Herman: How parking on his own lawn cost Austin man $143,000

Old joke.

Cop: “Hey, you can’t park there. Didn’t you see the sign?”

Motorist: “Yes, I saw the sign. It says, ‘Fine for parking.’ So I parked.”

Let me tell you about our neighbor Greg Daniels, with whom I recently spent some time out in front of his Northwest Austin house near the Cadillac de Ville, Mercedes S 500, Chevy Camaro and four Mazda Miatas he parks there.

Daniels is our neighbor only in that way that we’re all each others’ neighbors. I found him engaging in that way that helps keep Austin weird. I can also see how I might feel otherwise if he were my neighbor in that next-door kind of way.

Let me get to the point here: Daniels currently faces what can be construed as a fine for parking. More precisely, it's the cost of battling a neighborhood association decision that the 1986 Mazda he had parked on his lawn constituted an "unsightly" object. At last reckoning, that cost for Daniels was $143,363.16. By the time you read this, it will be higher.

The offense dates back before the turn of the century and was a flash point in a long battle between Daniels and the Balcones Woods Club neighborhood association that he said started after he built, without required pre-clearance, a Texas-shaped fountain/waterfall on his front lawn. The courthouse battles — Daniels has been declared by the courts a “vexatious litigant” — continued when the neighborhood association went after him for parking one of his cars on his lawn.

How’d we get to north of $143,000? That's the cost of the other side’s attorney fees, compounded by the passage of time and the miracle of interest.

Austin lawyer Devin Knox, representing the neighborhood association, detailed it all in a July 17 email that began with a friendly “Good afternoon Mr. Daniels” and ended with a helpful “Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.”

Oh, Daniels has questions and concerns. And, he acknowledges, issues.

Here’s how Knox laid it out for Daniels: At the base is the court-ordered $30,000 award for attorneys' fees expended by the association to defend against Daniels’ unsuccessful court fight. Then there’s 10% annual interest that’s been adding up since State District Judge Margaret Cooper’s 2003 judgment against Daniels.

“As such,” Knox helpfully told Daniels, “as of today, the judgment amount is approximately $143,363.16 per my calculations. This includes the $30,000.00 in principal and $113,363.16 in interest.”

FYI, the neighborhood association, through its attorney Knox, declined to comment on any of this, which is unfortunate because there’s so much on which to comment, including why the association let this go for so long.

This started like lots of things start: Looking for a good place to park. There are several courthouse versions extant of this particular escapade. But let’s go with Daniels’ side of the story, as told in his appeal of the 2003 trial judgment against him.

Daniels, 69, is a retired programmer. He said he has a rental property and owned a local nightclub back in the 1980s. He's now representing himself in this legal battle. In a court filing, he mentioned “his penchant for parking a car under the shade of an oak tree in his side yard.”

“Since approximately 1991, appellant Gregory Daniels continuously used the natural shelter of an oak tree near his driveway as a place to park his personal vehicle(s),” he told the 3rd Court of Appeals.

Balcones Woods Club Inc. filed a lawsuit in April 2002 against Daniels, whose reading of the pertinent restrictive covenant differed from the association’s reading. He lost.

Daniels moved the car, he said in a court filing, "approximately seven feet onto the driveway (less the benefit of shade) where it has remained ever since, without further protest.”

“It is, therefore, ordered that defendant Gregory Spencer Daniels is hereby commanded to permanently desist and refrain from parking or storing any motorized vehicle on the grass at his home located at 4401 Flagstaff Drive, Austin, Texas,” the January 2003 judgment said.

None of the current seven cars in front of his house are on the lawn. When I went by, four were in the driveway and three were on the street.

"They’re all relatively cheap cars," Daniels told me.

Still, at some length, and with some flourish, Daniels appealed to the 3rd Court of Appeals, complaining — as he still does — that the judge had not been impartial. His appeal included this: “There are those that feel the world will come to an end if a bed is not made, and others see making the bed a waste of time and energy. It’s those little quirks in human behavior that make life interesting."

