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TREE LAW I bought a new house in 2017 with an HOA. The HOA is $18/month and afaik all they do is send you nasty grams about weeds and maintain a couple common areas that no one cares about. There’s like 600 houses in it though and it’s managed by some third party property management company that is the only real point of contact on the HOA website. My house is on a hillside. It has a nice view. The builder told us that we can’t even extend the 6’ privacy fence down the hillside because of neighbors view considerations. I looked at the HOAs website and their mission statement is something like “In order to protect property values and the beautiful views the neighborhood is known for blah blah blah” and if you look at the landscaping guidelines it mentions protecting views literally 4 times in 5 pages. None of the houses came with landscaped backyards, you had to take care of it yourself. You have to have a landscaping plan approved by the HOA. My neighbor planted 8 pine trees with mature heights of 40’+ along the hillside below our houses that are going to be real bad for my view to the south which is the good part of the view. The trees are on their property also, though right against the boundary. When they did this I emailed the HOA and said “Uhhh what’s up” and they said “We can’t tell you anything due to privacy laws but your neighbor followed the procedure.” So I wait a year, the trees grow 18”, they’re now officially blocking (some of) my view. I send an email to the HOA explaining the situation, sending a picture, and asking how/why this was acceptable. After a few weeks someone responds and says they’re working on it and should have a response from the “architectural committee” within a week. That was 5 weeks ago. The lot and view is the only reason we bought here. I would estimate losing the view will drop my lot value $20,000 or more. It seems like either: 1. The HOA just rubber stamps everything because they’re lazy/stupid/whatever Or 2. The neighbor planted these without putting them on the plan submitted to the HOA. I have not talked to the neighbor about it because: 1. They’re homeschooley religious weirdos. Like those people in CA that are in prison for chaining their 13 kids to the radiator or whatever 2. I doubt they’re gonna just chop down thousands of dollars worth of trees because I asked nicely 3. I’m a weirdo 4. I don’t want to It’s now been almost two months since I sent the first recent email (Aug 8), 5 weeks since they responded (Aug 27), and 2.5 weeks since I sent a follow up “hey what’s going on” email. My current plan is to send a final email saying “Hey, it’s been two months, I need some kind of answer here or I’m going to have to explore other avenues of redress” and then if I don’t get a response within two weeks or so I find the best goddamn tree lawyer west of the Mississippi. But I wanted to see what others thought about this.
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Oct 3, 2019 22:05
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I didn’t get a disclosure for my first home because it was purchased as a rental and the owners never occupied it so according to my realtor and the title company that was okay. It was really bullshit because I’m pretty sure it was occupied by the owners children, but it is what it is.
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Oct 3, 2019 23:04
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bird with big dick posted:TREE LAW TREE LAW UPDATE I realized I didn't even need to do the "final email" because I realized that I'd just been emailing back and forth with the HOA PM without filing a formal complaint and filing a formal complaint seems like it would be a prereq for a lawsuit and filing a formal complaint spurred the HOA board into actually responding, and they made an appointment to come look at the situation, which happened this afternoon. Prior to this though, the PM guy cited this part of the CC&Rs:  This is an addition to the CCRs that was added because this subdivision in total took like 40 years to develop and had a half dozen or more different developers and towards the end they decided they needed some more rules. Couple things here IMO: 1. This was written by/for a developer that was pre 2006 and not the one that built my house in 2017. But the sections 7&9 definitely are my house/my part of the subdivision. 2. No houses in the entire 600 house subdivision are considered "view houses" by the HOA and that doesn't stop them from mentioning protecting views a half dozen times in their various docs. 3. 