FORT LAUDERDALE — Say your neighbor has a yacht so big that it dwarfs the dock behind his home. Do you call the city to complain?
Michael Meldeau did. It wound up getting him sued by one Steven Howell, owner of the yacht.
The two men live on Delmar Place in Fort Lauderdale’s upscale Las Olas Isles, just north of Las Olas and west of the Intracoastal.
The yearslong feud isn’t your run-of-the-mill neighborhood dispute. The lawsuit, filed four years ago, touched on not only property rights but also, in the case of the defendant, the right to free speech.
Reed Tolber, Meldeau’s attorney, attempted to get the lawsuit thrown out, accusing Howell of trying to muzzle Meldeau from complaining to Fort Lauderdale code officers if he notices anything amiss on Howell’s property.
The case was heading to trial in June, but all that changed May 16 when Broward Circuit Judge Martin Bidwell signed an order granting summary judgment in favor of Meldeau, saying there was no need for a trial.
“The record evidence firmly establishes that (Howell) knowingly and routinely moored his yachts behind his home in violation of the city’s code,” Bidwell wrote in his order. “Although it must be vexing to have (a neighbor) constantly report one’s code violations to the city, these actions by (his neighbor) cannot be said to be unreasonable.”
It remains unclear whether Howell and his legal team plan to appeal.
Howell, 64, declined to comment. His attorneys, Brent Gordon and Brian Gottlieb, could not be reached for comment.
Howell’s lawsuit had accused Meldeau, 77, of embarking on a campaign of harassment and urged the court to require him to employ an attorney licensed to practice law in Florida to report any future potential code violations on Howell’s property.
To keep the peace, Howell was forced to rent out dock space and pay dockage fees, his lawsuit says. Those dockage fees, according to the lawsuit, are special damages that Howell would not have to pay if the boat were docked behind his home.
A matter of size
Meldeau bought his three-bedroom home on Delmar Place in 2000 for $825,000, according to the Broward County Property Appraiser’s Office. Howell moved into the neighborhood a decade later, paying nearly $2.7 million for a four-bedroom home two houses away, appraiser records show.
The trouble began when Howell started docking his yacht on the 100-foot lot behind his waterfront home in late 2018, both parties say. The boat, named #OMG, was sometimes docked behind the homes of neighbors with their permission, according to the lawsuit.
Most waterfront homes in Fort Lauderdale have a 10-foot setback on either side for boat dockage. So a property that’s 100 feet wide like Howell’s would be prohibited from docking a boat bigger than 80 feet in length.
Meldeau and his attorney say the #OMG is just shy of 105 feet in length — 25 feet too long for Howell’s property.
A former attorney of Howell’s told a city board the yacht is 96 feet long. And Howell testified during a deposition that he’s not quite sure how long the boat is, records show.
Meldeau took exception to the yacht extending into his property line when it was docked behind the home of a different neighbor whose home sits in between his home and Howell’s, according to court records.
He called the city to report the yacht for violating the setback code in late 2018.
The city’s inspectors found the yacht to be in violation and ordered Howell to remove it, Meldeau’s attorney wrote in his motion to dismiss the case. When they returned to verify compliance, the yacht was gone and the complaint was closed.
But once the case was closed, the yacht was back at the dock, according to Meldeau’s motion to dismiss the case.
“This ‘dance’ occurred several times,” Tolber wrote.
Meldeau complained again and again. But when the city’s inspectors would show up, the yacht would be gone, Tolber wrote.
Then one day, a code inspector spotted the yacht docked behind the house in between Howell’s and Meldeau’s and found it to be in violation of the city’s setback code.
‘It’s time to stop it’
A hearing was scheduled before a magistrate, who agreed the yacht was too big for the lot.
Howell took his case to the city’s Board of Adjustment in January 2020 to request a variance that would allow him to keep the yacht behind his home.
The board denied his request, citing its failure to meet the code’s hardship requirement.
Before the board’s vote, Meldeau spoke up against the variance. He told the board that Howell “started bragging” that it was saving him $8,000 a month in dockage fees to keep his yacht docked behind his home.
“So this is not a hardship,” Meldeau told the board. “This is an economic benefit. And I say we’re not for sale. It’s time to stop it. If you can’t bring a boat in your neighborhood that doesn’t meet the code, don’t bring it in.”