And this: “This case was initiated by those who, in this time of constant daily casualty reports about ordinary citizens that put their lives on the line for principles of justice and freedom, choose to spend their time and effort focusing on the petty and insignificant.”

And Daniels bemoaned that when he moved into Balcones Woods, “it was not immediately apparent that his existence was to be ruled by a dictator-of-the-month club.”

The hermit

I got involved with this when Daniels, his back against the legal and financial wall, called to gauge my interest in what he sees as a little guy vs. evil homeowners association tale. We talked at some length by phone. He initially pushed back against a meeting at his home. Something about some animals. So we met out front of his house, near the seven cars.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I have an autistic bent to me, but I still can interact with people, especially if you’re not a threat to me. I don’t mind talking to you. But, truthfully, I’d rather stay in my little hermit box and not interact with anybody. That’s kind of my thing.”

He’s got an old silver Apple computer out front of his house. It looks like it’s been repurposed into a mailbox. But it hasn’t. Except it kind of was. “I had an address on here," he explains, "that said ‘Email only’ and I had my email address on here as my home address.”

Clever, right? But he said he neighborhood association now is after him to remove it.

There have been multiple conflicts between Daniels and the association, including over his Texas-shaped fountain/waterfall (still there, but inoperable), unpaid dues and a goat. There also were 10 days in jail for violating a restraining order.

Mr. Goat was in Daniels' backyard for about three years. He said it was a comfort animal, though “I didn’t go through any kind of special applications or whatever to make it formal, because why? It’s just my goat.”

That, one supposes, kind of makes Mr. Goat a common-law comfort animal.

“So, anyway, it wasn’t bothering anybody,” Daniels said. “But, of course, just to cause a problem, the homeowners association sent me a nasty notice saying, ‘You can’t have a goat.’”

So now he doesn’t. The association got his goat. More precisely, a petting zoo did, about six months ago.

Oh, and the animals inside the house turn out to be, he said, two cats that “have personalities that they get very upset over a lot of stuff and strangers.”

Whatever. We stayed outside.

About a half hour into our conversation I popped the question: “Are you an aggrieved citizen or the neighbor from hell?”

“Well, I’ll be honest. I keep to myself,” he said, acknowledging seven is more cars that some folks have and he likes seeing cars parked on the street. And he likes seeing lots of cars in front of lots of houses. Makes a neighborhood look lived in, he said.

So maybe this isn’t the neighborhood for you?

“That’s kind of sort of what they say,” he said. "I’m not a mover.”

I know what you’re thinking. Yes. Twice. Both ended in divorce. No kids.

Ready to pay up

“I’m very stressed out,” Daniels told me. “That’s my biggest thing. It’s the mental stress. It’s unnecessary. That’s the whole point. I’m trying to get you to write a story about the value of homeowners associations and the power of abuse that they have because that’s all this really is about.

“If you start getting too down into the details, then it becomes kind of my story,” he said. “And I don’t want this to be my story.”

It’s hard not to be Daniels' story, especially when one side won't talk and the other side won't stop talking.

"You have to understand," Daniels said. "I’m a hermit. Look it. I can stay in my house for a week at a time if I have food. That’s my thing. I need food. But I don’t want to buy too much food. Because if I had enough food to last me a month, I wouldn’t leave my house for a month.”

Why does a self-described hermit have seven cars in front of his house?

“That’s the irony of it,” he said with a friendly laugh.

On that day in front of his house, Daniels speculated about his future. “See, I’m not really a greedy person. To me, money is something that I pretty much like to use as little as possible. I don’t spend much of it. And I don’t feel like I want to go out and make a killing because I need to be a millionaire or multi-millionaire. It’s not my thing.”

His current thing is the judgment giving some other people a chunk of whatever money and wealth he has.

“And that’s where the problem is,” Daniels said.

Daniels called me a few hours prior to a scheduled Aug. 14 hearing that was supposed to have been a sorting out of his assets. The hearing was postponed, Daniels said, so the parties could talk about working this out.

He has a pretty good idea of how it’s going to work out: “I’m going to end up having to pay the $143,000.”

And that, he said, probably means a mortgage on his paid-for house.