In Bell v. Frost, the plaintiff--an attorney from Indianapolis--sued Roberts Brothers, Inc. and one of its agents in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama for copyright infringement.[ii] The plaintiff claimed the real estate agent used a photo originally created by the plaintiff on Roberts Brothers’ website. The photograph in question was essentially a stock photo of a city skyline. 

The plaintiff had previously sued the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) in federal court in Indiana and settled the case on this same exact issue.[iii] That settlement released all NAR members from liability for use of this particular photo. 

In a decision released on August 8, 2019, the Southern District court denied a procedural motion by the plaintiff attorney.[iv] The court appeared very skeptical of the lawsuit in large part because of the prior settlement in Indiana. However, because this order was on a procedural motion by the plaintiff, the lawsuit is not quite over with yet.

The Legal Helpdesk will continue to monitor this case as it continues through the litigation process. 

In A.G. No. 2019-046, the City of Foley sought clarification on what costs could be included in a “weed lien.” A “weed lien” can be placed on property by a Class 5, 6 or 8 Municipality[v] where noxious weeds are declared a nuisance through a statutory process undertaken by a city government, and the city incurs costs in abating or cleaning up the weeds on that property.[vi] The City of Foley is a Class 8 Municipality.[vii]

Here’s how the weed lien process works. First, the city provides the property owner notice that weeds on the property must be cleaned up. The homeowner may object to the finding that the weeds are noxious, but if the homeowner is overruled by the city council (the governing body which conducts the hearing) and continues to refuse to clean up the weeds, the city may enter the property and clean the weeds itself. Then, the city may assess a weed lien against the property owner to recoup costs.

In this Attorney General Opinion request, the City of Foley asked whether expenses for advertising and postage for the notice provisions, and various personnel and equipment costs for the actual abatement, could be included as eligible expenses to be assessed in the weed lien. The Attorney General answered “yes.” The opinion held that the statute in question allows including costs for providing the property owner notice of the abatement requirement and personnel/equipment costs if the city performs the abatement.[viii]

This interpretation is based in part on A.G. No. 2012-032, which found “under the plain meaning of (Ala. Code § 11-40-33), a municipality may assess certain incidental costs, such as reasonable attorney's fees and clerical costs, as part of the demolition of an unsafe structure.”[ix] That opinion found that similarly worded statute “allowed a municipality to ‘fix’ the costs which it finds were reasonably incurred in the demolition.”[x] The language at issue here was also consistent with the language in Ala. Code § 11-67-43(b), which provides for weed abatement liens in Class 4 Municipalities.[xi]

The Attorney General thus found that the City of Foley can include costs for mailing notices, advertising the weed abatement notices, and personnel costs incurred in weed abatement activities when calculating the total cost of a weed lien. 

On April 24, 2019, an Alabama homebuilder was charged by federal prosecutors with operating a wire fraud scheme. 

According to information published by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ),[xii] Jeffrey Rusert embezzled over $1.3 million from customers. His scheme allegedly involved soliciting funds from individuals and families to construct a home, but fraudulently using the funds for other unrelated construction projects as well as personal debts and expenses. He also allegedly submitted fraudulent invoices and documents to financial institutions from which he obtained financing though the funds obtained were supposed to be used for construction expenses. 

The Alabama Home Builders Licensure Board and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) worked on the investigation of this case. Rusert faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.