LUTZ - The suing started in March, over two mailboxes that didn't fit in.

It continued in April, over unmowed grass and bare spots on lawns. It doubled in May because of unsightly lawns and soiled houses. In September, another lawn lawsuit struck, plus a suit complaining of the lawn, the mailbox, trash and grime - all at the same house.

This year, the Calusa Trace homeowners association has filed at least a dozen lawsuits to enforce deed restrictions, including one last month over a basketball goal.

The number of suits in Calusa Trace, with some 520 homes, is strikingly aggressive compared to those filed by other area homeowner associations.

VillaRosa, with 920 homes, filed three deed-restriction lawsuits this year. Cheval East, with about 500 homes, sued none of its homeowners this year over deed restrictions.

Neither did Cheval West, with some 750 homes, nor Van Dyke Farms, with 422 homes, nor Tampa Palms, with more than 1,900 homes. Westchase, with some 3,000 homes, filed no more than a half-dozen suits, estimated David Love, a member of the community's enforcement committee.

Gerry Reno, president of the Calusa Trace Master Association, said the majority of Calusa Trace's residents obey the restrictions, and want them enforced.

"I have been in other communities where they just go downhill very rapidly if you don't enforce your documents," Reno said.

But complying has been an exercise in frustration for defendants like Robin Mazzetti, who was sued in September, 15 months after he moved in, for an overgrown lawn.

"If I had known that these people had this problem, I would have been dissuaded from buying in Calusa Trace," Mazzetti said.

The surge of cases there may date back to the arrival in summer, 2001, of Al Getz, of Greenacre Properties. As the community association manager assigned to Calusa Trace, Getz reports deed-restriction violations. He energetically replaced a man who had died of heart failure after months of declining health.

"I take my job seriously," Getz said.

So does the Calusa Trace board, Reno said.

Despite a year of Getz's work, residents were unsatisfied at the master association's annual meeting in November, 2002, Reno said.

"People came and complained about how unkempt some of the properties were," Reno said. "They said we were doing an insufficient job of enforcement."

Most of the lawsuits currently pending in Calusa Trace date back to deed-restriction violations originally cited in 2002. In the interim, the violators received a sequence of ever-sterner letters, first from Getz, then Calusa Trace's law firm.

"When they totally ignore it and we don't know what's going on, then we turn it over to the attorney," Getz said.

A $1,225 mailbox 

There, expenses soar.

Once Calusa Trace sues, it demands attorneys fees in addition to compliance. The fees range from $1,000 to $2,000, as Sheila Gulledge learned after she was sued in March over her mailbox.

"At this point a payment of $1,225 seems excessive for a mailbox that cost $6.89," she wrote to Eric Appleton, a Calusa Trace attorney. Although the mailbox had been replaced, Appleton pressed for the fees.***

Reno defended that, saying the attorneys incur such costs because the homeowners don't solve the problems earlier. Gulledge didn't respond at all until she heard from Appleton, Reno said.

"We have a monthly meeting, for crying out loud. It's only a mile down the road. How hard is that to attend?" Reno said. "If people would just come to the board and present their problem, we could eliminate 99 percent of them. But they just don't."

Gulledge sold her house in November, and couldn't be reached for comment. Her letter said she lost her job, and had been out of state seeking a new one.

Several other defendants seemed to be in transitions.

A couple living in Boca Raton and selling their Calusa Trace home were sued in June over lawn problems. Another couple was sued over their lawn amid a divorce. An absentee owner in San Jose, Calif., was sued in September.

Patricia Lortz sold her home in April, a month after being sued over her mailbox. It was her second suit from the homeowner association. The first came in 1998 because Lortz painted her house a dark "appealing apricot," as the paint company called it. That cost Lortz more than $2,000, most of it to repaint the house. The mailbox suit was dismissed in September.

Lortz felt picked on.

"One should be able to live their life with some degree of pleasantness and freedom from harassment," she said, from her new home in New Tampa's Meadow Pointe.

"Extreme remedy' 

Experts on the operations of homeowner associations widely agree that the associations must enforce deed restrictions, using lawsuits if necessary. But many milder methods, particularly clear communications, should be employed first, they say.

"I've found that when people understand the process and are part of the process, they're more likely to go along, even if they don't like the rule," said Ellen Hirsh de Haan, a community associations lawyer in Largo, and past president of the national Community Associations Institute.

Calusa Trace uses a series of letters, first from Getz, then from an attorney. If a homeowner responds to the board, special remedies can be approved, Reno said.

But lack of a response will lead to a lawsuit, he said.

"Lawsuits should be an absolutely last resort," said De Haan. "That's an extreme remedy."

Many homeowner associations have embraced a lesser step permitted in recent years in Florida law. They have rewritten their bylaws to create committees, separate from their boards, to judge deed-restriction violations and apply fines up to $1,000.

At Westchase and Tampa Palms, they are called Covenants Committees. They review correspondence and photos, and invite the offending homeowners to attend hearings on their cases. Then decisions, including fines up to $100 a day, are made.

Michelle Kitts, association manager for Tampa Palms' areas 1 and 2, said the covenants committee hears about seven or eight cases a year.

"We have never actually gone to court and sued someone," she said.

Since Cheval West formed such a committee, "Compliance is 2,000 percent better," said Lori Lencioni, a board member of the Cheval West Community Association. "We had one instance where we were going to court, but we opted out because of the expense, and because we weren't sure we were going to win."

But recruiting members of a fining committee is dicey. People don't want to sit in judgment of their neighbors.

In VillaRosa, "We had some volunteers, but we never got it going," said Kelly Moran, the community association manager, there. "They have to live next door to these people."

Reno said he tried to recruit four or five people for such a committee in Calusa Trace, and failed.

"Every time we've approached people on this issue, it seemed like they couldn't walk away from the conversation fast enough," he said.

David Love, who has sat on Westchase's Covenants Committee for five years, said having 3,000 homes helps. Most committee members in Westchase don't know the homeowner they are judging, and recuse themselves if they do, Love said.

"The majority of the people on my committee do not have children," he said. "If your kid was friends with somebody else's kid in school, and they were coming before you in a hearing, that would be pretty ugly."

Reno said he and other Calusa Trace board members have decided to try harder to establish such a committee, partly in response to this article.

"I think it's going to take a major selling effort on my part," he said.

But that doesn't mean Calusa Trace will lighten up on enforcement.

Reno believes his board received a vote of confidence in Calusa Trace's annual meeting was last month. Every board member was re-elected without opposition.