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Fircrest lawsuit leaves hurt feelings, more

By Scott Hewitt, Columbian staff writer
Published: December 30, 2009, 12:00am

Neighborhood leaders hope incident won’t deter volunteerism

No good deed goes unpunished. It’s a familiar wisecrack.

In Vancouver’s Fircrest neighborhood, it’s no joke. What started out as an innocent mistake made by volunteers trying to do good exploded into a small claims lawsuit that ended in a $420-plus-expenses judgment against the Fircrest Neighborhood Association. At least one longtime neighborhood leader has quit the group in the wake of internal controversy about paying up promptly, or making the winner wait.

All are hoping the matter doesn’t have a chilling effect on neighborhood volunteerism overall.

“All of us are going to have some second thoughts,” said local leader Ralph Peabody — before he decided to leave the Fircrest Neighborhood Association. “The whole thing is really strange.”

Becky Archibald, another longtime Fircrest organizer, said she hopes Peabody will reconsider. “I know Ralph is upset, but I hope it doesn’t stay with him in the long run,” she said.

Pile puzzle

Like many neighborhood groups, Fircrest for years has hosted an annual cleanup event. Residents can swing by a central location — the Fircrest Elementary School parking lot — with bulky or voluminous trash that’s just too much for regular curbside pickup. The city provides dumpsters and garbage trucks. Neighborhood volunteers organize and staff the effort.

It’s a free service but participants are encouraged to drop a little something in the donation jar. And the neighborhood tries to accommodate people who can’t drive their own trash over.

“We made an offer to older folks who are disabled or have no means … that we would have somebody pick it up for them,” Peabody said. “This one lady called and said she works during the day and couldn’t get there. She wasn’t qualified, agewise, but we made an exception.”

What Hanna Nowakowski wanted picked up was some household junk that she left at her curb. On May 9, 2009, a crew from the neighborhood association went looking but couldn’t find the house. Another volunteer who was more familiar with the area was dispatched.

But then the first crew scored. They found Nowakowski’s place and hauled away her pile of junk. Soon after they were gone, and unaware of their success, the second volunteer showed up and went hunting for a pile of junk to remove. He discovered another heap of stuff near the front door and a donation envelope on the window of her parked RV.

“I was in process of doing some work in my RV,” said Nowakowski. “I was replacing the carpeting and reupholstering the cushions. I took out the cushions and the plywood bases the cushions sat on and put it all by the front door.”

And that’s the stuff the second volunteer collected and threw away.

“We picked up the wrong stuff,” Peabody admitted.

“There was an error and I really understand that,” said Nowakowski. “The Fircrest Neighborhood Association does a great job with these neighborhood cleanups.”

But that appears to be as far as the good will goes. Nowakowski was out what she valued at $1,700 worth of materials; both she and Peabody said they tried to be reasonable in working out a solution, but it couldn’t be done, and tempers flared. Conflicting claims were made about the value and newness of the materials accidentally thrown away. Talks hosted by Community Mediation Services didn’t help. Nowakowski sued the Fircrest Neighborhood Association in small claims court.

“I wasn’t even asking for money at first,” Nowakowski said. “I understood it was a mistake. I’m aware they’re my neighbors. But I believe in shared accountability when bad stuff happens.”

The case was heard in October, and District Court Commissioner Sonya Langsdorf made a decision in November: The Fircrest Neighborhood Association owed Hanna Nowakowski the fair market value of the property she lost: $420 plus court expenses. About $460 total.

“This is an extremely unfortunate series of events,” Langsdorf wrote. “The Fircrest Neighborhood Association volunteers provide their valuable time to not only make the neighborhood more attractive but to instill a sense of community.”

But there’s no question about the law, she said: When a mistake has been made and someone has been deprived of property, good faith is not a defense.

No protection

Nor is the city of Vancouver.

“In general, the city can’t take on the liability for neighborhood associations,” said Judi Bailey of the Vancouver Office of Neighborhoods.

A January 2008 neighborhood association handbook outlines that state law provides protection from personal liability for volunteers — but it also says neighborhood associations are “not public agencies” and are not protected from liability by the city.

“We support neighborhood associations but they are independent entities,” said Tim Haldeman, the city’s risk manager. “The neighborhood association goes out and gets volunteers to help support that neighborhood’s cause. In general, our liability policy does not cover what they’re doing.”

Even when it’s a neighborhood cleanup incorporating city resources — the dumpsters and garbage trucks?

“Those are the pieces we bring to table,” said Haldeman, “but it’s up to the neighborhood association to make it happen and to get the volunteers and tell them what to do.”

That’s different than volunteers with the Neighbors On Watch program, a brigade of citizens trained to patrol the streets and watch for trouble. “Those people are trained by the city, they represent the city, they’re agents of the city,” Haldeman said. So they enjoy city liability protection, he said.

Haldeman added that this lawsuit — a first, according to everybody contacted by The Columbian — has the city researching the possibility of a risk pool neighborhood associations might be able to form in order to protect themselves at a reasonable price. But it would still be up to neighborhood groups to buy into it with their own money, he said. Fircrest — which is not formally incorporated as a nonprofit group — is studying its insurance options too, Archibald said, “but it will cost us horrendously.”

The Fircrest Neighborhood Association has no assets beyond a small bank account, Peabody said. He wouldn’t divulge just how much it contains — “nickels and dimes,” he said.

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At a Dec. 1 neighborhood meeting, Peabody said, the group decided not to make “a big concentrated effort at a fundraiser” to pay Nowakowski beyond a collection jar at next May’s cleanup.

But that was before anybody realized there was a definite 30-day deadline to pay up — and the next step could be civil court.

“We missed that very fine print,” said Archibald. There followed a flurry of panicked e-mails and phone calls, she said, and then Fircrest president Jesse Magaña took a drastic step: he went to Nowakowski and wrote a check himself. The neighborhood can take its time raising funds to pay him back, he said. (Magaña made headlines last month for prevailing in Washington Supreme Court in a long-running, $8 million disability lawsuit against the Hyundai car company.)

“I thought it was the right thing to do,” Magaña said. “What we did was wrong and we needed to take care of it. I wanted to get Hanna out of the way.”

Archibald said she’s certain the neighborhood’s decadelong tradition of cleanups will not end.

“I really hope this doesn’t hamper our good efforts in the future,” she said.

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