Article Courtesy of The Orlando Sentinel

By Rene Stutzman

Published September 14, 2008 

LONGWOOD - Kent Nauman has an artificial leg and two tiny dogs. When he walks them, he uses a pair of leashes 24 feet long. His condo association, though, has a rule limiting leashes to 4 feet.

"It's just plain too short," said Nauman, 57, a former physician. "They'd be under my foot."

The two sides have been at war over that rule for six years. Now, the Florida Attorney General's Office has filed suit against the condo board, the Springwood Village Condominium Association of Longwood Inc., accusing it of discriminating and retaliating against Nauman because he's disabled.

"It's our job to enforce the laws of Florida," said Danielle Carroll, the assistant Florida attorney general appointed Friday to head its Office of Civil Rights, the division handling the case.

The issue isn't so much that the rule is unfair, according to the suit. It's that the association enforced it against just one person -- Nauman. That was the conclusion of a state arbitrator.

The arbitrator ruled the association was in the wrong, even though it offered to let Nauman use a 10-foot leash, a deal he rejected.

Despite that loss, the association just kept citing Nauman, according to the attorney general's suit, which was filed two weeks ago in state circuit court in Sanford.

It also began to harass him, according to the suit. A week after the arbitration ruling, an association employee hauled away six or seven potted plants -- rose cuttings Nauman was tending. About that same time, the employee took away two small statues -- a rabbit and an angel -- that Nauman had placed outside his condo years before.

Association manager Larry Skinner said the association has done nothing wrong.

"We don't treat him any differently than anybody else," Skinner said.

The plants and statues were moved, he said, because the association always removes those things. They're on common property.

After that, Nauman filed a complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations, the state agency charged with protecting people from discrimination. It concluded last year that Springwood was guilty of discrimination.

"They're using the disability as a weapon," Nauman said of the condo board.

Not so, said board attorney James E. Olsen.

"I don't believe there was any intent to discriminate," he said. "I think it was a dispute that probably got out of hand."

Nauman has more than one disability, according to state records. He has also been diagnosed with schizophrenia, a serious mental illness that can be characterized by delusions and hallucinations. Nauman takes no medication for it and is not under a psychiatrist's care.

He also has a long history of acrimony with members of the condo board and over the years has accused them of a long list of misdeeds, including bylaws violations. He served on that board in 2002 and 2003.

"I'm not a very popular person," Nauman said.

Carroll, head of the attorney general's Office of Civil Rights, would not discuss Nauman's mental illness, but the Florida Commission on Human Relations noted it in its ruling, and members of the condo board know about it, said Derek Brett, Nauman's attorney for the past several years.

The board took advantage of it, Brett alleged, knowing Nauman could more easily be intimidated and frightened.

"He's a good guy," Brett said. "No one deserves what he got."

Nauman uses the leashes to walk his miniature dachshunds, Minnie Sweetheart and Shorty. He has used the same lengths of rope since before his accident in 1999, when a van pinned his right leg to a loading dock, crushing it.