I’ve Never Been to Indiana. Apparently I Own a Junk Car There?
The Marion County Hospital Corporation has decided the best way to promote public health is to sue an out-of-state property owner over someone else’s functioning Dodge Charger.
I definitely have more than enough chaos on my plate right now. I’m neck-deep in trying to develop lawsuits I didn’t ask for and sort out property damage I didn’t cause. I’m documenting sewage, vandalism, mold, and arguing with desk adjusters on the daily, while sourcing and performing every damn repair myself so I don’t get slammed with the 400% markup on things like outlet covers and caulk. Half the day, I’m loading up Mean Green into the garden sprayer and scrubbing whatever wall hasn’t been sealed yet.
And right in the middle of one of these lovely days, my family lets me know I got a letter delivered to their house, one they had to acknowledge just to receive.
Normally, I’d assume it’s an invoice, a debt offer, or maybe even a legal threat from my old property manager. Hell, I knew I wasn’t expecting a Christmas card in June.
But what I wasn’t expecting was a court summons.
From Indianapolis, Indiana.
A state I’ve never stepped foot in.
Apparently, the Marion County Health Department has decided to sue me over an abandoned vehicle they claim is sitting on a property I own there. A vehicle I’ve never seen. A property I’ve never visited in person.
Because clearly what I needed in the middle of trying to clean up other people’s feces and rebuild a house from near-condemned condition was to get dragged into court by a city I’ve only ever seen on Google Maps.
But fine. Let’s rewind.
The Beginning of the Bullshit
It was Friday, January 24th, 2025, and I was wrapping up packing for a long trip to Brazil that left the following day. Nervous as hell. I’d been planning the trip for a while - 90 days away, just me, the mosquitoes, and dreaming of a little less chaos. But by that afternoon, the excitement had curdled into something closer to dread. I wasn’t ready. I thought I was, but I wasn’t.
And then, just to really sweeten the mood, a letter shows up.
Not from a friend. Not from Delta. Not even a last-minute Amazon package.
It’s from the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County Public Health Department, Department of Housing and Neighborhood Health, which is maybe the least comforting sender name I’ve ever seen on an envelope.
Inside this letter is an official notice claiming that an inspection was conducted at a rental property of mine in Indianapolis - a city I’ve never even visited - and that the inspector allegedly found a junk vehicle sitting there. According to the letter, the vehicle was observed on January 16th, and now I was being cited for violating some code under Ordinance 10-301/10-303.
They say there was this “vehicle(s)” (as if they weren’t even sure how many cars they were accusing me of harboring), and they gave me until January 30th to fix it or risk fines of up to $2,500 per day. Oh, and they also let me know that if I didn’t handle it, they’d just enter the property themselves, take care of it, and send me the bill with penalties stacked on top of that. And if I didn’t pay the bill? They’d roll it into my property taxes.
Not quite the send-off I was expecting as I packed for a multi-leg international flight.
The letter was dated the same day the violation was allegedly observed. It took over a week to reach me out west. That left me with six days to fix it (four of which were business days) with no physical access to the rented property, no specifics as to what kind of car it was, and no actual proof that there even was a car there or what type of car we were even talking about.
So I did what I always do in these situations - I emailed my property manager. They responded quickly (the following business day), said they’d take care of it, and they would coordinate with the inspector. I also called the inspector myself, just to get the full story. I let him know that, according to the property manager, tenants were living there, and no abandoned vehicle of any kind on site.
He didn’t seem to care.
From his perspective, it was simple: if it was “on my property,” it was my problem. Period.
So the property manager went out, took a look, didn’t see anything unusual, snapped some photos, and sent them to the inspector. Looked clear. We assumed that would be enough.
It wasn’t.
A few weeks pass. I’m in Brazil, trying to salvage what’s quickly becoming one of the most mentally and financially difficult periods of my life (the term “Roubado” does not quite describe the damage), and I get another letter on February 25th. This one says a reinspection found the issue still hasn’t been resolved and that they’re “in the process of initiating court proceedings.”
Great.
Oh. And it’s dated February 7th.
So I forwarded it to the property manager. He says he’ll follow up, sends more photos, and suggests the inspector might just be spotting a random car that someone else is parking in front of the house. Seems plausible, it’s a residential street, and people park wherever they want.
I left a message with the inspector to let him know what we’re doing and said I’d call again once we confirm the vehicle’s status. The next day, I get a call from the county Health Department: someone from their team drove out, and sure enough, the vehicle’s back. I asked, “If it’s an abandoned or junked vehicle, then how is it moving around?” They advise me that the vehicle is unplated. Possibly mobile, but unregistered. Not the rusted-out heap the original letter gave me the impression of, just something that the tax man says legally shouldn’t be there… You know, on the street, that I don’t own. He advises it’s still my problem. I asked if they would tow the vehicle? The answer was no, it was my responsibility.
Alrighty then.
