Yard by the Sq. Yd.
For Lawn That Never Needs a Trim, Homeowner Goes to Berber Shop Steve Nadwairski was the only one in his New Port Richey, Fla., neighborhood who didn’t have to invest any of his time or money to maintain his front lawn. Oh, sure, maybe run a vacuum cleaner now and then, but that’s about it.
Nadwairski and his wife, Mildred, had been vexed over the years by the difficulty of seeding their sloped front lawn. Rainfall would wash the seeds away, and money for sod wasn’t in the retired couple’s budget.
The next logical step? The Nadwairskis covered their bare dirt lawn with a patchwork of carpet swatches, which stayed in place for close to two years. While this guaranteed them the most colorful lawn in town, neighbors and county officials were less than enthusiastic.
Steven Spence, the code enforcement manager for Pasco County, says the county has no specific ordinance against residents carpeting their lawns. The complaints against the Nad- wairskis had to go through the civil court process, Spence explains, which allowed them to keep the swatches in place for such a long period of time.
A Pasco County judge eventually ruled that the perpetually soggy carpet swatches were a nuisance and a pest magnet, and ordered the couple to remove them.
In May, the Nadwairskis were delighted to find a small army of volunteers—including two county commissioners—who removed the carpeting, and donated and in- stalled fresh sod.
Nadwairski plans to further beautify his property with plants (live ones, dare we hope?) and perhaps a birdbath.
*&%$#@!
Vitriolic Violator Vents With Poison Pen While Paying Parking Penalty Most of us have a reasonably good sense of when to keep our mouths shut. But if we absolutely have to get the last word in, doing so on paper can be adequately cathartic (not to mention safer).
Eva Sas took a bit of a different approach, though. Instead of jotting down, let’s say, an anatomical reference and discarding it, the Rutgers University student wrote it in the memo portion of a check that was used to pay a parking fine. She then mailed the check to the Municipal Court of New Brunswick, N.J.
The comment caught the eye of an employee in the cashier department and was passed along to a judge, who refused to accept the check. He decided instead that an official response was called for—a summons for contempt of court.
Puzzlingly, despite the existence of a 1999 directive from the New Jersey state judiciary deeming it “inappropriate” for judges to penalize citizens for writing offensive comments “in letters, on checks or on envelopes,” Sas incurred an additional $100 fine and ended up owing $122—which, for some reason, she paid in cash.
Dollars and Scents
Plaintiffs Seek a Whiff of Justice after Malodorous Mishaps Things have gotten down and dirty lately in the courts as sewage-related cases have spilled onto the docket.
A Fort Pierce, Fla., home- owner had two unwelcome surprises to deal with, the first coming last year when sewage backed up into his house.
When it happened again, a local utility crew came out but failed to locate Donald Griffith’s sewer connection. Earlier this year, Griffith, 66, did some digging of his own and unearthed his second surprise —a septic tank.
Griffith claims he has been billed by the utility since 1979 for sewer service he never received. He is suing the utility company for $16,000 plus interest and attorney fees. A Santa Cruz, Calif., man recently won a lawsuit against American Airlines after one of its planes—like a giant mechanical pigeon—released two chunks of frozen toilet waste that hit his boat.
The waste, known as “blue ice” because of the dark blue chemical that airlines use to break down solid matter, crashed through the boat’s skylight and missed Ray Erickson, 72, by about 10 feet. Erickson sued the airline in small claims court and was awarded damages of more than $3,000 in June.
And in New York state a man is flush with cash after a restroom mishap that left him with an injured thumb.
Cedric Makara of Brook- lyn was attempting to exit a Manhattan restroom that was missing its doorknob. As he put his hand through the hole to pull the door open, another man tried to enter and pushed the door, injuring Makara’s hand.
Though the defense pooh-poohed his claim, a jury in May awarded Makara a jackpotty of almost $3 million.
The lesson here seems to be that if you want to come out smelling like a rose, you first have to raise a stink.
“Oh, and Then There Was the Time …”
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