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Man Jailed for Brown Lawn
Sunday, October 12th, 2008It’s too bad the homeowner’s association had $795 to spend on attorney’s fees in the case, but couldn’t give the poor guy a couple hundred bucks to help him comply with the rule.
32 Responses to “Man Jailed for Brown Lawn”
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HOA: Love it or leave it.
This seems like a civil matter to me.The guy says he doesn’t have the money.So,we now jail people who can’t pay their bills?
This is less straightforward than it might at first appear. I don’t like homeowners’ associations and it’s obviously sort of nutty that someone spends time in jail over not sodding his lawn. My (indirect) experience is that many HOAs end up run by busybodies who have more time than common sense and spend it making up rules about the font you should use for your address lettering and whether your satellite TV dish can be seen from the street.
But, this isn’t a case of the government having some ridiculous or invasive rule and using it’s power to enforce it. It’s a case where someone knowingly entered an agreement where this HOA would have a say in the upkeep of his lawn. It is a private contract that he was in breach of, apparently. People can, of course, choose alternate means of arbitration and resolution, but I am not really against courts being able to enforce contracts and it sounds like this guy got due process and chances to avoid this punishment.
Just to clarify, if we are to believe the judge in this case, it was within the homeowner’s means to meet his obligation.
This guy wants the benefits of living in a deed restricted community, but doesn’t want to comply with the rules himself. As a libertarian this is exactly the sort of enforcement of contracts which I believe IS a legitimate role for government.
Sure they weren’t terribly compassionate, but I suspect his attitude didn’t help – “I just ignored them” he’s quoted as saying. Doesn’t look to me like he’s made any effort. The yard is generally untidy. Wouldn’t have cost him a cent to mow the lawn and put the stuff lying around away.
He’s in jail for not obeying a court order. Of course, it’s the same as if he’d been ordered to pay Al Gore’s utility bill, no one normal’s got that kind of money laying around. He’s living paycheck to paycheck and had his car repo’ed, no one’s going to loan him money for sod.
It being a Home Owners Association, the next thing they’ll do is put a lien on his property, foreclose on it, and then sell it for peanuts.
Why he didn’t just water the lawn by hand, I don’t know. Maybe the HOA has a rule against it.
The only good news is that since he’s retired, he doesn’t have a job to loose.
You folks don’t get it.Yes he owes and may be able to pay,but,it’s a civil,not criminal matter. Dunn his income or place a lean on his assets.Jailing a person for not following the rules of a PRIVATE association is just plain wrong.As freedomfan stated above,it’s a private contract and as such should not carry a jail sentence for non payment.I would say eviction would be the proper course of action assuming the bank goes along,which I doubt.
Exactly, Michael Pack. This is government coming to the aide of a private group of citizens over matters of non-criminal law. The only time the police should be involved is when they decide to evict the guy, which seems like it should’ve happened first, right? I mean, why not have the guy thrown out, instead of having him thrown into what sounds like the equivalent of debtor’s prison, where it seems alot less likely that he’ll come up with the dough for the sod, so to speak.
The guy is not in jail for having a brown lawn. He’s in jail for contempt of court.
What that means is that a judge didn’t like his attitude and had him thrown in jail.
All of you who have a problem with this should recognize that this sort of thing is inevitable with a state run court monopoly. This is the same power used to coerce slaves into adjudicating cases. It is the same power used to force people to provide evidence to them.
If you think the government should be running courts and that judges should have the power to kidnap people at a whim, then you shouldn’t be too outraged at this guy’s problems.
BTW, This is why you don’t buy land associated with a HOA (although these days, it’s hard to get approval for new housing without promising the town government that you’ll have one – or so I’m told anyway).
At least some people understand the difference between civil and criminal law. For the rest: Epic fail, oh and turn in your voter card
FWIW, I don’t know that the HOA can evict this guy. I think it depends on the remedies available in his HOA agreement, but it seems unlikely that a bank would lend money for a home where some third party can evict the borrower from the property. I thought eviction could only be forced by a party that had legal claim to the property, though I can’t say for sure. Either way, I can only imagine a bank would take a dim view of some cranks on an HOA board doing anything that would encourage a borrower to walk away from his mortgage, which eviction would certainly do.
