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| Owners: Regina E. Gebauer | Piggy: Taylor |
| Date they won: Jan 10 2002 | |
| Here's their story: Information: Federal and State Case law name(Gebauer and Lake Forest) Note: PAGE 1 1 of2 DOCUMENTS Regina E. Gebauer v. Lake Forest Property Owners Association, Inc. 2970520 COURT OF CIVIL APPEALS OF ALABAMA 723 So. 2d 1288; 1998 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 745 November 13, 1998, Released SUBSEQUENT HISTORY: [** 1] Released for Publication February 9, 1999. PRIOR HISTORY: Appeal from Baldwin Circuit Court. (CV-96-1049). James H. Reid, TRIAL JUDGE. DISPOSITION: REVERSED AND REMANDED. COUNSEL: For Appellant: Sandra K. Meadows, Mobile. For Appellee: Jay M. Ross of Reid, Friedman, Perloff & Ross, P.C., Mobile. WDGES: MONROE, Judge, Yates, J., concurs. Robertson, P.J., and Crawley and Thompson, JJ., concur in the result. OPINIONBY: MONROE OPINION: [* 1288] MONROE, Judge Lake Forest Property Owners Association, Inc., sued Regina E. Gebauer, claiming that Gebauers keeping Taylor, her pet Vietnamese potbellied pig, violated the neighborhoods restrictive covenant forbidding livestock. The association asked the court to enforce the restrictive covenant and remove Taylor from the Gebauer home. After a trial, the court found Taylor to be " livestock" and found that her presence constituted a nuisance, and it ordered that the potbellied pig be permanently removed from the neighborhood. Gebauer appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court, which transferred the case to this court pursuant to @ 12-2-7(6), Ala. Code 1975. Gebauer contends that the evidence does not support the trial courts finding that Taylor is livestock; instead, she said, the evidence shows that Taylor is a domesticated pet who should be able to live at home. Taylors is a [**2] sad, Dickensian tale in which a cold, hard-nosed PAGE 2 723 So. 2d 1288, *1288; 1998 Ala. Civ. App. LEXIS 745, **2 triumvirate tries everything within its power to separate a woman from the potbellied porcine pet she loves. The story goes like this. Gebauer already owned Taylor when she moved into the Lake Forest subdivision in February 1996. About [* 1289] a week after Gebauer moved in, the architectural review committee of the Lake Forest Property Owners Association sent her a letter claiming that she had violated the neighborhoods restrictive covenants by putting up a chain-link fence and by keeping a pig in her home. Robert Segalla, chairman of the three-member architectural review committee, who is also the president of the neighborhood association, was the only person to testify for the association. At trial he said that he had never seen Taylor, and there is no evidence that the two other members of the architectural review committee had ever seen her, either. Segalla acknowledged that even though he had no personal knowledge of Taylor, he helped with a petition to have her removed from the neighborhood. He acknowledged that the three members of the architectural review committee were laymen as far as animal husbandry is concerned, and he said that [**3] he knew nothing about the differences between a potbellied pig and a regular farm pig. He acknowledged that another potbellied pig, "Lulu," lived in the neighborhood but that no action had been taken to have her ousted from the neighborhood. Nonetheless, the architectural review committee charged ahead like a wild boar in rutting season, single-mindedly pursuing its quest to have Taylor removed from her home. Gebauer testified that Taylor is her pet, just like a dog or cat, and that, as often happens with female pets, TayJor has been spayed. At the time of trial, Gebauer had had Taylor for three years. She explained that Vietnamese potbellied pigs are raised in the United States to be pets, not livestock. Their pedigrees are maintained, and purebred potbellies can be registered, as thoroughbred dogs can be. Potbellied pigs like Taylor are far smaller than regular farm pigs, weighing between 75 and 100 pounds when fully grown. Their ears, tails, body hair, and other traits differ from those of farm pigs. Potbellied pigs cannot eat the same feed as farm pigs, and, on doctors orders, Taylor eats a brand of feed made especially for exotic pigs. Gebauer submitted a videotape, "A Day [**4] in the Life of Taylor." The tape shows Taylor walking around the house, going up and down stairs, eating her treats, getting her belly scratched, and doing tricks like sitting on command and performing some sort of pig dance. Taylor, who Gebauer said is housebroken, is shown going out into the backyard to play. She has an igloo-shaped doghouse lined with handmade afghans, but it appears she sleeps indoors at night -- in her own bedroom. Neighborhood dogs can be heard barking in the background of the tape, but with the exception of an oink, oink here and an oink, oink there, Taylor is quiet. There does not appear to be a rambunctious bone in her body. The literature on potbellied pigs submitted by Gebauer makes it clear that the animals are meant to be kept as pets. Pet stores sell books on how to care for and understand your potbellied pig. The City of Daphne, where Gebauer and Taylor live, has passed an ordinance allowing potbellied pigs to live as pets within the city limits. Dr. Michael Rehm, Taylors veterinarian, testified by deposition that potbellied pigs are intelligent, clean animals that "are probably less destructive than a puppy would be." He said that, in his experience, [**5] people who have potbellied pigs "rant and rave about how clean they are and how easy to train they are, so 1 think from that standpoint they are in all PAGE 3 723 So. 2d Thursday, January 10,2002 America Online: IDDIEBIDDY / |
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