The owner of a pet treat manufacturing factory in Colorado sued his neighbors, city employees and others, alleging they conspired to violate his constitutional rights after the neighbors complained to the city about bad smells coming from his factory.

Ray Kasel, owner of Kasel Associates Industries, which, among other things, makes pig ear dog treats, claims that city officials and his neighbors conspired to get him in trouble with the local Department of Environmental Health.  According to news sources, for years neighbors have complained about the odors coming from Kasel's factory. "Smells like dead animals," a neighbor once reported.  After receiving five smell complaints from different households within a twelve-hour period, the city's Department of Environmental Health issued a citation against Kasel pursuant to Denver's air-pollution ordinance.

Kasel appealed the citation, lost and then sued the city and others in federal court for conspiring against him, harassing him and violating his constitutional property rights. The defendants named included city officials, employees from the Department of Environmental Health and some of the complaining neighbors.  Their actions, he asserted, "constituted an unlawful conspiracy to defame [his] reputation" and led to "annoyance, inconvenience, stigma... [and] litigation costs." Kasel's lawyer, Phillip Parrot, said the city and neighbors had deprived Kasel of his right to operate his business and "selectively enforced" the city's odor ordinance to punish him.

The city argued that Kasel's constitutional rights were not violated by receiving a single odor violation and a $500 fine, which remains unpaid. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch dismissed the lawsuit, saying, "My jurisdiction to deal with this matter is under the United States Constitution. You don't have a federal claim."

Even though the neighbors were successful in dismissing the lawsuit, they claim it a victory for Kasel because everybody is afraid to file complaints against him.  "He is a bully," neighbor Emily vonSwearingen says of Kasel.

—Source: blogs.westword.com (Colorado)