Sweet v. Roy

• Decision Date: 26 April 2002
• Docket Number: No. 99-230.,99-230.
• Citation: 801 A.2d 694
• Parties: Jodi L. SWEET v. Marcien ROY, Leon Roy, and the Marcien and Mary Anne Roy Trust
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

801 A.2d 694

Jodi L. SWEET v. Marcien ROY, Leon Roy, and the Marcien and Mary Anne Roy Trust

No. 99-230.

Supreme Court of Vermont.

April 26, 2002.

Geoffrey F. Walsh and Gregg Meyer, Vermont Legal Aid, Inc., Springfield, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Christina A. Jensen of Lisman & Lisman, P.C., Burlington, for Defendants-Appellants.

Present: DOOLEY and MORSE, JJ., and TOOR, Supr. J., and GIBSON, J. (Ret.), Specially Assigned

DOOLEY, J.

Defendants Marcien Roy, Leon Roy, and the Marcien and Mary Anne Roy Trust (the trust) appeal from a judgment entered in Bennington Superior Court on a jury verdict in favor of plaintiff Jodi Sweet. Defendants made several claims of error in a post-judgment motion for judgment as a matter of law or for a new trial, and renew those arguments here: (1) the trial court abused its discretion in admitting evidence of defendants' prior bad acts; (2) the court erred in ruling plaintiff was entitled to the protections of the Mobile Home Park Act, 10 V.S.A. §§ 6201-6266; (3) the trust was entitled to judgment as a matter of law; (4) the jury's damage award should have been set aside; (5) it was error to dismiss defendants' counterclaim for slander; and (6) the court erred in excluding evidence of a threat made against defendants by an alleged agent of plaintiff. We affirm.

The trial focused on events with respect to Jodi Sweet after she purchased a mobile home located in the Royal Pine Villa Mobile Home Court (the park), and with respect to others who owned homes in the park. The park had been owned and managed by Marcien and Mary Anne Roy for twenty years, but in 1993 ownership was transferred to the trust. The park was originally managed by Marcien, but by the time of this case management responsibilities had been assumed by Leon Roy, son of Marcien and Mary Anne. Paula Roy, wife of Leon, was responsible for running the park office, bookkeeping and answering the telephone. The Roys all lived on the park premises.

The park consists of sixty-six mobile home lots. Some of the mobile homes are owned by individual lessees who pay defendants a monthly lot rental; others are owned by defendants, in which case the rent is higher than it would be for the lot alone. For example, lot rent typically runs about $200-230 per month, whereas rent for a lot and mobile home is two to three times that amount.

Plaintiff purchased her mobile home, which was located on lot 35 in the park, from Justin Schwartz in February 1997 after several unsuccessful attempts to contact defendants in order to determine what she needed to do to obtain a lease. Plaintiff and her three-year-old daughter moved into the mobile home that month. She called defendants and left voice messages with them on a daily basis; she also sent them letters and mailed them lot rent checks for February and March 1997. The checks were not cashed, and defendants never responded to the calls and the letters. Plaintiff spent $3800 on improvements to the heating, flooring and wiring of the mobile home.

Soon after sending her third letter to defendants in March 1997, plaintiff returned home from work and discovered that someone had systematically smashed out all thirteen glass windows in her mobile home. One week later, plaintiff approached Marcien Roy in the park, and he told her he wanted her out of the park and offered her $500 for her mobile home. Shortly thereafter, plaintiff returned home from work to discover she had no electricity. She called an electrician, who determined that the underground electrical wires to her mobile home had been cut and covered between the home and the service meter. To restore service, plaintiff and several friends spent a day hand-digging a trench approximately two feet deep and sixty feet long so that new wires could be installed the next day. Leon Roy backfilled the trench with a backhoe before the wires could be run. Plaintiff had to redig the trench again by hand. By the time the new wiring was installed, she had been without power for about a week. Upon returning to the mobile home with her daughter after power was restored, she "felt terrified" and "under a lot of stress."

Defendants Marcien and Leon Roy denied responsibility for the vandalism to plaintiff's mobile home, although Leon did admit to filling in plaintiff's hand-dug ditch because "it was a dangerous thing." Marcien, Leon, and Paula testified that plaintiff was a trespasser and had no rights as a resident because she and the party she bought the mobile home from had not followed the required procedures.

