Homeowner’s Messy Lawsuit Tidily Wrapped Up by Judges

Robert Cunningham is 64 years old and thinks he’s got his Hodgkin’s disease licked. He lives alone and is a guy who, by and large, keeps to himself. His job would seem to suit him perfectly: He works a solo shift from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. for a company that monitors radio distress calls from boats at sea and, when necessary, dispatches help.

Most nights, not much happens. Most nights, he’s got time to think.

What he’s thinking about this week is his resounding legal victory over his Fountain Valley homeowner association. To use a baseball analogy, it’s like the beer-league team beating the Yankees.

The saga begins in 1993 when a workman complained of clutter on Cunningham’s patio. Fed up with similar complaints from neighbors, the Chateau Blanc Management Assn. sued Cunningham, claiming that he wasn’t conforming to its CC&Rs; (covenants, conditions and restrictions) and that his home represented a fire and safety hazard.

In May 1994, city fire and building inspectors toured Cunningham’s unit. They concluded that, while cluttered, it wasn’t unsafe. However, the association continued for another two years to make periodic demands that Cunningham discard various items, including books and clothing.

Growing increasingly angry, Cunningham countersued.

His suit went to trial and last year, a jury voted 9 to 3 in his favor. The judge, however, saw things differently and agreed to the association’s request for a new trial.

An appeal brought the state appellate court in Santa Ana into the fray and last week, a three-judge panel dropped a bomb on the homeowner association.

Seemingly speaking for every homeowner who’s wanted to pick their own color for a swing set, the court mauled the association’s actions.

“It is virtually impossible to say the association acted reasonably,” Presiding Judge David Sills wrote. While acknowledging an association’s rights, Sills added, “but these sections of the CC&Rs; cannot reasonably be read to allow an association to dictate the amount of clutter in which a person chooses to live. One man’s old piece of junk is another man’s objet d’art.”

Just getting warmed up, Sills continued, “The association’s rather high-handed attempt to micromanage Cunningham’s personal housekeeping, telling him how he could and could not use the interior rooms of his own house, clearly crossed the line and was beyond the purview of any legitimate interest it had in preventing undesirable external effects or maintaining property values.”

For people who like to run their own lives, the court’s decision was a godsend.

“It’s a big relief,” Cunningham told me this week, as we talked in his office. “My feeling about the opinion is that it’s as much for other homeowners as it is for me, other homeowners out there who won’t be browbeaten so severely and taken advantage of.”

The appellate ruling vindicated the judgment of attorney Alexandria Phillips, who took Cunningham’s case pro bono. She said she tried to settle the suit, but the association refused. “They wouldn’t because they were pretty sure they were going to win,” she said. “We were the underdog. Whoops.”

Not nearly so chipper is C. Mark Hopkins, who represented the association. Sounding like the proverbial fighter who wonders what hit him, Hopkins said he’ll probably recommend the association appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Clearly surprised at Sills’ vehemence, Hopkins cited the highly publicized case of neighbors who prevailed in a case against a Huntington Harbour woman, Elena Zagustin, whose house was filled with rubbish, feces and vermin. Cunningham’s neighbors live much closer to him than Zagustin’s do to her, he said.

“I don’t understand,” Hopkins said, “why, if the city and the county and the fire people and the news people . . . think she ought to clean up, why is my association roundly criticized for trying for 10 years to get this man to clean up his unit? And he lives wall-to-wall with his neighbors?”

The questions of filth or lack of sanitation weren’t central to the Cunningham case. Sills saw it as a control issue, and he wrote:

“Particularly galling to us--and clearly to the jury as well--was the presumptuous attempt to lecture Cunningham about getting rid of his old clothes, the way he kept his own bedroom, and the kind of reading materials he could have. To obtain some perspective here, we have the spectacle of a homeowner association telling a senior citizen suffering from Hodgkin’s disease that, in effect, he could not read in his own bed! When Cunningham bought his unit, we seriously doubt that he contemplated the association would ever tell him to clean up his own bedroom like some parent nagging an errant teenager.”

Hopkins shakes his head and says the justices have it all wrong. That’s not what the association was trying to do, he says.

But that’s how many residents perceive their associations. It’s just that, unlike an appeals court judge, they’re afraid to say so.

Cunningham wouldn’t gloat as we discussed the court opinion, and I asked him why not. Likening the protracted legal battle to warfare, the Navy veteran said, “I was trained as a warrior at one time, and the idea of going out and killing human beings . . . there’s still something about that, even though it may be right for the cause, it’s not something you take lightly, not something you take a whole lot of pride in, I don’t think.”

The next step is to hit the association for damages. Neither Cunningham nor Phillips would float dollar amounts at me.

“I would like to be adequately compensated for what I definitely consider to be an injustice,” Cunningham said.

I tried to detect a glint in his eye as he said that, but I just saw a man at peace.

Or, maybe it was the look of a man who, while working the overnight shift waiting for boats to sink, may suddenly be wondering if his own ship is about to come in.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, orby e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com