Homeowner Challenged An HOA Ban On Sunflowers, And A Lawyer’s Close Reading Of The Contract Uncovered A Loophole The Board Had Missed
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HOA rules can create some very strange gardening battles.
What do you plant when your contract bans sunflowers but says nothing about corn?
Instead of giving up, one homeowner found the ugliest legal replacement he could buy.
His HOA quickly reconsidered its priorities.
Won’t let me plant sunflowers? Fine.
Client walks into the office and asks us for a contract review. He then hands over an HOA contract.
Before slogging through a whole HOA contract, I asked him what he was hoping to accomplish.
“They want me to dig up my sunflowers.”
“Your… sunflowers?”
“Yes, I planted a row of sunflowers outside my house. They pranced by and said that sunflowers are not allowed per the contract I signed. So I want you to tell me if that is true or not.”
The client wasn’t concerned about how much it cost.
“Sir, before anything else I need to tell you that this will likely be an hourly fee bill. HOAs are notorious for dragging things out. So these could quickly become expensive sunflowers.”
“I don’t care. This is America and I should be able to plant sunflowers god dammit.”
Still thinking he wasn’t that serious about sunflowers, I asked for a three hour retainer. He immediately pulled out a checkbook and paid for four hours.
So I buckled down to review the alleged anti-sunflower clause.
Just for reference, the sunflowers he wanted to plant were really big (5ft) and all along the front of the house. It was a very substantial amount of sunflowers.
He found the part in the contract about sunflowers.
The contract did indeed contain a clause, with a very thorough list, on which plants were and were not allowed to be planted.
The list had just about every plant I could think of, in alphabetical order (think apple, banana, cauliflower, dill…). Sunflowers included.
Corn was not included, which becomes very important later.
Quick legal point – if you write ‘no dogs allowed’ it is normally assumed that you are talking about all dogs generally.
If you write ‘no labs, golden retrievers, or poodles allowed’ it is normally assumed that all other dogs are allowed.
Sometimes a not great attorney will write a super long list to pad hours (read: charge more) instead of just writing ‘no plants without prior approval’ or something.
I called the client back in for the bad news.
He explained the situation to the client.
In explaining the above legal point, I let him know that the HOA got a raw deal from whoever drafted the contract.
“No can do on the sunflowers. But if it makes you feel any better they were probably over billed by whoever wrote this contract. Pretty shoddy work too, they even forgot to write down ‘corn’ but they included nonsense like ‘dragon fruit’.”
“So yes to corn, no to sunflowers?”
“I didn’t really check the contract for corn. But its not prohibited in the plant section, so probably?”
The client had a plan.
“Excellent. That’ll work.”
I thought he was oddly happy with bad news.
Then two or three weeks later he came in with a picture of his house, surrounded by huge sunflowers.
What happened? This guy drove out to the country and bought obnoxiously large and ugly cornstalks. He promptly planted them where the sunflowers had been.
He was able to use this against the HOA.
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When confronted by the HOA he told them (paraphrasing) to suck it the contract lets me plant corn.
Then after some negotiation he agreed to take the corn down, in exchange for permission to plant sunflowers.
Now we are friends, he is still a great client, and he lives surrounded by a ridiculous moat of sunflowers.
That was a clever plan, and for this client, it sounds like it was worth every penny to find a loophole and get what he wanted.
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
Here’s another suggestion to get the HOA to let you have your way.
I love this idea too.
This person points out an issue with the timing in the story.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a college student who decides to send his university a counter-bill after they try to get him to pay “inconvenience fees.”
A former HOA board member weighs in.
The homeowner replaced his banned sunflowers with giant cornstalks that the HOA couldn’t stop him from planting.
They eventually agreed to allow the flowers if he removed the corn, giving him exactly what he wanted.
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