Virtually all of the rest of plaintiff's evidence dealt with other mobile home owners who resided at one time in the park. The most important of this evidence involved an earlier similar suit brought in 1986 by Mark Wright and the State of Vermont against Marcien and Mary Anne Roy. In that suit plaintiffs alleged defendants had instituted an illegal policy requiring that any tenant who wished to sell a home in the park sell to defendants and prohibiting any sale to others unless the home was removed from the park. Plaintiffs also alleged that defendants had vandalized plaintiff Wright and his mobile home when he tried to sell it to a third party.

The court found that the plaintiff's allegations were true and that the Roys had initiated the plan to acquire homes in the park because they could charge substantially higher rents for a lot and mobile home than they could for a lot alone, and would realize larger profits from their park, especially if they were able to drive down the capital expenses associated with this enterprise—namely, the purchase price of the mobile homes. The court found that in June 1986, the Roys sent the park residents a notice declaring their policy to require all mobile homes to be moved out of the park upon resale. The Roys also required each resident who sold a mobile home to pay the Roys a $200 brokerage fee whether or not the Roys assisted in the sale of the mobile home. The court found that the Roys would refuse to accept willing purchasers when a park resident sought to sell a mobile home to a third party.

The court found that the Roys used illegal self-help eviction measures against Mr. Wright. Specifically, the court found that in May 1986, Mr. Wright wanted to sell his mobile home and move in with his parents in order to regain a solid financial footing. Wright had a willing purchaser who offered $12,000, but the Roys refused to approve the sale and said no prospective purchasers would be approved. In September of that year, Wright told the Roys he would withhold his lot rent until allowed to sell his mobile home. Later that fall, Wright took a roommate to share expenses. In December, the roommate moved out after the tires on his and Wright's cars were slashed and the cars were spray painted. The television cable was cut, and snow was plowed into the driveway, blocking in the cars. The court found by a preponderance of the evidence that these acts were performed by Leon Roy.

The court found that defendants had violated the Vermont Mobile Home Park Act, 10 V.S.A. §§ 6201-6266 (the Act) in four respects. Specifically, it found illegal the policy of requiring tenants who wished to leave the park to remove the mobile home or sell it to defendants. It found illegal the rejection of prospective purchasers "for reasons that theretofore had not been prohibitions in the terms of the lease." The court also found two violations of the Vermont Consumer Fraud Act, 9 V.S.A. §§ 2451-2480g. Specifically, it found that defendants violated the act in "the strong-arm tactics used in an apparent attempt to persuade Mr. Wright to abandon his tenancy in the park."

As part of its relief, the court enjoined the Roys from "unreasonably refusing entrance [to the park] to purchasers or prospective purchasers" and from refusing entry to any purchaser who "qualif[ies] under uniformly enforced, written, reasonable terms of the park lease." The court also awarded damages and attorney's fees for the State and Mr. Wright.

At the time of the Wright suit, the park contained sixty-six lots of which sixty-five contained a mobile home. Residents of the park owned fifty-seven of these mobile homes, and the Roys owned just eight. By the time of this trial in January 1999, and despite the judgment in the Wright case, the Roys owned approximately thirty of sixty-three mobile homes in the park. From 1993 until 1997, no homes were sold to new park residents.

Most of the rest of plaintiff's evidence involved incidents close in time to the events involving plaintiff. Ken Scott testified that he purchased the mobile home on the lot next to plaintiff's, lot 34, in February 1997. He used his $5000 savings to buy the mobile home. Prior to doing so, he had his real estate agent send defendants a certified letter asking to be qualified as a park resident. Defendants orally refused without stating any reason and told Scott the park did not have a standard written lease. Scott moved in and began sending rent payments to defendants. He was later confronted by Leon Roy, who advised him that he would not be able to stay in the park. Soon after this encounter, someone removed the drain plug from Scott's kerosene tank causing a fuel spill and a costly clean up by a state environmental team. Someone also threw rocks through his windows and cut off his power. Scott eventually left the park due to the vandalism and associated stress. Although he was offered $7000 for his mobile home, he could not sell it because Leon Roy refused all purchasers. A realtor used by Scott testified that she had sent defendants a certified letter on behalf of two prospective purchasers of the Scott mobile home, but that she had received no response from defendants with respect to either.

Tracey Schwartz and Justin Schwartz testified that the mobile home involved in the instant appeal, located on lot 35, was sold to plaintiff by Justin Schwartz in February 1997. He purchased...