'Unsightly' Amount of Trash in Residential Neighborhood Leads to Legal Trouble for Homeowner

Calling conditions in her yard “a hodgepodge of furniture pieces and a mishmash of trash and debris . . .  a collection that only grew despite efforts to convince her to clean [it] up,” an Ohio appeals court upheld the conviction of Elena Hammock for violating a city of Norwood ordinance forbidding the accumulating or dumping of garbage on property.

In October 2019, Dale Marshall, the city health inspector, visited Ms. Hammock's home with a notice to vacate the property due to a lack of running water.  He had not been looking forward to this trip, and had asked several police officers to accompany him.  Ms. Hammock had a long history of confrontations with her neighbors and the city.  While there, Mr. Marshall saw a vast amount of junk and debris in her yard, which led to an order directing her to clean up the property up within 15 days.  The city later granted her request for an additional 60 days to do the work.  Some eight months later, however, the property mostly remained in the same condition.

]The city filed a criminal complaint against Ms. Hammock, in July 2020, in the Hamilton County Municipal Court. It alleged that she "knowingly failed to remove all scrap items, litter, trash, junk, debris, garbage and other unsightly and/or unsanitary items from her property," and that she continues to "trash the exterior of her property."  The language was based on a city ordinance that reads:

                    No person shall place, leave, dump, or permit to accumulate any garbage, rubbish,

                    trash, debris, junk or other materials . . . on any premises, . . . in the city, so that the

                    same . . . shall constitute an unsightly appearance with regard to the character of the

                    neighborhood.

Ms. Hammock initially responded to the complaint on her own; a public defender later represented her.  She claimed that she could not clean the property because of ongoing harassment from her neighbors – they apparently have been feuding with each other for almost a decade – and because her van broke down.  She also attempted to secure body camera footage and other evidence depicting an alleged assault by the Norwood police when she called them to intervene in previous neighbor disputes.  As she saw things, the city and her neighbors were colluding to drive her from her home.

At trial, Mr. Marshall and Sean Kenan, one of the neighbors allegedly giving Ms. Hammock trouble, testified for the prosecution.  Mr. Marshall stated that he took the pictures of her yard, and the city tendered these photos into evidence.  The ground was barely visible in the photos due to the piles of wooden pallets, boxes, containers, furniture and appliance pieces, as well as heaps of nothing more than debris and trash.

Because the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted much activity in early 2020, Mr. Marshall testified, he gave Ms. Hammock more than the 60 additional days she requested to clean the property.  Driving by her place periodically, he could see she was not making any progress on the clean-up.  Indeed, the garbage collection was getting worse.  That’s when he decided to take the matter to court.

Mr. Kenan testified that he has lived next door to Ms. Hammock for six years and that her accumulation of junk has presented a problem from the outset.  He and others have been involved with her in previous court cases.  In one of them, a judge ordered a Rumpke dumpster to be placed at her house.  When he sentenced defendants to community service, they were directed to help her dispose of her items. Mr. Kenan told the court that she regularly left her house on weekdays and returned with loads of doorframes, rusty cooking grills, buckets of Styrofoam, and other junk.  He claimed that he and his family cannot enjoy their backyard.  The smell from her property resembles raw sewage, he said, and the stagnant water she collects in five-gallon buckets creates infestations of mosquitos.

Testifying in her own defense, Ms. Hammock did not deny accumulating debris in her yard, but attempted to justify it. She accused Mr. Kenan, his girlfriend and his daughter of harassing her for years, throwing trash in her yard and then calling the health department.  She explained that she roams the streets on trash nights and collects from curbs whatever she thinks might be reusable or sellable in order to make money, but that her plans were frustrated by Mr. Kenan who, she claimed, damaged her van.

She did concede that materials in her yard were not organized "as much as I like, not much probably people like, but I tried to do what I could."  She mentioned having a disability that prevents her from clearing out the yard, but she refused to have an evaluation at the court clinic to determine whether any accommodation might be appropriate.

The jury convicted Ms. Hammock of violating the ordinance.   The trial judge deferred her sentencing and requested a report on the advisability of treatment given the issues that surfaced throughout the trial.  The judge ordered her to start cleaning the property, and gave her 30 days to do so before considering her sentence.  

Could anyone have been surprised when Ms. Hammock did not clean her yard and rebuffed the court-ordered evaluations?  Her reasons: she had been "bullied" by everyone involved and that "no pill can help bullying."  She was sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined  $200.

On appeal, her lawyer argued that the words, "an unsightly appearance with regard to the character of the neighborhood," are unconstitutionally vague, preventing the average person from understanding what activity is prohibited.  Moreover, she contended that the ordinance has no rational relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose and it may not constitutionally be applied under any circumstances.  The appeals court was not persuaded.

An ordinance may be ruled unconstitutional on grounds of vagueness.  The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution bars enforcement of a law or other regulation that either forbids or requires an act in terms so imprecise or confusing that someone of average brainpower must guess at its meaning or how it is applied.  The enactment must be clear about what is not allowed and provide reasonably definite guidelines for law enforcement officials.

  At the outset, the panel noted the “legitimate governmental interest in maintaining the aesthetics of the community and, as such, aesthetic considerations may be taken into account by the legislative body . . . ."  The court then addressed the constitutional issue.

“[T]he ordinance before this court does provide guidance for what behavior constitutes a violation. *  *  *  [T]he ordinance here explains that ‘[n]o person shall place, leave, dump or permit to accumulate’ any garbage – in other words, it requires action by someone,’” the opinion stated.  “Moreover, Ms. Hammock does not challenge any imprecision in the words ‘rubbish,’ ‘trash,’ or the like, as she limits her attack to the ‘unsightly appearance’ aspect of the ordinance.”

Turning to Merriam-Webster, which defines "unsightly" as "not pleasing to the sight; not comely," the panel concluded:  “The ordinance is sufficiently definite to provide a person of ordinary intelligence with notice that she should not accumulate garbage or other materials in her yard to the point that it becomes not pleasing to the sight of the people living around her.”

State v. Hammock, Nos. C-210518, C-210620, Ohio Ct. App., First Dist., Oct. 7, 2022.