Tampa homeowner in guest house dispute remains in jail as his neighbor’s attorney speaks out

One outside contractor says she’s never seen a case like the one that got Michael Martin arrested.

TAMPA, Fla. — The lawyer for a Tampa couple who asked a judge to find their neighbor in contempt of court over a disputed guest house says there’s more to the story we first brought you on Tuesday.

Scott McLaren, an attorney at Hill Ward Henderson, says arresting Michael Martin for the construction is a last resort after years of not complying with a judge’s order.

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Martin remains in jail, refusing to pay a demolition company hundreds of thousands of dollars to tear down the guest house, pool and pickleball court at his Beach Park home in south Tampa that he started building five years ago.

“Mr. Martin is ‘a state court loser,’” McLaren said in an interview Wednesday night, citing a federal lawsuit Martin filed that was later dismissed on procedural grounds. “[He] just continues to file frivolous appeal after frivolous appeal.”

Martin’s neighbors, Barbara and Gordon Babbitt, first sued Martin and the City of Tampa in 2021 after Martin applied and was approved for permits to build his home, guest house, pickleball court and pool.

“This location will allow the occupants of the [guest house] to peer into the backyard and pool area of Babbitts’ home,” the original complaint stated.

Martin subsequently removed any windows facing the Babbitt’s property and installed bamboo along the property line to obstruct the view of the guest house.

The Babbitt’s contend Martin’s construction was erroneously approved by the city, saying, in addition to other mistakes, that the guest house is “within a utility easement that has never been invalidated or released by the City. This area had previously been reserved on a plat as public space.”

The case, nearly five years later, now has more than 500 filings as part of the court record, with Judge Nash ultimately ruling the construction didn’t comply with plat restrictions from when it was originally subdivided in 1924.

He first ordered the demolition of the guest house in his order, later changing the language and scope to include the pickleball court and pool.

Martin has appeals pending right now, but the Babbitt’s filed six motions to have Martin found in contempt, arguing Martin has signed a contract with a demolition company and needs to pay $392,372.50 to Dynamite Demolition to begin tearing down the structures. Judge Nash rejected them until last week, finding Martin in contempt and ordering a writ of bodily attachment, which orders all law enforcement to take Martin into custody and take him to jail.

“No one is above the law,” McLaren said. “So we just want the court’s ruling complied with, that’s it.”

General contractor Julie Magill is one of several outside contractors and developers I asked to evaluate the case. She says she can’t remember a time when a judge told the city it didn’t follow its own code on neighborhood conformity.

“I’ve never seen anything of this magnitude and someone to have that much power to put somebody in jail; that’s crazy,” she says (Magill is also running for Tampa mayor). “Once the city makes a decision, it’s pretty much that’s the way it’s going to be. Especially on a formal decision.”

An original subdivision plat is created when a tract of undeveloped land is mapped into individual lots. In the 1924 plat for Martin and the Babbitts’ neighborhood in Beach Park, where homes line W Swann Ave close to Swann Park, an alley and a grassy block were originally prescribed. That block and alley were later subsumed into the adjacent lots and were bought and sold a few times before Martin’s purchase, according to court records.

But when Martin began to build his home, guest house, pool and pickleball court in 2021, the Babbitt’s first tried to tell him to stop, then sued him and the City arguing, “in approving a lot reconfiguration to allow construction within Block E, the City disrupted the historical precedent pattern of parcel configuration in the neighborhood.”

But there already was a house and concrete structures there when Martin acquired the property, says Dennis Johnson, minority owner of Bayshore Title Company. Johnson helped Toni Everett, the listing agent for the property, turn three lots plus Block E into three lots to sell.

“It was my understanding in my meetings with the City that those vacated easements had been vacated,” referring to the alley that never was built and the current rear frontage of homes both on W Swann Ave and W Beach Park Drive, where the Babbitts live. “I asked the city many times, ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to replat this?’ And they said, ‘No, it’s not applicable here. Not at all applicable. We do not want you to replat it.’”

But 13th Judicial District Judge Christopher Nash said no replating the property is one of two reasons why Martin is in the wrong. The other is that one of the new plots, where Martin lives, doesn’t match the shape of the other neighborhood plots and therefore violates city code. In this case, a judge is enforcing the code, not code enforcement, which perplexes Magill.

“It’s usually the city inspectors go out, they deem that it’s not habitable, and they’ll condemn it and put a demo order on,” she said. “This is a viable project, in my opinion, and to be ordered to tear it down because a neighbor complained is just completely over the top.”

McLaren, the Babbitts’ attorney, says it may be unusual to send a neighbor to jail, but it may be the only way to get the guest house removed.

“They don’t want Mr. Martin in jail, but they do want him to comply with the court order,” he said.

The city of Tampa, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on its role because the court case is still open.