10.04.5 says the developer can gently caress up my view. The developer is long gone, they didn't gently caress up my view, an HOA homeowner did. I think the only reason these extra provisions exist is because the developer knew they were gonna gently caress the view of the uphill side of the street when they later built the downhill side of the street. My house was built in 17 but the people uphill from me was built in 05 or 06 and my house absolutely destroyed their view but that was obviously always going to happen. Also could be planning for poo poo like there's a huge rear end water tank up here what if they had to move it 100' uphill for some reason and screwed someones view because of it. Like 80% of the poo poo in these extra provisions is "I can run a caterpillar over your backyard whenever I want because its the only way to access the foundations I'm building uphill from you." But the backyard in this case was just dirt or desert floor so who cares theyre just protecting themselves legally. 4. They say rights are not created by this Declaration but that isn't the same as saying they don't exist, and the rest of the HOA docs say they DO exist because they talk about them constantly. 5. Other parts of these "special provisions" that are only applicable to 7&9 make it clear that they're not all in perpetuity, because they specially mention the ones that are in perpetuity (things about not loving up drainage channels if they happen to come through your property). There are several sections specifically called out as existing forever and the stuff about we can gently caress up your views if we want to is not one of them. So with regard to the visit by three members of the HOA board: 1. They acknowledged that this sucked and my view was gonna be hosed. 2. They stated that the HOA wasnt obligated to prevent it because of the CCR thing above but then acknowledged that none of the houses anywhere in the HOA were legally "view houses" so no one anywhere has a "protected view" which in that case why do the CCRs/R&Rs, and the "guidelines to external changes" mention protecting views literally a half dozen times. 2a. They wanted to check the approved landscaping plan to see if those trees in those positions had been approved by the Architectural Committee. If they're not able to or obligated to prevent it why does that even matter? Like if they ARE on there (HOA hosed up and approved it) then tough poo poo for me, but if they're NOT on there (homeowner lied to the HOA) then maybe they'll do something about it? It either violates the terms of the HOA or it doesn't and if it does then it shouldn't matter whether it was the HOA or the homeowner that hosed up. IV. They said they spoke with the HOAs lawyer and he/she said that the first sentence in the "there's no view easements" 10.04.5 is all that really matters and the fact that the entire rest of the paragraph only talks about the developer loving up peoples views and the fact that the all the HOA documents talk about protective views doesn't matter. When asked why the CCRs then talk about view protecting nonstop when they aren't protected they didn't have any answer. 5. Here's the start of this extra part of the CC&Rs. The three statutes they call out as existing in perpetuity are about drainage, retaining walls, and something about easement encroachment that to me reads like total gibberish but tbf I'm fairly drunk so I'll post it below also. F. I think I'm in the right both legally and morally. Like if views aren't protected thats fine then you need to say that in the HOA docs. What we've got are HOA docs that say views are protected and the HOA telling me and acting as if my views aren't protected. VII. I know this is not legal advice but am just interested in those of the legal persuasion weighing in and letting me know if they think I'm at least 50%+ in the right here because I really think I am and because of that would like to gently caress them with the long (bird) dick of the (tree) law.  
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Nov 16, 2019 05:52
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euphronius posted:That’s an insane amount of words for me to read for free I know im sorry you dont have to
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Nov 16, 2019 18:10
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This is the thing that makes me thing this is a slam dunk and the HOA people are all lying morons:quote:Be aware that per the CC & R’s (sections 3.10 and 4.04), the A/C has a responsibility to Their own stated interpretation of their own CC&Rs says that either they or the homeowner hosed. I don't see any other way to interpret that. How could anyone with a functioning brain consider allowing someone to plant 8 40' tall trees to be "protecting views." I guess I wait a week or two for them to tell me to gently caress off and then go hire a lawyer and hope they don't push it to a trial. Thanks everyone/anyone that read my 6 pages of jabbering.
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Nov 16, 2019 18:23
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Saucer Crab posted:My non-laywer opinion is that HOAs suck major poo poo and you made a mistake buying a house in one in the first place. My opinion when I thought the HOA would protect my view was different than my opinion after they didn't do anything to protect my view.
