Feuds Take Homeowner Groups to Legal Limits : Property: Bulging association case files in O.C. cover everything from overweight pets to satellite dishes.

John Drews’ life has never been quite the same since he took the Harbor Ridge Assn. to court eight years ago.

A Newport Beach heart surgeon, Drews sued the homeowner association when it refused to allow him to trim the trees that had grown to obstruct his home’s panoramic view of Newport Harbor.

As the resulting legal battle heated up, Drews took leave from his medical practice to give the case his complete attention.

“I think our case went longer than the Iran-Contra trial of (President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Adviser) John Poindexter,” he said. “And it was all over a bunch of trees. It was so ludicrous. I just wanted to get away from those people.”

Ultimately, after running up legal bills that topped $150,000, Drews prevailed in a two-week jury trial. As soon as the trees were trimmed, he sold the $950,000 house.

But the experience left such scars--”I felt so wronged”--that the 52-year-old heart surgeon decided to chuck a lucrative medical career to enroll in law school.

The history of homeowners’ associations in Orange County and Southern California is full of stories just like Drews’.

They involve neighborhood feuds over association rules prohibiting such things as pets that weigh too much, privacy fences that are too private, garage doors that remain open too long, back yard satellite dishes, home paint colors deemed nonconforming and more.

One of the most unusual drove a woman from her Santa Ana condo a couple years ago, when the Townsquare Owners Assn. cited the 51-year-old grandmother for kissing her date good night in the driveway of her complex. Her transgression: “doing bad things for an hour” in a parked car.

Many homeowner associations were originally created to provide services traditionally delivered by cities and counties. Over the past two decades, these “residential governments” have multiplied dramatically and now number an estimated 150,000 nationally, and 20,000 in California covering communities where some 5 million people live.

(Only Florida has more associations than California.)

For thousands of homeowners, the attraction can be one of simple economics. Residents pay monthly fees to maintain attractive neighborhood landscaping or for access to common recreational amenities such as golf courses, parks, clubhouses, lakes, tennis courts and swimming pools.

But this growth has not come without problems. Courthouses are full of association disputes, some of which have grown from the tiny neighborhood battle to the legal cause celebre.

Only two weeks ago, the California Supreme Court added more clout to homeowner groups throughout the state when it ruled that associations could ban cats and other pets from homes.

“It’s just unbelievable,” said attorney Joel Tamray, who represented the woman seeking to keep her three felines, Boo-Boo, Dockers and Tulip. “Anybody buying a condo these days really should take a hard look. I think this decision alone could depreciate condominiums by at least 10%.”

In the higher reaches of homeowner association bureaucracy, however, Debra Bass, a spokeswoman for the Community Association Institute in Arlington, Va., said the decision in “the cat case” and others like it are working to maintain the “sense of order” people expect when they buy into communities governed by their neighbors.

“Homes are the largest investments in people’s lives,” said Bass. “Associations provide people stable and predictable environments. They also give residents access to neighborhood things like swimming pools and tennis courts--amenities that were once the exclusive domain of the wealthy.”

At their best, Bass said, homeowner groups serve the common interests of the residents. In the up-and-down world of the real estate marketplace, for example, rules governing neighborhood neatness and uniformity can help keep property values somewhat stable, even though some residents might gripe about having to cut their grass or weed their gardens according to association schedules.

A united homeowner association can also prove to be a worthy opponent for powerful developers or home builders in disputes over home construction defects and shoddy workmanship. Bass said there “numerous examples of associations which have won multimillion-dollar judgments against big developers because of problems they have caused in the neighborhoods.”

Then again, people like state Assemblyman Dan Hauser (D-Arcata) have seen associations at their worst.

“Most people have no idea what they are getting into,” said Hauser, chairman of the Assembly’s Committee on Housing and Community Development. “They thought they were buying a house--their castle--and then find out they can’t paint the house blue; they gotta pull weeds when somebody tells them; and they can’t put a gazebo or hot tub in the back yard because it’s really not your back yard.”

Consider the case of Marty Goodman:

When Goodman purchased her Fullerton condo 17 years ago, she also bought into a belief that the local homeowner’s association would maintain the attractive landscaping and the “delightful” water fountain.

Ever since, the 76-year-old widow has dutifully paid her monthly maintenance fees--now hovering near $200 per month--even though the fountain was turned off years ago and the grounds have long lost their luster.

Last week, in a trembling voice, Goodman said her Amberwood-Fullerton Homeowners Assn. went too far when they asked her to dig up the rose bushes she and a friend planted to provide some color to the area.

In its letter dated Aug. 25, the association stated: “It’s been brought to the attention of the Board of Directors that you have been planting roses outside of your patio area. This is in violation of the Common Area Rules and Regulations of your association. . . . We are hoping that you will have this issue resolved immediately upon receipt of this letter.”

Said Goodman: “I put those roses in the ground five years ago. Me and my neighbor have tended to them. Now they want me to dig them up? I’m not gonna do it.”

It turns out that Goodman will be able to keep her roses after all. Amberwood President Mary Lee Todd said the letter was the work of one board member who might have had “a personal thing” against Goodman.

Todd said the association has more serious problems to tend to than Goodman’s roses, even though they are “growing a little wild.” Todd said homeowners are still trying to recover from the loss of nearly $1 million embezzled by a former association manager.

The problems often come down to cases in which association directors simply take their authority too far.

“Too often, in my opinion, you have people in charge of these associations who always wanted to be the fire chief, or the police chief,” Hauser said. “Because nobody wants to take on the responsibility of managing these things, you have these people with all the power, and, by God, they are going to enforce the rules.”