I asked my property manager to get it towed. He explained that the city’s towing process could take weeks if they approve it, and that we might need to go private, which would cost extra. I tell them I’ll check in with the inspector again to let him know what our plan was, to see if we could pump the brakes on the whole “initiating civil court proceedings” part.
My property manager starts the formal city request process and let’s me know we should find out if it’s approved in about a week.
Three days later, I get the update that our request through the Mayor’s action line has been voided and closed. No explanation. Just... shut down.
We’re back to square one.
So now the plan is to send someone out to tow it ourselves if the car’s still there. I asked my property manager to please record video evidence of the area if the vehicle isn’t there. But when they go out again, the alleged car is once again not there. Not just moved to another part of the street, not pulled around back, just completely absent. The property is empty, and the street is clear of my unplated problem.
This time, they get the video. Show every angle. Send it to the inspector, and forward it to me.
I think, finally, we’ve got it handled.
I thank the team for the help. I thank the universe for maybe - maybe - letting me have one small win in the middle of my sewage-soaked nightmare year.
I checked in again a few days later to make sure the inspector received the footage. No response.
I check in again a week after that. Still nothing.
And then?
No letter. No call from the county. Nothing for months.
Total silence.
I assume it’s done. Resolved. One less thing to worry about.
Until a court summons shows up at my family’s house in June.
The Return of the Bullshit
So this time Marion county contacted me via a call from my mother, “You got a letter from Indianapolis.” I already knew what it was. I could feel it in my stomach before she even opened it.
Sure enough… it was the thing I thought we’d killed off months ago. A court summons from Marion County Superior Court.
And look, I’d love to tell you I handled it with calm maturity and strategic focus. But the truth is, the laugh that came out of me when I heard the words “abandoned vehicle” again was a little unhinged. It came from somewhere deep in my spine. It was the kind of laugh that shows up when the universe keeps throwing things at you and missing your head by just enough to be insulting.
Because if I didn’t have enough going on, of course, what I needed in my life was to go deal with a problem that, as far as I can tell, doesn’t even exist.
Cope
So I did what any self-respecting, exhausted adult with an emotionally codependent relationship with their phone would do:
I made a TikTok.
Got it out of my system. Mostly.
Then I did what I actually had to do, which was take off the “venting online” hat and put on my pretend-I-have-a-law-degree-because-I’m-too-broke-to-hire-one hat. The one I break out anytime I have to figure out how to navigate damn near anything.
I needed to know exactly what I was being accused of, and more importantly, if any of it even made sense.
Welcome to Chapter 10: Where Everything Is Your Fault
The original violation notice said I was in breach of Chapter 10 of the Code of the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County, Indiana, specifically Ordinance 10-301 and 10-303.
With my legal scholar hat equipped and Google degree primed, I pulled up the code and started reading.
Section 10-301 basically says an owner can’t allow occupancy of a dwelling unless the premises are “clean, safe, sanitary, and fit for human occupancy.” Fair enough. It also states that the owner of an occupied property is responsible for disposing of garbage, rubbish, and junk in a clean and sanitary manner.
Section 10-303 says the owner or occupant can’t allow any condition that causes or produces a hazard, including anything that might attract rodents, mosquitoes, or other disease vectors. It also includes this gem: any usable item must be stored at least 18 inches off the ground. Not just appliances. Not just lumber. Anything “usable.”
So, fine, I can see what they’re aiming at. If a “junk vehicle” is sitting on a property and might be providing free bed and breakfast for one single rat or mosquito, that could count as a health hazard. Even if it’s not mine. Even if it’s not there anymore. Even if it never was.
However, there’s also a Section 10-302 which lays out the occupant’s responsibilities - not the owner’s. It literally says that “an occupant shall keep the premises free from accumulations of rubbish, garbage, waste, tires, and junk vehicles.”
So now I’m sitting here thinking... wait. Isn’t this an occupied property? Didn’t I already tell them that?
And if Chapter 10 applies to both owners and occupants - depending on who actually lives there - then how theoreticaxactly is this my problem?
What makes it more confusing is that Chapter 10 seems to lean on definitions pulled from Chapter 537 of the Municipal Code, which is all about vacant building standards. So either they’re really taking free license with policy interpretation of the municipality, or they’ve decided that reality doesn’t matter as long as someone’s mailbox is still working and the hospital corporation can milk some money out of some sucker.
And look, I get it - health nuisances can happen on occupied properties too. Trust me. My tenants in Illinois turned a formerly cute and actively lived-in house into a miniature Chernobyl. So yes, I agree, human occupancy does not guarantee basic cleanliness.
But even if we humor this idea, that this car exists and in some weird way I’m somehow responsible for it, the entire violation still hinges on the classification of that car as a junk vehicle.
So here’s how the city defines it:
According to Chapter 537, a “junk vehicle” means:
“Any vehicle that is no longer licensed or that does not display a current license, from which any part material to the operation of the vehicle has been removed, or that is inoperable for any reason.”
