Tag Archives: Lawsuit

Texas Clock Boy is Back, For All The Wrong Reasons

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Well, I’m no longer a fan of the so-called ‘Ahmed, the Clock Kid.’ He’s the Texas 14-year-old who assembled a clock and thought it was cool enough to show his science teacher. In our no-tolerance world a kid can’t even point his finger and say “bang, bang” without the police being called. When the cops started interrogating Ahmed about whether the clock was a bomb, it became a viral sensation. He was solicited by colleges, got an invitation to the White House.

Now, it seems that Ahmed and his family want to sue the school and the police department for $15,000,000. Apparently Ahmed was so ‘traumatized’ by the incident he deserves that princely sum to help him get his life back together. He once had a great future ahead of him. But I wouldn’t hire him now. I wouldn’t want to contribute to his tuition.

This country’s tort lawsuit machine gives a lot of people around the world some good reasons to despise us.

(link to clock kid’s lawsuit)

 

 

Searching Out Hoarders

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Yes, indeed, certain Homeowners Associations are actually doing unannounced mandatory inspections for hoarding. Among the items not to be hoarded are books! Scary, isn’t it? 

I have to make a confession here. I hoard books. I still own just about every book I ever read. None are piled on the floor, but my shelves are packed.  Somehow, I just thought my grandkids might someday wonder how their old grandpa got the nutty ideas in his head for some of the directions in life he took.

My mother was a wise old bird. She had a ‘secret compartment’ on her shelves that held some books my brothers and I were forbidden from reading. Of course, as soon as I discovered the ‘secret section’ I made a good inventory and went back as often as I dared. So at the age of ten, I started making my way through a number of naughty writers like Ayn Rand, Gore Vidal, D.H. Lawrence and Aldous Huxley. I don’t remember many turned down pages, but I do remember that Ape And Essence was kind of titillating,

Among the forbidden books were some by James Madison and Charles Dickens. Ah yes, there was also a book called Fahrenheit 451.

It was about people who hoard such things as books. And the local HOA squad goes out and torches the illegal collections.

In my forty year career as a news reporter, I’ve walked into hundreds, perhaps even thousands of homes. Some were clean. Some were not.  But in all those years I never saw anyone’s book collection that should have been confiscated. 

Hoarding is a problem. But isn’t it the wildest form of arrogance for a private non-profit corporation known as a Homeowners Association to do surprise inspections and make random decisions about what is and isn’t ‘hoarding’?  I don’t like mice. Or termites. But just keep your hands off my books!

 

Kind Of Funny, When The News Media Begin To ‘Get It!’

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Yep, nobody’s guiltier than this long-time reporter. So many times over the past four decades the real import of a story has just  sailed over my stupid fuzzy head.

But it’s fun to be a witness when a reporter suddenly has that head-thunking moment when he or she realizes that they’re actually reporting on a story that has real national significance!

Today’s ‘head-thunker’ is Jodie Fleischer of “Channel 2 Action News” in Forsyth County, Georgia. She’s just discovered that private HOA security guards are embued with the same powers as police officers in making traffic stops inside Homeowners Associations. Now try to understand this: Homeowners Associations are private non-profit corporations which have ZERO government powers, ZERO government enforcement abilities. Yet these sleazy little white-bastion gated communities are acting like they have all the Constitutional Powers customarily reserved for trained police officers. Every trained cop in the country should be mightily offended.

We’ve already had the Trayvon Martin disaster where an untrained ‘HOA security cop’ killed a kid who was walking through the neighborhood. Again, I have no opinion as to whether the fault was Trayvon’s or George Zimmerman’s. But this is like a ticking time bomb in every one of the nation’s carefully coiffed gated communities.

Trial lawyers are broke right now. Their phones have stopped ringing. The recession has eaten deeply into their personal savings. They are birds-of-prey at this moment, floating and circling over the countryside looking for any available carrion in these HOA communities. Every single time a private security guard pulls his lights, siren, badge and ticket writing stunt on a detained motorist, there’s a lawsuit in the making.

Every time a lusty young private HOA security guard takes a sideways glance at a low-cut blouse on the most recently detained motorist, there’s gonna be Hell to pay.

And it ain’t Hell that’s going to be paying the legal bills. It’s each and every member of that private gated Homeowners Association.

Jodie Fleischer, take it from a long-time fellow reporter. You’re hanging onto the threads of a donkey’s tail. This story will kick you into the mud, or into the Big Leagues.

http://tinyurl.com/c3fbb7k

(original source)

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/do-security-guards-issuing-traffic-tickets-overste/nXXbD/ 

 

Don’t Like The Blogger? Sue His Butt!

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They’re often called SLAPP lawsuits, a frivolous suit filed just to shut up an annoying critic.  The acronym stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation.” SLAPPS were sometimes used by major companies to hush up environmentalists. Sometimes it was used the other way around. The bottom line was that lawyers were hired to cause the other side great expense and great anxiety, nothing more, nothing less.

SLAPP lawsuits have made their way into the world of Homeowners Associations, too. If you don’t like the neighborhood critic, just hammer him with a SLAPP lawsuit. But there’s a troubling little annoyance called ‘The First Amendment’, and a troubling little Supreme Court decision called ‘New York Times vs. Sullivan’ that essentially says if you’re a public figure you’ll get nailed if you try to jam up the Free Speech rights of the neighborhood critic. A public figure has to be able to prove ‘actual malice’ in a lawsuit against someone who’s just expressing an honest opinion about what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s more complex, of course, but I go into the subject in detail in my new book, “Neighbors At War!”

But the commentary linked below shows that it can be very expensive for an HOA board member to use neighborhood monies to fund a lawsuit against the local loudmouth. Nobody wins in these idiotic SLAPP lawsuits. Everybody loses, that is, with the exception of the lawyers who file and defend  such lawsuits. They always make money. That’s why there are so many lawyer jokes in the public discourse.

The wisest words in the story linked below: Get over it. Move on.

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/technology/florida-homeowners-association-sues-resident-critical-blog-comments-seeks-identity

Monopoly? (guest blogger, Nila Ridings)

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Not sure why the game of Monopoly always led to fights when we were kids. Someone would invariably cheat, the others would protest, and….there went the neighborhood!

Same thing goes on today in many American Homeowners Associations! Your new retirement community seems perfect, the dues seem about right. Suddenly, without notice the rules change. Monthly dues skyrocket from $180 to $500 a month, with even more hikes on the way. 

When you weren’t watching the rules changed. They changed because a new developer or a new majority took over the HOA. Now, you suddenly find yourself foreclosed upon, or you’re priced right out of the neighborhood where you once had your dream home. 
 
Don’t believe it?

Read the link below and weep.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2013-03-17/news/os-lk-lauren-ritchie-homeowner-associations-20130317_1_homeowner-association-levy-fees-subdivision