This is well afield of any expertise I have, but it seems like a suitable remedy available to the judge would be to attach this guy’s bank accounts or pension check (he’s retired) to get the funds to fix the lawn. He was explicitly jailed for contempt (refusing to pay when the judge thought that he actually could), not for being broke. But, I’m not sure where jailing him accomplishes anything but make him a burden on the taxpayer.
When will people stop “doing their job” and start using some fucking common sense?
freedomfan, My condominium association evicted someone last year for failure to pay their fees, so it can be done. (It was a very unpleasant situation, and I gather it wasn’t easy to do—they were two years behind in payments by the time it happened.) My guess is that eviction is just one of several ways that a home can become uninhabitable, and the bank takes its chances.
Windypundit, I stand corrected. Out of curiosity, when the homeowner’s / condominium association evicts someone, who then owns the evicted unit?
freedomfan, I believe it gets sent to a sheriff’s auction. The resulting proceeds are used to pay whatever is owed the association and then the remainder would go to the owner and/or the mortgage holder.
I doubt it would go to a sheriff’s sale,those are for taxes and are treated differently than other debt.Besides,the true owner is the one who holds the deed,in this case the bank.I’;d like to hear from a attorney to clear this up.
You know, I’m all for voluntary agreements. What gets me here is that those… well, there isn’t a polite word for them… on the HOA board decided to do this to a neighbor. Those aren’t human beings. They’re living excrement.
They ‘regret it came to this’? They ‘followed the procedures’? Well, whoop-de-doo. I’m certainly not much of a compassionate guy, but to even me this goes way beyond the pale. You have time to go to fucking court to slam this guy, but not the time to go over and water his lawn for an hour, or help him pick up the trash or weed it out?
Those folks don’t deserve to live in this world.
The courts really overstepped here. Yes, he entered a contract. Contempt of court was not the way to enforce the contract; if that were the case, we can now start jailing people for being unable to pay their credit card bills, and I thought debtor’s prisons were outlawed years ago.
The correct remedy was for the HOA to pay for it, and then file a for a writ of garnishment and/or a lien on the house for the amount they paid.
If I were the man’s attorney, I would seriously consider filing a complaint with the judicial tenure commission over this one.
freedomfan, an eviction for an owner just denies the owner the right to live there, but it doesn’t transfer the property. It’s a slow process: Even after judge approves the eviction, the owner has months to fix the problem before the sheriff’s deputies show up. It’s also an extreme measure, because unlike with rental units, there’s no way to put someone else in, and unoccupied units drive down the value of all the properties in the condo association. I guess the next step would be for the association to foreclose like any other lien holder, but I don’t think it’s an easy thing to do.
(I am not a lawyer, your mileage may vary, offer valid only in Illinois…)
I searched all over for a non-HOA home. Couldn’t find one, and building a new home was prohibitively expensive. So, pardon me if I am less than receptive to the whole “he knowingly joined into a private contract” crap. 10-1 that was all he could find as well. Fuck HOAs. I feel about them like most of you feel about the government.
He’s in jail for contempt of court. He could have responded to the court order in writing instead of ignoring it. The fault here is not with the government, but with the pricks who run the HOA. They are the ones who should be facing the fallout from this.
No one has commented on the dateline: “BAYONET POINT”.
How appropos.
Note to Bradley: the HOA didn’t spend their money on an attorney and expert witness, they spent the homeowner’s money. It’s right there in the order: he not only has to pay to sod his lawn, he has to pay their fees.
To those pointing out that he is in jail for contempt, not for sodding the lawn, I say you’re making a distinction without a difference. He’s not in jail for dropping trou at the judge, nor for shouting at trial. He’s in jail for not sodding his lawn. The cure is to sod his lawn. The HOA put him in jail by using the judge as their proxy, and until he obeys the HOA (by obeying the judge), he will stay in jail.
