Take Control of Your Peace
Video Transcript: Using Cease and Desist Letters to Quiet Noisy Neighbors in Oklahoma. I’m Oklahoma lawyer James Wirth.
I’m doing a series on cease and desist letters and how they may apply to various circumstances to try to get relief for concerns that you have without having to go to court and through litigation.
What is a cease and desist letter? That is a formal, drafted letter. It’s not a formal court proceeding, but just a letter usually from an attorney or a law office. Put it on letterhead, sign it by the attorney, send it by certified mails so you have proof that they received it or hire a process server and have it served by a process server to make an even more impactful message.
What that letter’s going to say is that “We understand you’re doing this and it violates this law.” In this case, we’re talking about noisy neighbors. So maybe they have loud music going on every night or in some other way, they have loud activities going on at their household that is disturbing you as a neighbor.
Now that by itself may not be enough, but many times if you’re in city limits, there’s ordinances to prevent that sort of activity. And if they’re being too loud, it’s violative of a city ordinance. So the letter advises, “This is what you’re doing, this is how it breaks the law” and it demands, the letter would demand that they cease and desist that activity. And if they failed to do so, the letter notes what the potential consequences could be.
In the case of noisy neighbors that are violating city ordinances, that could be a criminal referral, meaning that you make a police report and advise that this is an issue. Or it could be civil litigation in order to abate the nuisance of that noisy neighbor. So sending the cease and desist letter is a faster, cheaper process. A lot of times they can get results without having to go through litigation.
But also if they don’t cease and desist, then it can also be helpful in making that criminal report filing or filing a civil lawsuit because you can prove and demonstrate that they were on notice, that what they were doing is violating the law and you gave them an opportunity to stop and they refused to stop. That can make your case stronger.
So if you’re dealing with a scenario like this, cease and desist letter may be a good thing for you to do prior to filing civil litigation or filing a police report. But don’t just take the advice from this video. You’re going to want to talk to an attorney about it privately and confidentially to see if it is the right thing for your circumstances. To meet with a Tulsa criminal defense attorney at my office, you can go online to makelaweasy.com.
