Longtime Side Streets readers no doubt recall the stories of Jan Jackson, who lives with her husband in the mountainside subdivision known as the B Lazy M Ranch.
It’s a beautiful community on the western flank of Pikes Peak.
Here’s a GoogleEarth map to the B Lazy M:
And this is another view of the remote, wooded ranch.
Here is a view of Jan Jackson’s house, one of two she owns in the community of 35-acre ranchettes.
Jackson and her husband bought their first house with a barn and corral in 1999. They bought the house next-door, above, a few years later and moved. But they still own both properties.
Jackson’s anger at the B Lazy M homeowners association was ignited when they questioned the size of a corral on the property at her first home. Then she accused the HOA of illegally storing water in this pond on Hay Creek.
The pond dam is 19 feet high and 200 feet long. It holds about 30 acre feet of water. It was built in 1963 to water cattle on the 1,600-acre ranch. After the ranch was developed into a subdivision in 1977, the HOA maintained it to water a few remaining cattle, to stock for fishing and as insurance against wildfires.
When the dam needed repair, the HOA issued a special assessment, which Jackson protested, to fix it and to buy water rights to fill the pond.
The dispute led to years of complaints, counter-complaints, allegations, tense meetings and deteriorated into name-calling and lawsuits.
Jackson launched a crusade not just against B Lazy M Ranch but against all HOAs, declaring war and vowing to abolish them. She has her own Web page and posts on many blogs on the subject.
Finally, in October 2007, 4th Judicial District Court Judge Thomas Kennedy ruled Jackson had repeatedly libeled members of the ranch owners association board of directors with venomous attacks that often started like this. . .
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Here is a link to a vintage Jackson rant in which she called board members psychopaths. The board of directors had 2,000 pages of evidence.
In addition, the judge issued an injunction that gagged Jackson from future screeds to her B Lazy M Ranch board, or about the board to newspapers, blogs like the AHRC, which stands for the American Homeowners Resource Center and is a major anti-HOA voice on the web.
Want to really dig into this case? Check out this link, which includes transcripts from the 2007 trial before Kennedy and his decision.
Now, the Colorado Court of Appeals has struck down Kennedy’s injunction against Jackson, freeing her to unleash new attacks. But not with impunity. She no longer faces contempt of court for speaking her mind, but she may be open to new libel lawsuits, bigger fines and court costs.
She is appealing to the Colorado Supreme Court claiming the one-year statute of limitations on defamation claims had expired on many of the statements. It’s unknown if the high court will consider the appeal.
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YIKES! Ms Jackson demonstrates all that is wrong with people who use The Constitution to cloak their anger and uncivil behavior towards those they disagree with. As Rodney King once said, “Why can’t we all just get along?”
HOAs, like Old Salem, can be hotspots of vengeful deeds. People who feel unfairly targeted can and should protest. Power corrupts. HOAs should monitor their own behavior to ensure they don’t fall into the overlords vs. serf mentality.
Why a genuine mountain ranch property has a HOA in the first place is beyond me. And one who measures the size of a corral to boot!
My grandparents who homesteaded east of Castle Rock and Kiowa on Comanche Creek in 1898, where my father was born in a soddy at the base of a Cottonwood tree would be turning over in their graves if they thought they would be dictated to by neighbors organized as a HOA. It was bad enough County, and State government could tell them what they could and could not do with and on their Ranch.
And indeed, after our ranch was sold to a later cattle rancher, Elbert County complained in 1990 that the 110 year old Ranch House was not ‘up to code’ and forced the new owner to either spend huge amounts to ‘upgrade’ it, or tear it down. They tore that historic homestead down and I barely had time to show the place off to MY grandchildren where their ancestors lived.
But a HOA?????
No HOA representatives better come around me. I still have the Hughes Brand – Lazy O T – branding iron, And if WE got into a dispute over MY property, I would happily brand their behinds as they went out the door.
Yeah ‘the land of the free.’
Re: “I would happily brand their behinds as they went out the door.”
((((HOWLIN LAFFIN)))) You sound like a man (or woman) who thinks and feels (and acts!) as I do about legislatively mandated HOAs (which would never have happened without the help of Community Associations Institute (CAI)). HOAs are, imho, a boil on the backsides of any intelligent and rational American who values their freedoms and liberties which are inherent in our U.S. and state Constitutions.
Jan Jackson
jackson doesnt let us post on her Site but she happily posts here
she is a typical hypocrite.
and Hughes forgets (old soldiers usually do) that HOAs are not
mandated, they are voted in!
we voted ours down.
Jan Jackson has made our lives a living hell for the past few years, finally this year, as we memorialized my grandfather on our ranches property, we were able to teach our grandkids to fish as he once taught us, in that very pond. Jan just likes to make trouble, carry sidearms to intimidate us, and finally she has been silenced!
NIck is wrong, HOAs are not “voted” on since most of those adhesion contracts come with the properties and are perpetual contracts and do not recognize “free use of land” under the common law as those founders intended. And to give lien and seizure rights to your neighbors, just begs for arguments, lawsuits and the like. They were in order for the city and country and state governments to shift additional property taxes onto the citizens, and then use those mortgage withheld property taxes instead at their discretion. And so contrary to the entire common law behind home and land ownership in this country it is astounding! The British law of servitudes on which it is based, is a British law, not American – and favors the “corporate” over the individual rights of the owners.
And only control freaks want to control not only the maintenance of their own properties, but others as well. l
Nick, are you by any chance a real estate, property or CAI lawyer? The ones who clean up and are foreclosing on homeowners for their own profits and real estate portfolios in most instances?
And by the way, this concept and idea was a federal one, not state at all, since it is also a global agenda of those global economists for land use control now throughout the world – putting in these “servitudes” now with all new development, and it also then profits the government in those extra taxes collected.
The CAI (Community Associations Institute) is a lawyer led group with also is national, and receives federal grant monies for its control of these development through their lawyers. They receive grant monies for “educating” the public about this illegal concept that is so contrary to those founders in “freedom” over your land and home that all those laws and statutes even backing them up such as the Davis-Bacon Act in California, and the Act in Colorado, are so in violation with “securing” your home and land, and owernship rights they fly in the face of the state and federal Constituion on so many levels it is ridiculouis.
As far as protecting property values? Well, this last mortgage foreclosure mess has certainly proved that wrong also.