@ #20, chance: You didn’t “search all over for a non-HOA home”, or you would have found one. You restricted your search, probably based on a reasonable commute to your job. That’s understandable if you chose to accept that trade-off, but it’s also understandble to find a new job in a new area that is not overrun with HOAs.
I most states,if you fail to respond to a civil lawsuit,the court issues a default judgment that they can use to file a lean or take other action to collect.They do not throw you in jail.By not responding he admits to owing the debt.They use the judgment for collection .I see no reason this man is in jail.
Co-sign what Chance said. IMO, the idea of homeowners associations — other people having sway over what YOU do with YOUR home — undermines the entire point to owning property in the first place. If I pay for something, it is MINE to do whatever the fuck I feel like with it.
But, now, everyone who wants to own a home can! (Subject to restrictions such as these…)
Maybe he was trying to conserve water. In any event, I agree the best solution would have been to offer help, rather than take him to court. But then, we live in a litigious society, where it’s easier to take someone to court or rat them out to the city government rather than knock on their door and say, “Howdy, neighbor. I noticed your lawn wasn’t too happy. Anything I can do to help?”
But I guess I’m just naive.
I love that chance hates HOAs (membership completely voluntary) like most of us hate the government (mandatory at birth).
BTW, I’m in a nice neighborhood with no HOA. They’re not impossible to find.
b-psycho: Sounds like “zoning” to me.
Highway makes a valid point here; in all the meetings, resolutions, trips to the courthouse, and fees paid for this, it never occurred to anyone to do the decent thing and help a struggling neighbor.
On the other hand, there is a lot of blame to share here; you don’t just “ignore” court orders. I take it the homeowner never bothered to go to court and plead his case to the judge; I can’t imagine he wouldn’t have been granted more time to remedy the situation. If he’s retired, he should have either been able to take a second job or some odd work to make a few extra dollars to “sod” the lawn — or would buying $5 in grass seed and spending a few minutes a day with a hose even have been sufficient? You’d think somebody in the neighborhood would have had some spare grass seed in the shed out back even, or an extra sprinkler to lend.
The whole situation is beyond asinine. I imagine he’s probably been a difficult neighbor or never quite fit the mold of the neighborhood and the HOA took exceptional steps to make life difficult for the poor sod (pun). Voluntary or not, I make well and sure that neither of the two houses I own are under a HOA.
You Keep Telling Yourself……
…that this man went to jail for ignoring the court order, and not for having a brown lawn. Now you know what I mean when I say government is the gun in the room. Believe me, if this homeowner’s association had to enforce their own damn rules by deci…
“BTW, This is why you don’t buy land associated with a HOA”
Check the municipal codes governing your property. Mine are pretty restrictive, bare ground must be covered by landscaping material of some sort, cannot grow certain genus of trees, cannot have vegetation overhanging the sidewalk, etc etc. The city got in real PR trouble when they tried to enforce these codes by fining an aging war vet who had a wife with cancer. Note they didn’t throw him in jail without bail, they fined him. and had things not been cleared up those fines would assumingly be attached to his property as a lein.
In the end a newspaper got word of it and some neighbors organized a work party. Big box home store donated sod, community came together, problem solved.
It screwed me. My neighborhood was undergoing a code voilation sweep at the same time. I was looking forward to people cleaning up their front lawns. After the city got screwed in the press they decided to call off the enforcement action in my neighborhood.
For the numbers: 1,000 square foot lawn, professionally installed: bids from $1,600 to $1,800. And that was 5 years ago.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/article850257.ece
The follow-up story from Oct 13 is similar to #31. But the question still remains of why the HOA board didn’t at least try to help out instead of having the guy put in prison. All this story does is turn everyone against both the judge and the members of the HOA board. I’ll bet the neighbors who helped out didn’t even know this was happening until it made the papers.
Hopefully, the judge has to stand for election next month — he’ll be out on his ass banging a tin cup for loose change. And the entire board should be outed — have their names published in the paper so the community knows not to sell them any more food or gas. The residents should be thinking about new board members as well.