In February 2020, the following month, Howell filed suit against Meldeau.
During a deposition last year, Meldeau’s attorney asked Howell to explain the timing of his lawsuit.
“I don’t know the exact dates of how all this timed out,” Howell said. “But the truth of the matter was that there were all sorts of challenges all around this at different times. We had to manage different risk levels while all this stuff was going on. And that’s why I escalated this to where we are now because I just decided I wasn’t going to live like this any longer. We did everything we could to try to mitigate this and not end up where we are right now.”
In March 2020, the magistrate fined Howell $14,000.
The fine remained unpaid as of Tuesday, May 21, city officials said. During last year’s deposition, Howell said he hadn’t paid the fine because it was “not correct” and he didn’t consider the matter resolved. The yacht was moved from his home in late 2021 and was docked at the RMK Marina, Howell testified.
Howell told Meldeau’s attorney he doesn’t remember details about the boat being moved around after Meldeau started making calls to code officers.
“I don’t recall its movement, but boats come and go,” Howell said. “That’s what they do.”
When asked to confirm that the #OMG yacht is 105 feet long, Howell said he was under the impression the boat was 105 feet when he bought it. But during last year’s deposition, he testified that he was no longer sure.
“When we bought the boat, we thought that it was 105 feet,” Howell said during the deposition. “We’ve since learned, since all this started with Mr. Meldeau, that it’s a Model 105, not 105 feet. And I have multiple documents that confused us all about the exact size, including certifications from the manufacturer. We never measured our boat. We tried and we can’t figure it out.”
The lawsuit, which was amended in 2022, accused Meldeau of making repeated complaints to code enforcement about Howell’s property.
Twice in 2019, Meldeau called the city to report that sewage from the yacht was possibly being dumped into the canal, according to the lawsuit. The city came out to investigate but found no evidence to support the claim, the lawsuit says.
“Plainly, Meldeau is obsessed with Howell,” the lawsuit said, “and he shows no signs of stopping with his continued social media posts (though he subsequent to this lawsuit removed or made such posts private), his unsupported accusations to the president of the local homeowners association, and complaints to the marine patrol just prior to the Covid-19 pandemic on or about as of February 9, 2020.”
‘I don’t want him to do that’
According to the lawsuit, Meldeau “spread lies” on Facebook that Howell was dumping sewage in the canal and renting out dock space to other boat owners. The lawsuit references this comment posted on Meldeau’s Facebook account: “Las Olas Isles will turn into a Commercial Marina full of supersized yachts looking to rent docks on the ‘Cheap.’ And so goes the Venice of America.”
In his order, the judge makes mention of a Facebook post where a relative of Meldeau’s commented, jokingly suggesting he shoot holes in the yacht. “I am ready,” Meldeau replied under the comment.
“The record further establishes that Defendant at one time made a Facebook post suggesting that he would shoot holes into the OMG,” the judge wrote. “However, the record does not show that (Meldeau) has ever pointed the gun at someone, made threats towards anyone, or otherwise caused (Howell) to suffer irreparable damage.
The lawsuit alleged that Meldeau set out two chairs on his dock turned east toward the Howell property, then sitting in one and leaning a rifle against the other. In a motion for summary judgment, Meldeau’s attorney says the “rifle” Meldeau was holding was actually a pellet gun his client used to kill iguanas on his sea wall.
The matter came up during Howell’s deposition last year.
“I think sitting with a rifle and looking down at my house is, especially in today’s culture, no, I don’t think that’s acceptable and I don’t want him to do that,” Howell told Meldeau’s attorney. “I wouldn’t sit with chairs and a rifle facing his house.”
But in his findings, the judge noted that Meldeau maintains the device was an air-powered pellet gun used to kill iguanas.
“Regardless, (Howell) last witnessed (his neighbor) on his dock with the device about three years ago,” the judge wrote.
Toward the end of last year’s deposition, Tolber asked Howell whether he had any plans to bring the yacht back and dock it behind his house.
“It’s undetermined right now,” Howell said.
Tolber asked again, rephrasing the question.
“It will not go back behind my house,” Howell replied, “but it’s possible that it could come back here to a neighbor’s.”
Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sunsentinel.com Follow me on X @Susannah_Bryan