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Nov 18, 2019 17:06
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BonerGhost posted:Yeah, you'll really have to take this to a local lawyer. I read this on the shitter for free because I'm not a lawyer and can't get paid for it anyway, but my first thought was that this is more about the (albeit ridiculous and contradictory) contract with the HOA than the trees. But it does seem to include elements of tree law, and whatever bizarro laws about HOAs that may or may not exist where you live. Yeah my issue is more with the HOA than the neighbor. The neighbor is an inconsiderate weirdo but you're going to have that, they're allowed to be that, the HOA is supposed to prevent their being that from impacting myself and my property value. Arcturas posted:So, you're going to lose. You need to take this to a lawyer and on the internet we can't help you, but you're probably going to lose. That paragraph you just quoted said they have to "consider" view protection. They can "consider" it and then say "gently caress it" after "consider"ing it. I've certainly considered that interpretation of the wording. I mean I guess the only way it'd be closer to iron clad is if the CC&Rs flat out said "We will not allow anyone to plant rows of giant trees that will destroy neighboring views" but my hope is that the 8 times they mentioned protecting views plus multiple times they mention protecting property values would lead a reasonable person to conclude that their views would be protected and if they're not going to do that they at the very least need to remove all mention of it from their governing documents. I mean if the answer is always "we considered it but we don't care" then it's misleading to even mention it. It'd be one thing if this was just one or two trees, then they could say "Hey, yeah, it's blocking some of your view but we considered it and decided that it's not an unreasonable amount of blocking" but this is a row of 8 40' tall trees that will block literally everything in that direction. I.e. it's not really possible for any person in the HOA to block someones views worse than this. It's maximum view blockage. In some states I think this could legally be considered a spite fence just because it's effectively going to be a 20' tall hedge that serves no purpose and obstructs my view, but it seems like in Nevada the laws regarding that sort of thing are weak/non existent so probably not any help to me. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Have you tried calling the dude who owns the lot and asking him to plant smaller trees that won't block your view? Offer to buy them for him. It'll be cheaper in the long run. When they were planted I thought they were smaller trees, since the HOA told me they had approved them, which turned out to not actually be true (the HOA may or may not have approved them but the person that told me they were approved didn't know one way or the other.) I doubt he's even aware that I've gone to the HOA at this point. I'll consider it but the guy planted 8 40' mature height trees for some reason I doubt he'd want them replaced with 8 6' tall shrubs even if I were paying the thousands of dollars it'd take to do it.
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Nov 18, 2019 17:40
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BonerGhost posted:This is what HOAs boil down to, usually. So real it sounds like a parody. My HOA so far: We exist to protect your views and property values! No we cannot stop someone from destroying your view and property value! But we can fine someone $100 if their garbage can is visible from the street the day after garbage day, does that help? My best hope is that their arguments so far seem so stupid and inconsistent that it seems impossible they’d be legally sound. Namely: HOA: None of the houses anywhere in the HOA are specified as view houses so no one has a protected view. Me: then why do the docs mention view protection 8 times HOA: Uhhhhh. and HOA: We’ll check and see if we approved those trees. Me: why does it matter if you approved them if you’re telling me you can’t stop anyone from doing stuff like that? HOA: uhhhhhhhhh.
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Nov 18, 2019 18:09
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Devor posted:I don’t think them having lots of ways to win the argument is the negative that you’re implying here You think those are good arguments?