In recent years, some relief for residents has come in the form of state legislation which requires homeowner associations, like all other forms of government, to hold their meetings in public.

“For the most part, we found that the workings of the associations were a very closed process,” Hauser said. “We wanted to make sure everybody was provided a chance to know what was going on.”

Moreover, new legislation, which took effect in January, now requires all warring parties in association disputes to first seek some form of mediation before bringing their fights to court.

But with the boom in association living--it is estimated that one in eight Americans lives in a community governed by an association--comes a corresponding increase in problems that require some form of attorney-assisted resolution.

“These kinds of disputes are probably the fastest growing areas of law,” said Hauser.

So it is no surprise that some attorneys have tailored their entire practices to deal with the legal vagaries of association living.

In Irvine, for example, the law firm of Fiore, Nordberg, Walker & Racobs has represented about 2,000 associations in Orange, Riverside, Los Angeles and San Diego counties. Earlier this month, the firm sponsored its eighth annual seminar for those interested in community association law and management, and about 270 people showed up.

Throughout Southern California, San Diego attorney Sandra Brower is known as one of the best advocates in business for the owners of satellite dishes.

In about a dozen decisions against homeowner associations, Brower said, she’s never lost a dish.

Her most-publicized victory--which remains the only case of its kind ever to be reviewed by a California appeals court--came in a case involving the Trabuco Canyon community of Portola Hills.

Resident John James said he knew about the association’s ban on satellite dishes, but put it up in his back yard anyway, because he thought the association’s board of directors would be “reasonable.”

Aside from the added entertainment channels it provides, James said the dish was also important for capturing weather forecasts from around the world for use in his work as a pilot for a local family.

James said he attempted to negotiate and pay for a variance in the association rules to allow for the dish, but was turned down. Within two weeks after the dish was installed in 1987, he got a letter from his association’s board of directors.

“There were a couple egomaniacs on that board who felt very strongly that they would prevail,” James said. “They went and got themselves an attorney. My attorney (Brower) just buried him.”

In the end, James said, the $40,000 he spent to keep his $1,000-dish was well worth the effort. As part of the court’s decision, the court ordered the association to pay James’ attorneys fees plus $3,000 in sanctions for bringing a frivolous lawsuit.

“It’s the strangest thing, but another guy in the neighborhood put up a satellite dish and the board is now going after him, too,” James said. “I guess it’s true when they say a fool repeats his folly.”

In the second case, the president of Portola Hills Homeowner Assn. No. 1, Margurett Nicholson, agrees with James. She said the association has “learned nothing” from its experience with James.

“I was not in favor of this lawsuit, but we have an attorney on the board who kind of controls things,” Nicholson said. “I’m totally frustrated.”

Newport Beach attorney Stanley Feldsott is a veteran of these wars, having represented about 300 associations in California and some homeowners, including Drews the heart surgeon.

Some of the most obscure legal files involving associations have, at some time or another, found their way to his briefcase.

One involved a Palos Verdes man who withheld $500 in association fees because he alleged the association used an insecticide inside his unit that killed his two pet goldfish.

Representing the Palos Verdes Bay Club Assn., Feldsott won the case for his clients and the resident was forced to pay legal fees totaling $20,000 per goldfish.

In Marina del Rey, the attorney has taken on the case of a woman who is fighting her association’s rules against the type of bamboo shade she placed on her condominium balcony.

The shade in question is a three-piece model. The association prefers a one-piece shade. The fight continues, but the legal bills have passed the $100,000 mark.

Still, nothing seems to tickle him more mention of the 1992 case involving a couple of overweight dogs named Katie and Kahlua in Corona del Mar.

At the time, Feldsott was representing the Jasmine Park Homeowners Assn., which had a ban on dogs exceeding the association’s 35-pound weight limit, and sued homeowners whose canines tipped the neighborhood scales.

While one resident placed her pup on a low-fat, high-fiber diet to make weight, Gary Roberts, the owner of a 48-pound Labrador retriever, and Tania Allard, who had a 100-pound, partially-blind and arthritic Airedale, decided to challenge the regulation.

“At first I thought it was a joke,” Roberts said. “I laughed. (The association) sent me a letter requesting a certificate of weight from a licensed veterinarian. . . .”

Although the Jasmine homeowners had twice before rejected attempts to change the association rule, Feldsott said they eventually gave in and the lawsuit was dismissed. “I’m sure those dogs are just stuffing themselves now,” he said jokingly.

But out-of-court settlements are not always in the cards when it comes to homeowner disputes.

Like Assemblyman Hauser, Feldsott said association residents generally are not interested in the association’s workings and are unaware of the rules until they become involved in disputes themselves.

In their encounters with association management, some residents are likely to encounter long-serving directors who are only working in those positions because nobody else cared to take on the responsibility.

“They are designed as little democracies, but they start to take on the appearance of malevolent dictatorships after a while,” Feldsott said. “It becomes a dictatorship because no one wants to do anything.”

Bass of the Community Association Institute in Virginia acknowledges that there have been problems, but they are the “ones that tend to make the headlines.”

Part of the institute’s mission, she said, is to educate association directors and homeowners about how to strike a friendly coexistence.

“Love thy neighbor,” states one of the institute’s 116 “tips to ensure a happy community association experience.” Other commandments include: “Curb thy dog, don’t play the stereo too loud, park in your own space and don’t be a six-car family.”

Among the first few “tips” for association board members: “Serve because you care, not because you have a hidden agenda.” And “don’t go on a power trip.”