A HOMEOWNER has been engulfed in a years-long legal battle with his homeowner’s association (HOA) over a landscaping feature.

Jim Hildenbrand moved to Avignon Villa Homes, a community for older adults in a Kansas City suburb, and almost immediately ran into issues with the HOA and neighbors.

First, it was his satellite TV dish, which the HOA wanted him to move.

Then, it was citations for parking cars in his driveway overnight and an unapproved St. Francis statue in his lawn.

Next, Hildenbrand was written up for a dead cat found in his window well, which he believes was planted by a neighbor in order to get him in trouble.

Hildenbrand then began a years-long fight with the HOA over dividers in his garden he claimed to have received approval for.

The shin-high wall lines his plant bed along the side of his house, which he thinks increases curb appeal.

The HOA ordered him to remove it, but he did not, now it has been left to the courts to decide.

 “I have to do the right thing, and this is the right thing,” Hildenbrand said of his legal battle, calling the HOA board “a dictatorship.”

The homeowner claimed to not have received anything in writing that prohibited him from keeping the short wall.

“It’s standing up for my constitutional rights,” he said.

Andrea Mosher was supportive of Hildenbrand’s fight and claims that after her support, she was targeted by the HOA for issues they had not pointed out before.

“It’s the worst place I’ve ever lived,” she said.

“Dictatorial. Bullying. You’re not free; you’re constantly under their control, their demand, their whim. They not only drive around, but they walk through your yard, they take pictures of your yard to compare pictures from one walk-around to the next walk-around to make sure something’s not different.”

Some residents of the neighborhood have a different story to tell about Hildenbrand; that he is the problem, not the HOA.

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“We’re not the Gestapo,” said Kevin Drake, who was on the board when the lawsuit went to trial originally

“We try to work with everybody in this neighborhood. But we have to enforce our deed restrictions. This individual was not going to stop with just putting in the wall.

“Next would have been a koi pond, or he would have put some playground structure or something up. We had to say no. You knew the rules when you moved in. If you don’t like it, you’re free to move someplace else.”

“We’d just like for this to go away…The guy just didn’t comply with the rules like the rest of us have,” said Bob Collins, a resident of the HOA.

Niels Mortensen, the HOA president said that this case is about more than just whether the wall stays.

“The minute you start saying, ‘Oh well, that’s not a big deal,’ then before you know it, nothing is a big deal…I view this as a test case: Either our declarations are enforceable, or they’re not,” he explained.

Hildenbrand pays $185 a month to the HOA, like his neighbors, but that is hardly the most expensive part about his particular residence.

In his first few years of living in Avignon Villa Homes, he amassed $3,500 in fines, which was later waived by the HOA in order to provide a “clean slate.”

He then found himself dealing with court fees as he fought to keep his wall.

“So I’m real close to being $300,000 out of pocket over a landscaping decorative accent wall that goes around the side and into the front of my yard, which all of my neighbors find beautiful,” said Hildenbrand.

When the issue initially was taken to court in 2014, the HOA won and their order to remove the wall was upheld.

Hildenbrand soon had an attorney who filed various motions which failed, before appealing to Kansas Court of Appeals which sent it to a lower court to re-try.

“I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” Hildenbrand said. “The stupidity of this whole thing amazed me.”

In 2017 a judge ordered him to pay $25,000 to the HOA, upholding the original ruling, which Hildenbrand quickly moved to appeal.

In court fees, all combined, this legal battle has totaled almost $1 million.

By 2019 the HOA had spent nearly $388,000 on legal proceedings and Hildenbrand had spent around $400,000.

Four years later, the Court of Appeals of Kansas still sided with the HOA but revised the ordered fine to $17,600 and kicked it back down to a lower court to finalize.