Article Courtesy of The Orlando
Sentinel
By Rene
Stutzman
Published September 14, 2008
LONGWOOD - Kent
Nauman has an artificial leg and two tiny dogs. When he walks them, he
uses a pair of leashes 24 feet long. His condo association, though, has a
rule limiting leashes to 4 feet.
"It's just plain too short," said Nauman, 57, a former
physician. "They'd be under my foot."
The two sides have been at war over that rule for six years. Now, the
Florida Attorney General's Office has filed suit against the condo board,
the Springwood Village Condominium Association of Longwood Inc., accusing
it of discriminating and retaliating against Nauman because he's disabled.
"It's our job to enforce the laws of Florida," said Danielle
Carroll, the assistant Florida attorney general appointed Friday to head
its Office of Civil Rights, the division handling the case.
The issue isn't so much that the rule is unfair, according to the suit.
It's that the association enforced it against just one person -- Nauman.
That was the conclusion of a state arbitrator.
The arbitrator ruled the association was in the wrong, even though it
offered to let Nauman use a 10-foot leash, a deal he rejected.
Despite that loss, the association just kept citing Nauman, according to
the attorney general's suit, which was filed two weeks ago in state
circuit court in Sanford.
It also began to harass him, according to the suit. A week after the
arbitration ruling, an association employee hauled away six or seven
potted plants -- rose cuttings Nauman was tending. About that same time,
the employee took away two small statues -- a rabbit and an angel -- that
Nauman had placed outside his condo years before.
Association manager Larry Skinner said the association has done nothing
wrong.
"We don't treat him any differently than anybody else," Skinner
said.
The plants and statues were moved, he said, because the association always
removes those things. They're on common property.
After that, Nauman filed a complaint with the Florida Commission on Human
Relations, the state agency charged with protecting people from
discrimination. It concluded last year that Springwood was guilty of
discrimination.
"They're using the disability as a weapon," Nauman said of the
condo board.
Not so, said board attorney James E. Olsen.
"I don't believe there was any intent to discriminate," he said.
"I think it was a dispute that probably got out of hand."
Nauman has more than one disability, according to state records. He has
also been diagnosed with schizophrenia, a serious mental illness that can
be characterized by delusions and hallucinations. Nauman takes no
medication for it and is not under a psychiatrist's care.
He also has a long history of acrimony with members of the condo board and
over the years has accused them of a long list of misdeeds, including
bylaws violations. He served on that board in 2002 and 2003.
"I'm not a very popular person," Nauman said.
Carroll, head of the attorney general's Office of Civil Rights, would not
discuss Nauman's mental illness, but the Florida Commission on Human
Relations noted it in its ruling, and members of the condo board know
about it, said Derek Brett, Nauman's attorney for the past several years.
The board took advantage of it, Brett alleged, knowing Nauman could more
easily be intimidated and frightened.
"He's a good guy," Brett said. "No one deserves what he
got."
Nauman uses the leashes to walk his miniature dachshunds, Minnie
Sweetheart and Shorty. He has used the same lengths of rope since before
his accident in 1999, when a van pinned his right leg to a loading dock,
crushing it.
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