Law Humor

Peeps Eviction Trial Postponed

By Kevin Underhill

An Easter-week showdown has been averted in the trial of a Colorado woman who claims she was wrongfully evicted for refusing to remove marshmallow Peeps and other Easter decorations from her apartment door last year.  Carol Burdick was evicted last May after she stopped paying rent, which she apparently did to protest the landlord's forcible removal of the holiday Peepery.  The management company sued her for back rent, and she countersued.  The case was set to go to trial this week, but it has apparently been continued to June 22.

Those "news" outlets that have been running this story with stock photos of the familiar duck-shaped Peeps need to get their facts straight, because as this picture from the Boulder Camera clearly shows, Burdick deployed bunny-shaped Peeps in her Easter display.  (She chose them specifically because she has a "fondness for rabbits.")  The landlord appears to have claimed that Burdick was violating the clause of her lease that requires balconies, patios and so forth to be kept in "clean sanitary condition."  If this is an accurate replica Burdick has constructed, it was a somewhat raggedy-ass display but there does not seem to be anything unsanitary about it.

The trial will be quite entertaining if the case does not settle.  Burdick's attorney, John Pineau, says he has lined up an outstanding array of witnesses -- including a local couple who won third place in a Peeps diorama contest and will testify that Peeps can be art -- and evidence including a DVD of Burdick's September appearance on "The Colbert Report."  (Colbert fake-claimed Burdick had been evicted for religious reasons after she put up her marshmallow-bunny pyramid, which he called "a timeless symbol of the Resurrection.")

According to the report, Burdick has entered the Peeps diorama contest herself this year, with a display showing a Peep on trial before a Peep judge and jury.

Link: Boulder Camera (Mar. 29) and (Mar. 19)
Link: Peeps  (official site)

Full post as published by Lowering the Bar on March 31, 2010 (boomark / email).