violation of fiduciary obligations. If one party obtains the legal title to property by fraud or by violation of confidence or of fiduciary relations or in any other unconscientious manner, so that he cannot equitably retain the property which really belongs to another, equity carries out its theory of a double ownership, equitable and legal, by impressing a constructive trust upon the property in favor of the one who is in good conscience entitled to it and who is considered in equity as the beneficial owner.

Whenever a person in a fiduciary capacity breaches his trust and purchases property with trust funds and takes the title thereto in his own name, without any declaration of trust, a trust arises with respect to such property in favor of the cestui que trust or beneficiary. Equity regards such a purchase as made in trust for the person beneficially interested, independent of any imputation of fraud and without requiring any proof of an intention to violate the fiduciary obligation because it is assumed that the purchaser intended to act in pursuance of his fiduciary duty and not in violation of it.

Williams Management Enterprises, Inc. v. Buonauro, 489 So.2d 160 (Fla. 5th DCA 1986) in essence, holds only that the common law remedy of replevin relates only to tangible personal property that a sheriff, executing a writ, can physically identify and seize and is inappropriate as applied to an intangible, such as, the debtor-creditor relationship existing between a lawyer and a client who has deposited money in the lawyer's trust account or as exists between a depositor and a bank as to monies deposited by the depositor with the bank. Therefore, the Buonauro case is inapplicable in this case where the property sought to be replevined is a specific Mercedes automobile.

However, where the right to possession of specific personal property is not a right in law, such as that of a legal titleholder or one claiming possession by or through the legal titleholder, but is a right cognizable only in equity and which must first be established by the bringing of a cause of action in equity the remedy of replevin in a court of law is unavailable, the claimant must sue in equity to have the equitable right established and that equitable right, enforced or established as a legal right, and may not, alternatively, file an action at law for replevin and establish the right to possession in a court of law based on equitable principles.

The line between these two branches or systems or bodies of law, while unclear and archaic to many who are unfamiliar and impatient with the historic reasons for it, was, and is, JURISDICTIONAL, although in a peculiar sense of that word. It clearly existed as part of the "common and statute laws of England" "down to the 4th day of July, 1776," has not been changed by statute in Florida and is of force in this state by virtue of section 2.01, Florida Statutes. In Florida since the adoption and ratification of the Constitution of 1868, circuit courts have been courts of general jurisdiction with original jurisdiction in all cases of law not cognizable by inferior law courts and with original jurisdiction in all cases of equity. In 1954, the Florida Supreme Court merged the 1950 Florida Common Law Rules and the 1950 Florida Equity Rules into one practice and procedure. However, neither by constitutional amendment, nor by legislative act, nor by court rule, has there been a merger or elimination of differences in substance between the two bodies of law known as common law and equity. The contrary view fails to recognize the vast and valuable differences between substantive law and procedure, between "right" and "remedy," and between "law" and "equity."