Things may not be returning to normal anytime soon in a Cincinnati suburb that got stirred up when an 88-year-old woman was arrested after refusing to give the boy next door his ball back. She is now suing the boy's parents for disturbing her peaceful enjoyment of her home.

Edna Jester's arrest in October for misdemeanor theft brought national publicity to her neighborhood in the suburb of Blue Ash. The city later dropped the charge, but Jester, a widow who has lived there since 1949, isn't burying the hatchet with her neighbors, a family of seven whom she accuses of being serial trespassers.

“Kelly and Paul Tanis and their minor children regularly, and without permission, enter Ms. Jester's property, often to retrieve footballs, frisbees, and other play items that have been carelessly tossed into her yard,” she alleges in a complaint filed last month.

Even the posting of a “No Trespassing” sign has failed “to discourage the Tanis family from continuing to interrupt her peaceful enjoyment of her property,” the suit says.

Jester is seeking unspecified damages for trespass, nuisance and intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), claiming that

Choosing to blatantly ignore the pleadings of Ms. Jester, an 88 year old woman in declining health, with knowledge of the detrimental effect Ms. Jester was thus forced to endure, is extreme and outrageous behavior that society does not recognize.

Paul Tanis, a father of five, called police Oct. 16 after his 13-year-old son threw a football into Jester's yard. “I just wanted the ball back,” he told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “My son paid for the ball with his own money.”

But when the officers asked Jester to return it, she refused. “It was a terrible ordeal. Terrible,” she said of her arrest.

Suing the neighbors probably won't ease Jester's stress level, particularly as she is unlikely to recover much, if anything. The Tanises' alleged intrusions certainly don't meet the high standard for an IIED claim, which, as the Restatement of Torts says, “does not extend to mere insults, indignities, threats, annoyances, petty oppressions, or other trivialities.”

By Matthew Heller
1/6/09