SALEM - The chair lift was supposed to make Pam Stavis' life easier.
She couldn't get up and down a steep common stairway in her condominium without it. But the device has pitted her and her husband, Bob, against their upstairs neighbors in a prolonged and costly legal battle.
The most recent turn in their case could force them to remove the chair lift, which means they will have to find another place to live.
Pam, 62, needs the lift. She has muscular dystrophy and scoliosis. It has taken five surgeries over two decades to keep her twisted spine straight, fused together with bits of stainless steel. Without the lift, it would take her 20 minutes to get down the stairs, her husband said.
The Stavises' headache began months after they moved into their Weatherly Drive condo in the Village at Vinnin Square development.
"It's been a miserable existence," Bob said.
The conflict has kept the condo they bought after living for 35 years in Marblehead from ever becoming a home. More than five years after moving in, the Stavises still have boxes they haven't unpacked.
Now they're searching on the Internet and driving around the area looking for a new place to live.
"To say that it's unfair is a real understatement," Bob said. "We have to move."
Their predicament blindsided them.
"We thought we did what we were supposed to do to avoid this," Bob said, referring to the years of legal wrangling.
Before purchasing the condo in 2002, the Stavises received permission from the condo developer to install the lift. Tom St. Pierre, then Salem's acting building commissioner, also said it was OK, Bob said.
It cost the Stavises about $2,000 to install the lift in July 2002. Then in October of the same year, St. Pierre told the couple in a letter that he had made a mistake, that the lift violated the building code and would have to be removed as soon as possible.
'This can't be'
Pam Stavis started calling local handicapped advocacy groups.
"They all said that this can't be. You can't be made to take the thing out," Bob said. "That kind of put us to sleep. They led us to believe, in a good sense, that we had a lot of support here."
The couple learned that two of their neighbors in the six-unit building had approached the building inspector with complaints about the chair lift.
"We were just so flabbergasted," Pam said, "that we didn't have a clue which avenue to take."
Acting on advice from the state attorney general's office, Pam eventually filed an appeal in January 2003 with the State Building Code Appeals Board. The board heard her case a month later and granted the variance she needed to keep the chair lift.
But Irving Gordon and Harold Mack, owners of third-floor condos upstairs, objected. They petitioned the Building Code Appeals Board for another hearing. The board listened to Gordon's and Mack's objections, but again ruled in favor of Pam Stavis and her chair lift.
When Gordon and Mack then took their case to Superior Court, the Stavises realized they should hire a lawyer.
"At that time we knew we were in over our head," Bob said.
Superior Court Judge Howard Whitehead reversed the decision of the Building Code Appeals Board, because Pam Stavis did not file her appeal with that board within 45 days of receiving the building inspector's letter, as the law requires.
Stavis appealed, but the appeals court recently sided with Whitehead, vacating the Building Code Appeals Board decision to allow the chair lift.
Fire hazard?
After spending a "five-figure amount in legal fees," the Stavises are faced with selling their condo in a buyers' market and relocating.
"It's just lousy," Bob said
Mack could not be reached for comment.
Gordon's wife, Ida Rose, said her husband did not want to discuss the case.
Their lawyer, Stuart Holber, told the Building Code Appeals Board that the lift, in use or not, disrupted his clients' "general use of the stairs" to enter and exit the building.
Gordon testified in an affidavit in 2003 that the chair lift presented a "substantial hazard" because it narrowed the width of the stairway. He said no one would be able to use the back stairs in an emergency if the building's front door could not be accessed and the chair lift was in use.
"The safety of my family has been substantially jeopardized," Gordon testified.
Bob Stavis called claims that the lift imperils people's safety "bogus." In 2003, Salem fire Capt. William Hudson determined that the lift, when not in use, did not pose "any unreasonable hazard or obstruction for use as an exit."
Bob, 68, is mostly retired. Occasionally, he drives a shuttle bus, carting wedding parties from church to a reception hall. He and Pam have two children and four grandchildren.
Turmoil over the chair lift has added a layer of tension to the couple's everyday lives when they happen to pass their neighbors in the parking lot or at the building's front door.
"It's a strain," Pam said.
If Bob could have seen the future in 2002, he would have sold his condo when the problem first arose.
"There was just no indication that this was going to go this way," he said. "Who needs aggravation like this?"
