Why environmental court is a nightmare for Shelby County residents | Opinion
Consequences can be severe when the government allows people to file “blight” lawsuits involving occupied homes in their community. Entire families can end up on the street, along with their furniture. Despite the high stakes, the judicial system prioritizes efficiency over fairness in Memphis.
Division 14 of the Shelby County General Sessions Court, typically called the “Environmental Court,” handles about 1,200 cases each month, ranging from animal code violations to fire hazard complaints. To keep things moving, the court allows witnesses to stand up in the audience and speak. Nobody swears them in or authenticates their evidence.
The environmental court simply ignores the Tennessee Rules of Evidence and Civil Procedure. Chewing gum is forbidden in the gallery, but condemning neighbors with hearsay testimony is fine.
Waiting in the wings are “receivers,” court-appointed housing organizations ready to make money off other people’s misery with liens against their homes. To make matters worse, the Environmental Court does not record or transcribe its proceedings, so losing parties have no record on appeal.
Entering a draining saga
Sarah Hohenberg stepped into this grimly efficient world—not by choice—in 2013 when two neighbors complained she was moving too slowly to repair damages after a storm toppled trees onto her house. Six years later in 2019, when the Environmental Court finally dismissed a pair of cases against Hohenberg, she was homeless and living as a fugitive in a Mississippi hotel room.
Her flight from Memphis became necessary when she refused to sign over her property to a receiver in 2018, triggering the judge to issue a warrant for her arrest on contempt charges. Despite the desperate maneuver, Hohenberg lost her home anyway after racking up an estimated $100,000 in attorney fees and declaring bankruptcy.
Calculating the precise amount of her legal costs would be difficult because her financial papers were lost, stolen or destroyed—along with most of her other possessions—when the Environmental Court sent agents to gut her home and stack her belongings on the curb.
Hohenberg, who was nearly 70 and suffering from health problems at the time, could not move the items herself due to age and disability. And she could not pay someone else to do it. The Environmental Court left her destitute, mentally shaken, and unable to fight for the home she had owned for 25 years without a mortgage.
“What they did to me was a nightmare,” Hohenberg says.
Shockingly, everything happened without due process. Rather than accept the constitutional shortcuts, Hohenberg and another former homeowner named Joseph Hanson fought back in 2020 with a lawsuit against the city, county and court. Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, represents them free of charge.
Despite the record of abuse—or rather the lack of record—the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee dismissed the lawsuit without considering the merits on Aug. 3, 2022. Ironically, the federal judge accused Hohenberg and Hanson of failing to follow proper procedure.
Realizing a need for due process
Hohenberg and Hanson welcome the demand for due process. It’s what they sought for years in the Environmental Court. Yet the U.S. District Court erred when it cited an antiquated legal trap called the Rooker–Feldman Doctrine, which prohibits federal trial courts from hearing the appeals of people who lost in state court. The doctrine does not apply to Hohenberg or Hanson because neither person actually lost at the local level. The Environmental Court dismissed the cases against them without issuing judgments.
Both former homeowners have vowed to challenge the federal ruling in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Refreshingly, they will have an actual record to cite. On paper—with an explanation of why the judge ruled the way he did.
The Environmental Court could learn from the example. Driving people from their homes is a serious matter, and the Constitution demands a transparent process with rigorous safeguards. Efficiency should not trump fairness—especially when the government wants to open someone’s front door and step inside.
Robert Peccola is an attorney and Daryl James is a writer at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Va.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Why a Shelby County General Sessions Court is nightmare for citizens