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Nov 18, 2019 18:43
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evilweasel posted:the long and short of it is, the entire document needs to be carefully reviewed and checked against local real estate law, and your personal views (which are really all we have to go off of) are clearly not useful because you don't know what you're looking for in the documents or what the meaning of key things are. which is fine, you're not a lawyer, but it means that we have no useful info to go off of. I know you're right and the documents need to be considered as a whole and compared against local law and whatnot but the relevant portions of their docs are pretty short and sweet (not all are directly relevant to trees but are relevant to view protection): CCRs The ARC may disapprove such [landscaping] plans if the ARC determines that the landscaping may unreasonably impair or obstruct the view or outlook of neighboring Lots or Common Areas. The ARC shall consider whether the proposed construction, alterations, or additions unreasonably obstruct the view from any Lot. R&Rs Landscaping: Special consideration shall be given to preserving the views of neighboring lots. Guidelines The goal of the HOA is to maintain an attractive, cohesive look to the neighborhood and to protect the views that contribute to the value of the homes here on the hill. And then four more separate areas in the doc where they talk about not blocking views with (1) trees/shrubs, (2) decks, (3) fences and (4) permanent RV storage. I get that this still could boil down to "we considered it and decided lol we didn't give a poo poo" but if that's the case then gently caress tree law. Unless something changes at the very least I'll get a local lawyer to give me his opinion and probably draft some letters but if it looks like a lawsuit is the only way to resolve it it may not be worth it unless I've got like an 80% chance of winning.
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Nov 18, 2019 18:59
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evilweasel posted:but you're not a lawyer! neither is he
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Nov 18, 2019 18:59
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evilweasel posted:you are very confident for someone who is woefully ignorant about what you're talking about. the woeful ignorance is fine: you're not a lawyer. the absolute confidence is not: you ought to be aware you're not a lawyer. you characterized an argument as a "slam dunk" that is, plainly, not (that a HOA having a "responsibility" to "consider" view protection means that you have recourse if they consider it and approve loving up your view anyway) You're right I thought them mentioning denying applications in order to protect views over and over again meant that they had some obligation to do it but I am now understanding that it may not and that sucks.
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Nov 18, 2019 19:03
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evilweasel posted:that being a "may" instead of a "shall" is not good for you. one natural reading is that ARC is allowed to veto unreasonable impairments of views, but is not required to - i.e. you can't sue for them not vetoing, but perhaps your neighbor could sue for vetoing arguing the impairment was "reasonable" That all makes sense, thank you. It's really maddening to me that they could pay so much lip service to view protection and in reality it may not mean a single thing legally and on top of that it may all come down to whether or not some boob on the Architectural Committee even bothered to look at the landscaping plans for more than 3 seconds before approving them. That isn't right, whether or not it's how it works legally.
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Nov 18, 2019 19:20
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I've had a complaint made against me as a staff member by a student. Since this is actually loving my life up I would like some legal help. I don't know for sure yet but I think the complain is a complaint of assault, which is defamatory since it was a mutual game of wrestling and she happened to get hurt. Something that didn't seem to bother her after when we were on the sofa together. The university I am studying at are taking it very seriously though and so am I, even though I am pretty sure I am going to win this battle I would like some legal help for when this is over because I would like to counter this with some sort of complaint against the university/her.
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Dec 6, 2019 05:25
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Just giving you a head start little buddy
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Dec 6, 2019 05:30
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A_Account posted:Not everyone is suing everyone here. I actually am allowed to give my side of the events of the night, weird right... I feel like the GBS thread went better for you and also I’m tattling that you called the GBS mods butt-feeders you’re gonna get in big trouble
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Dec 7, 2019 06:58
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Turtlicious posted:This is some legal advice: what if you're a professional wrassler
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Dec 7, 2019 14:53
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bird with big dick posted:I guess I wait a week or two for them to tell me to gently caress off and then go hire a lawyer and hope they don't push it to a trial. Thanks everyone/anyone that read my 6 pages of jabbering. Update: They told me to gently caress off and I hired a lawyer (well, contacted one that a couple different people recommended, waiting to hear back). They came and looked at the trees and said "yep that sure sucks poo poo we'll check and see if we approved the trees" and then the letter they sent me doesn't even say whether or not they approved the trees, just says I don't have a protected view and literally nothing else. I'm guessing they discovered that they approved the trees but that they aren't even willing to tell me that they did is just ridiculous. They were also supposed to confirm the species and estimated mature height and tell me, and of course did not. One thing that I think someone previously mentioned as a possibility for why they could get away with this, all the mentioning of views was something they put in their docs just in case they designated some houses to be "view houses" and then they never did so none of it matters. One thing that at least somewhat goes against that is that their "Guidelines to External Changes" that mentions view protection in five different places is a modern document that is updated yearly so if none of that poo poo applies they should have removed it from it years ago. This will probably all come down to me getting hosed due to the documents saying "may deny" and "will consider" which is ridiculous but I guess I learned a $20,000 lesson. Question: The law firm had a place on their website where you could specify the lawyer and submit a request to be contacted and I filled that out, should I follow it up with a phone call or just wait and if just wait how long? Week? After the holidays?
