Court strikes junk ruling

Judge must hold new hearing on vehicles, litter issue

By RICHARD BURGESS
Advocate Acadiana bureau

LAFAYETTE — A judge was premature in striking down a law aimed at removing junked vehicles that litter the yards and streets of Lafayette, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled this week.

Fifteenth Judicial District Judge Edward Rubin declared the city’s vehicle nuisance law unconstitutional last year in a lawsuit brought by a man who said the cars and trucks towed from his property were not junk.

Rubin wrote at the time that the ordinance relied on a subjective interpretation of what a junked vehicle is and that the law might discriminate against people who do not have a garage, because it exempts vehicles kept in an enclosed area.

The state Supreme Court ruled this week that the judge should have first settled the question of whether he feels the vehicles meet the definition of junked vehicles under the law before delving into constitutional questions.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to Rubin for another hearing on the issue.

The recent ruling does little to resolve the case, because the judge could ultimately make the same decision as before after going through the process outlined by the Supreme Court.

The legal wrangling over the junked vehicle law comes in a lawsuit filed by George Phillips Jr.

Police had alleged that four vehicles in the yard of his Tessington Street home appeared to be inoperable, including a pickup truck that sat with its engine out and a car with a flat tire and mildew on the windows.

Lafayette’s junk vehicle ordinance makes it against the law “for any person to cause or maintain such a public nuisance by abandoning, wrecking, dismantling, partially dismantling, rendering inoperable, or discarding any motor vehicle” on their own or someone else’s property.

City-parish government has stopped enforcing the vehicle nuisance law while the lawsuit over its constitutionality is pending.

“We have about 80 to 100 that are ready to go right away if we started towing tomorrow,” City-Parish Criminal Justice Support Administrator Marcus Bruno said.

Before enforcement stopped in late 2007, the city had tagged about 1,600 vehicles that year for removal.

Most of those were removed by property owners, but city-parish government seized and towed away about 25 cars and trucks.

“The ordinance is a very important tool in the efforts of the city-parish government to address quality of life issues in our neighborhoods,” City-Parish Attorney Pat Ottinger said.

No hearing date has been set for Rubin to reconsider the case.

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