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Sweet v. Roy4/26/2002
ome, and sent registered letters to defendants to notify them on each occasion that he had a prospective purchaser. He had an offer of $11,000 cash from a woman from Massachusetts who had money from a divorce settlement and was looking to buy a home in Vermont. She, along with several other prospective purchasers, was refused by defendants, and eventually he had to sell the mobile home for only $4000.
Dolores Goodell testified that she had been a park resident for twenty-two years, and that when she approached an area realtor to sell her mobile home, the realtor laughed at her when she revealed where it was. She decided to sell the home herself, and she and her daughter put out a sign and listed the home in a circular. When she first moved into the park, she had a lease, but it ran out and was not renewed. When she put her mobile home up for sale in January 1998, she tried to get a copy of the lease from defendants, but they never sent her one until she called the Attorney General's Office. After receiving the lease, Goodell sent defendants several certified letters over the next few months to notify them of prospective purchasers. She testified that in each case she had to wait thirty days for a response, and each applicant was denied. This happened four times, until, in mid June, defendants finally accepted one of the prospective purchasers. Originally, she was asking $5000 for her mobile home, and she had purchasers willing to pay that amount, but she ended up selling it for $2000.
In April 1997, plaintiff filed this action in Bennington Superior Court for damages and injunctive relief. Plaintiff alleged that defendants broke her windows, cut her electric line and refilled her trench in an effort to illegally evict her, and she sought relief under the Vermont Mobile Home Park Act and on theories of equitable estoppel and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
On April 23, 1997, based on the consent of the parties, the court issued a temporary order prohibiting defendants from engaging in any further self-help eviction measures pending resolution of the suit, and no further acts of vandalism occurred.
The parties skirmished over the admissibility of the facts and order in the Wright case and the testimony of other mobile home owners as described above. As discussed in detail below, the court denied defendants' motion to exclude the evidence, finding it admissible to identify defendants as those responsible for the acts of vandalism and to show a continuing plan and motive behind their conduct.
Defendants argued that plaintiff was not protected by the Act because she had never been accepted as a tenant. The court rejected this argument, ruling that plaintiff was a resident of the park and was entitled to the protections of the Act as a matter of law, and instructed the jury accordingly. The court dismissed defendants' counterclaims for foreclosure of lien, ejectment, and trespass, dismissed plaintiff's claims based on equitable estoppel and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and dismissed plaintiff's claim for injunctive relief as unripe. The case was then submitted to the jury on special interrogatories, and the jury returned a verdict for plaintiff. The jury found that Leon Roy did attempt "to evict plaintiff by force or other self-help means," but found that Marcien Roy was not liable for the same conduct. In addition, the jury found that Leon Roy "wilfully caused, directly or indirectly, the interruption or termination" of plaintiff's utility service, but found that Marcien Roy did not do the same. The jury awarded plaintiff $10,000 compensatory damages against Leon and the trust. It also found that both Marcien and Leon Roy "acted re
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