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Dec 18, 2019 15:39
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Arcturas posted:(Also to be over-technical because it’s an easy mistake to make, you haven’t hired a lawyer just because you’ve contacted one. They have to say yes, and there’s typically a written engagement letter.) Jesus, I know I haven’t hired a lawyer just because I left a message for one, that’s why I said this:(well, contacted one that a couple different people recommended, waiting to hear back)
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Dec 18, 2019 21:33
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Arcturas posted:It’s possible you’ll get a nuisance value settlement out of the HOA-what it would cost for them to defend the lawsuit. But in general this does sound like a learning lesson. Even if I personally get nothing I’ll consider it a win if I’m a thorn in their side enough for them to change the language in their documents so it’s not pretty much blatantly lying to all the current/future owners.
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Dec 18, 2019 21:50
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A lot of people itt are kind of unpleasant for some reason
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Dec 18, 2019 22:05
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I mean, I didn’t want to say it...
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Dec 18, 2019 22:06
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I thought it was pretty clear from my very next statement that I knew I hadn’t actually hired a lawyer but you’re the lawyer I guess.
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Dec 18, 2019 23:06
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Wait a minute, are you a lawyer?
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Dec 18, 2019 23:10
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What if you’re not a lawyer though do you have to say no What if you’re both a cop and a lawyer
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Dec 18, 2019 23:16
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What’s usually the best way to give a person that is absolutely not yet my lawyer some documents? Should I just print everything out? Include a list of links where they came from? Put pdfs and whatnot on a flash drive? Email it all? Are lawyers suspicious of flash drives from clients? What if I put a virus on there? Or pornography? It’s mostly HOA stuff that he could access himself but some of it will be emails from the HOA and he probably doesn’t have access to my gmail also I put together a power point to illustrate what I think our best possible legal strategies are and also some relevant case law I found on Nextdoor.com
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Dec 18, 2019 23:25
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Ashcans posted:Print everything out, then scan it back in slightly crooked. Make sure you scan it as an image, and then paste each image into a word document, zip each document separately, and then email them to the lawyer one at a time. Lol that’s pretty good
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Dec 19, 2019 00:34
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Thanatosian posted:This coming from the person who wants to use their HOA to force their neighbor to remove a bunch of trees because of their precious, precious view? Yes.
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Dec 19, 2019 04:24
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Volmarias posted:"Your car sucks" is not a protected class unfortunately. Nor should it be. If anything it should be the opposite.