Is the vehicle licensed? Probably not. The inspector told me it didn’t have plates, and they never gave me a plate number, and the citation just refers to “a junk vehicle”.
Is it missing a major part? Unknown. Nobody’s told me what’s supposedly wrong with it.
Is it inoperable? Clearly not, because from what I’ve pieced together between the inspector and the property manager, it moves. Sometimes it's there. Sometimes it’s not.
Which raises a pretty basic question:
Should a hospital corporation be running enforcement for the DMV?
If the car isn’t broken, and if no one’s even confirmed it’s actually on my property, then how is it my violation? And if it’s not my violation, then why am I the one getting summoned?
Well, maybe it’s because the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County has been given broad authority under IC 16-22-8-34. They’re allowed to enforce all sorts of public health measures - including regulating unsafe buildings, controlling mosquito breeding grounds, and making sure nobody accidentally leaves out a bucket of standing water that might offend a passerby. They also seem to have established a definition for a junk vehicle that is significantly more encompassing than the definitions found for junk/abandoned vehicles under Indiana state laws IC 9-22-1-13/9-13-2-1
Somewhere under that wide, dusty umbrella of government discretion, they’ve apparently decided that the best way to achieve a rodent-free Indianapolis is to drag an out-of-state landlord into court over a mysterious, possibly moving, possibly not-even-there vehicle.
Cool system.
Time to Revisit the Tape
Taking my lawyer hat off, I went back through my emails to pull up the video we sent the inspector back in March - the one I assumed had ended all this. Because I genuinely thought this whole thing was over. Closed. Dead.
But now that I’ve got a court summons in my hand, I figured it was worth rewatching. Just to see what, exactly, this case is supposedly built on.
The video’s short. It’s a 360-degree pan of the property and the street parking out front, the quiet neighborhood in the background, and one of the manager’s maintenance guys narrating as he records. He confirms there’s no junk vehicle present, no sign of anything parked on the lot, in the yard, or blocking the drive. Camera pans across the street. No obvious problem.
Except.
As he’s filming, he says, “I currently do not see a silver Dodge Charger that is damaged or in a parking spot”, and he’s right, you can’t, and I feel slightly relieved that I finally learned the model of this mysterious machine. However, my relief subsides and irritation returns because you can see a silver Dodge Charger without a front license plate parked directly in front of the neighbor’s front door.
It’s not on my lot. It’s not on my driveway. It’s not on the street in front of the house. It’s sitting right in front of their steps like it belongs there.
The car doesn’t have a front plate visible, sure, but other than that? It looks fine. It’s not rusted out. It’s not up on blocks. It doesn’t have weeds growing through the engine. Every body panel on the visible side is present and accounted for. If this is the vehicle in question, and if this is what Indianapolis calls a junk vehicle, then I’ve got news for half the country.
But most importantly, it’s not on my damn property.
I’m a reasonable guy, and I could see brushing this off as a mistake… you know, if they weren’t harassing me at the tune of $2500 per day and suing me after we sent them a video of it parked in the yard DIRECTLY in front of the house number of the neighbor.
So now I’m left staring at the only piece of “evidence” this whole violation rests on, and the best I can piece together is that some unlicensed-but-operable Dodge Charger showed up in front of my neighbor’s door, got spotted by an inspector with Google Maps-level precision, and somehow I’m the one being sued.
So… do I subpoena the rats?
In my mind, that vehicle clearly does not meet Indianapolis’s legal definition of a junk vehicle, but I guess I’ll hold onto that opinion in case it ends up in front of a judge. A judge who, ideally, would also watch the tape and maybe ask the same question I’ve been asking for five months:
Why the hell are we here?
And if that judge does somehow decide that the functional Dodge Charger sitting in front of my neighbor’s front door is a junk vehicle, and that my neighbor’s front door is actually part of my property… then great. I hope they at least give me the keys to both.
But anyway, I’ve drafted a pro se motion to dismiss. It’s ready. Sitting quietly on my desktop. I’ve also sent off an email to the attorney representing the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County, along with a follow-up email with the re-attached video to the city inspector, just to make sure it didn’t get lost under a stack of citations for mosquito-loitering.
So now I wait. Again. And until I hear back?
I’m just shaking my damn head. Laughing only on the inside at this point because I fear a further increase in my blood pressure will cause me to stroke. If this is how the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County spends its time, then Indianapolis must be the healthiest city on earth. Their inspectors are apparently so far ahead on public health that they’ve got bandwidth to go door to door, tracking down functional vehicles parked in front of other people’s houses to sue property owners from out of state who’ve never even been to Indiana without any sort of abatement action ever taking place.
Really makes you wonder what they’ll come up with next.
Maybe I’ll get hit with a violation for not trimming my neighbor’s hedges in Vermont.