After a four-year battle that ended at the Alabama Supreme Court, a Gardendale couple is building a garage.

Danny and Jennifer Brittian began the process of building a garage four years ago at their house on Richie Avenue, but were stopped after a neighbor called to complain, according to Ben Goldman, an attorney with Hand Arendall, LLC, the firm representing the city of Gardendale.

That call led to appearances before the city zoning board, followed later by a hearing at Jefferson County Circuit Court and finally to the highest court in the state.

On June 18, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Brittians.

“We’re going to put that garage up even if we move in a year,” Jennifer Brittian said Friday. “It’s just the principle.”

The Brittians have two existing garages, one attached to their house and one free-standing, but need a third to house classic Pontiac GTO cars that Danny Brittian collects, according to Jennifer Brittian. Two of the cars are currently being housed in a neighbor’s basement — Ronnie and Tommie Thomason, who testified on the Brittians’ behalf in court, Brittian said.

“When you have vehicles like that, you can’t leave them outside,” Brittian said. “My car has been sitting out in the driveway in the weather for four years. There’s nowhere else to park.”

The case began in 2006, when Kenny Clemons was mayor of Gardendale. Mayor Othell Phillips inherited the situation when he took office.

“The city of Gardendale has nothing personal against the Brittians,” Phillips said. “Municipalities have written ordinances and established regulations concerning building codes, and that’s why the city fought this case. The ordinances, regulations and codes are made to protect the citizens and the city as a whole. Why have them if you can’t enforce them?”

Goldman said the case always was “all about and only about stopping them from building an attached accessory structure in their side yard.”

He said he could understand why the jury ruled in favor of the homeowners.

“The Brittians are a nice couple,” he said. “If I was on a jury and that’s how they wanted to use their property, I would find that persuasive. But the city can’t forego its zoning ordinance.”

Jennifer Brittian said that as property owners, she and her husband should be able to use their property as they see fit.

The process

After investigating the initial complaint from a neighbor, city officials found that the Brittians had not obtained a building permit, according to Goldman.

“We ordered them to stop work and apply for a building permit,” he said.

The permit was denied because of a city zoning ordinance that says residents “can not build a detached accessory structure in your side yard,” Goldman said.

The Brittians’ next step was to go to the Board of Appeals and Adjustment of the City of Gardendale, which has the authority to decide whether an applicant is entitled to a variance. The board denied the variance.

“We thought it was over,” Goldman said.

Then the city received another call from a neighbor, according to Goldman, which led to officials finding out again that the Brittians were building a garage without a permit.

After another denial for a building permit, the couple again went to the city’s board of appeals in April 2007, to be denied again for a variance.

Goldman said the Brittians were requesting four variances. One was for having a covered deck that “extended too close to the back property line” and one was for the existing detached structure being too close to a property line, Goldman said.

He said the city knew about those violations because of surveys submitted by the Brittians.

“It was all brought to our attention by their survey,” he said.

When denied the variance, the Brittians took matters a step further by appealing to the Jefferson County Circuit Court.

In such a situation, the circuit court acts as a “de facto board of zoning adjustment,” Goldman said, with the jury sitting as a board of zoning and appeals to “make a decision about whether to grant a variance.”

The judge set a trial date of Dec. 1, 2008, where the case was tried for three days.

The jury ruled in favor of the Brittians, and then it was the city of Gardendale’s turn to appeal. The case ended up before the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, which affirmed the trial court’s decision without issuing an opinion, or a statement about why it supported the ruling.

Goldman said the city then asked the Supreme Court to review the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals decision. The Supreme Court also upheld the decision, without issuing an opinion.

The Brittians received their building permit from the city on June 18, the day of the Supreme Court ruling.