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Jan 25, 2020 17:12
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Will question: Is it possible for a couple to write up a will that it's legally impossible to change after one of them dies? My dad remarried a younger/healthier woman like 15 years ago and IIRC told everyone that they wrote up a will such that everything got split 50/50 between her kids and his kids when the second of them died and it couldn't be changed so that, e.g., if he died a year later she couldn't stiff his kids on the estate. This was a fairly reasonable thing to consider given my father's propensity for smoking Marlboro reds, drinking straight tequila, and eating lard products but the odds have been defied and he's still truckin along at 78 and she died from cancer 8 years ago. But even if it's true it also seems maybe pointless unless they wrote something in that prevented gifting the estate a way a chunk at a time over a decade? I dunno. I suspect that none of it was true and he just told people this (either unprompted or because one of my sisters flat out told him he should consider the possibility) to keep anyone from hassling him. The reason it came up is because apparently he told one of my sisters that he was considering revising his will so that it wasn't split 50/50 anymore because he has a decent pension so his net worth is still increasing and he doesn't really see the need to give her kids half of money that he "earned" 10 years after she passed. I'd ask him but tbh we don't talk that much, he's not quite as sharp as he used to be so he might not even really remember the actual details, plus he's always been the type to "spin yarns" i.e. make poo poo up for no reason.
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Jan 25, 2020 17:32
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I tried to get a 90 day supply (3 pills) of my penis pills today but they said they didn’t have any in stock and didn’t know when they’d be resupplied is it possible for me to sue Walgreens over this?
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Mar 25, 2020 03:42
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What are some good questions to ask when interviewing personal injury lawyers? The one guy I’ve talked to so far kept talking about negotiating pricing with hospitals and insurance companies and never once mentioned the possible need to go after personal assets of someone even after I gave him an opening to do so (he responded by talking about umbrella policies).
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Aug 18, 2020 13:13
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Mr. Nice! posted:Because you rarely are ever going to go after someone’s personal assets. If someone has assets worth pursuing, they’re going to be insured to an amount that covers your losses. I am worried that that is very much not the case in my current situation.
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Aug 18, 2020 14:28
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Nonexistence posted:Was this a car accident? If so you should have under/uninsured motorist coverage that could pay. Your rates won't increase if the accident wasn't your fault. I do but the limits are not going to come close to covering everything. Organza Quiz posted:Did you say this to the lawyer rather than playing mindgames and hoping they give you the specific answer you want to a broad question? At the time I wasn’t as concerned about it as I am now after some additional facts have come to light. Mr Nices comment explains it. Next time I talk to someone I’ll mention my specific concerns.
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Aug 18, 2020 15:17
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Organza Quiz posted:Did you say this to the lawyer rather than playing mindgames and hoping they give you the specific answer you want to a broad question? I also was in no way playing mind games and the “broad question” was “what if his auto insurance sucks can we go after him personally” so feel free to just not respond to my posts in the future please.
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Aug 18, 2020 18:50
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euphronius posted:You are not interviewing the attorney in other words Yes, I am.
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Aug 18, 2020 21:09
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Some posters probably have cases involving extremely negligent people causing extremely grievous injuries caught on extremely clear 1080p camera. It seems silly to treat every poster as if they're some loser person with a loser life and a loser case.
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Aug 18, 2020 23:24
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Phil Moscowitz posted:Why do you think your UM coverage won’t be enough? Because it's only 100 grand. quote:Is the other driver uninsured, like no insurance at all? I don't know for sure at this point but guessing only 50 or 100 grand. quote:The ones desperate enough to take a case on contingency to chase after some trailer home aren’t worth hiring, and will probably flake out eventually anyway. You guys know about libertarians right like there are some people out there that may tend towards minimal insurance that still may have sizable assets. quote:Also, buy more UM coverage. At least you have some, but really. It’s the easiest way to make sure you don’t get shafted through no fault of your own. That, I am absolutely going to do.
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Aug 18, 2020 23:30
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I mean, yeah, kinda.
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Aug 19, 2020 00:00
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:04 |
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Phil Moscowitz posted:Lol you go to the hospital by ambulance with a broken leg that needs surgery, that’s $100k easy Ambulances are practically free, life flights are where the real money is. I wonder if anyone has ever been in a small rural hospital and gotten life flighted to the big regional hospital and they looked at the injuries and said “lol no thanks this is not for us” and then they got life flighted a second time to the closest enormous University hospital. That would be pretty crazy.
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Aug 19, 2020 13:50
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