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CAN YOU GET KICKED OUT OF YOUR OWN HOME?
By
Eric Glazer, Esq.
Published September 21, 2015
Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.
About two weeks ago, I get a call early in the morning from the
President of a condominium in Broward. He tells me that last
night a unit owner unloaded 50 rounds of ammunition inside of
his unit from his AR-15 assault rifle, his AK-47 assault rifle
and his 9mm Glock handgun. The swat team removed him from the
condo unit and thank god nobody was killed, even though bullet
holes tore through the walls of his unit, into the neighboring
units. Water pipes were hit and leaks were everywhere causing
substantial damage.
Now you would think that if your neighbor fires 50 rounds of
ammunition into the walls of his unit with various assault
rifles, the next time you see him would be in the visitor’s wing
in some penitentiary. But that didn’t happen here. As I write
this blog, I’m trying to find out how this happened, BUT THE
SHOOTER WAS BACK IN HIS CONDO IN ABOUT 48 HOURS.
No, that is not a misprint. You read it correctly. Back home in
48 hours. This caused other owners in the community to pack up
their things and move into a hotel. Remember Ripley’s Believe it
or Not? Tell me this isn’t better.
The condo President was equally as dumbfounded as I was, and
asked if we could help get the owner removed from the unit. This
wasn’t our firm’s first rodeo when it came to removing persons
that the association thought was violent from their home. We
immediately filed a lawsuit and an Emergency Motion for
Injunctive Relief, requesting that the owner be removed from his
home by a civil court judge. The motion was granted. The order
was served by the same department that sent their swat team out
just a few nights before.
In addition to several other similar cases, a few years ago we
represented a condominium in South Beach that had an owner
living there that used his dogs to terrorize the community,
tazed people with a taser, beat someone with a fire extinguisher
and otherwise caused havoc and fear among the residents. My star
witness was the wife of an Assistant United States Attorney who
lived at the property. The trial judge removed this guy from his
home as well. On appeal, the defendant’s attorney argued that a
court does not have the authority to remove someone from their
home. I’ll never forget one of the Appellate Judges stating at
oral argument that a judge’s first responsibility is to
“preserve the peace” and that the only way to preserve the peace
in this community was to remove his client from his unit. The
decision of the trial court was affirmed.
It doesn’t end there though. About two months later the same guy
was found in the trunk of a car on Long Island with a bullet
hole in his head. Perhaps if the trial judge and appellate court
did not remove him from the condo, the bullets would have been
flying at the Florida condominium instead.
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About
HOA & Condo Blog
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Eric Glazer graduated from
the University of Miami School of Law in 1992 after
receiving a B.A. from NYU. He has practiced community
association law for more than 2
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decades and is the owner of Glazer
and Associates, P.A. a seven attorney law firm with offices in
Fort Lauderdale and Orlando and satellite offices in Naples,
Fort Myers and Tampa.
Since 2009, Eric has been the host
of Condo Craze and HOAs, a weekly one hour radio show that airs
at noon each Sunday on 850 WFTL.
See:
www.condocrazeandhoas.com.
He is the first attorney in the
State of Florida that designed a course that certifies
condominium residents as eligible to serve on a condominium
Board of Directors and has now certified more than 10,000
Floridians all across the state. He is certified as a Circuit
Court Mediator by The Florida Supreme Court and has mediated
dozens of disputes between associations and unit owners. Eric
also devotes significant time to advancing legislation in the
best interest of Florida community association members.
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