What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Colorado. Hello, seems like a helpful community. My issue. We live in a semi rural area. ItÂ’s a small community, 35 houses mostly 5 acre lots. My neighbor has various types of animals but the ones at issue are her roosters. They are loud and obnoxious crowing throughout the day starting at approximately 4:00am. Unfortunately under the county animal zoning rules they are allowed to have roosters. Paraphrasing : 2.3 acres no roosters allowed / 5 acres roosters are ok. We have a homeowners association that forbids obnoxious noises odors etc. After my complaints the Homeowners association board sent them a letter demanding immediate removal of the roosters. The neighbor in question removed the offending roosters for one month than simply brought them back. The homeowners association is tiny with no enforcement arm. Any legal action would be up to me. Do I have any legal recourse? Lawsuit for loss of home value ? Violating the order of the homeowners association ? Thanks for any help
You have said that the zoning rules are not violated, so that avenue is obviously foreclosed to you. I would have to read the exact language of the HOA covenants and related rules and know more about the problem to determine if the noise from the roosters are violating anything with respect to the HOA rules.
The other option is to sue the neighbors for an order to abate a nuisance. Adjusterjack is wrong to suggest that simply because roosters are “farm animals” and make “farm animal noises” that this automatically means the keeping of the roosters is ok. The details of it matter a great deal. The Colorado Supreme Court in a 1931 case involving a dispute over the keeping of 30-40 dogs in kennel operation that did not (at the time, anyway) violate the zoning ordinances of the city of Denver (it was located at about 55th and Federal, and that kind of business would not be allowed there today, that location is much more urban now than it was 86 years ago
) overturned the dismissal of the trial court that was premised in part on the notion that the barking of a dog is a natural sound. The Court quoted the trial judge’s opinion which stated: “The barking of a dog ought not to disturb an ordinary person. That is a common sound heard in every community. To some ears the barking of a dog, especially on the person's own premises, is a sound that it pleasing, and one which tends to make him feel secure.”
Krebs v. Hermann, 90 Colo. 61, 65–66, 6 P.2d 907, 908–09 (1931). The defendant’s lawyer, in making a similar point, quoted a Missouri Senator who praised the sound of dogs in a eulogy given concerning a dog. The Supreme Court, rather dryly, then observed:
The Senator, however, was speaking only of one dog and not of a collection of 40 or 90 dogs, all of whom were continuously howling and yelping at the same time under his window in the nighttime while he was unsuccessfully trying to sleep and get repose of body and mind. If the Senator had been in his home, trying to obtain sleep, and the chorus of 40 to 90 dogs had been continuously howling and yelping under his window, we might conjecture, although we do not attempt to state, the blistering language which he probably would have employed because of his inability to sleep.
Id. The Supreme Court did not say that this situation was definitely a nuisance since it was reviewing an order to dismiss. Thus, the case was remanded to the trial court for further proceedings to examine the details in light of the Supreme Court’s opinion and for the trial judge to make that decision. But it does stand for the proposition that it certainly could be a nuisance and for the rejection of adjusterjack’s implication that any farm animal noise, being natural, would automatically be allowed.
So even in rural setting zoned to allow farm animals, the argument that any noise made by farm animals would be ok doesn’t fly. The details matter. Keeping just a rooster or two with some chickens is probably not sufficient to cause a nuisance on 10 acres, but keeping a large number of them might well rise to the level of a nuisance depending on where the roosters are located relative to the other homes in the area, how much actual noise they make and when, etc.
In short, I think you ought to see a Colorado civil litigation attorney familiar with HOAs and nuisance law. You might have some options to force the neighbor to get rid of some or all of the roosters. The devil is, as the saying goes, in the details. But I reject the notion of some who have responded that you have no chance and that you are somehow unreasonable in your complaint. Without those details, there is no way I could express an opinion one way or the other on that.
