Filthy House to Be Auctioned

After 25 years of living next door to heaps of trash, human waste and an eccentric college professor, Beverly Goulette hopes her new neighbor will be “normal.”

Goulette’s neighbor has been Cal State Long Beach professor Elena Zagustin, who has survived numerous attempts to force her out of her home in the stylish Huntington Harbour waterfront community.

That may be about to change. Zagustin’s house will go on the auction block Thursday at a 10 a.m. Orange County marshal’s sale in Westminster to satisfy unpaid small claims court judgments her neighbors have won against her.

“We just want to have a normal neighbor; someone who won’t use a bucket for a toilet and dump the stuff in the yard,” Goulette said.

It appears that the upcoming sale will end a 15-year saga that has seen Zagustin, 62, battle in the courtroom and community with Huntington Beach officials, Goulette and other neighbors who insisted that she live like the rest of them on the 16000 block of Morse Circle.

But don’t start preparing the welcome wagon for a new neighbor yet, warned attorney Tom McCurnin, who advised Goulette and other neighbors in the lawsuits against Zagustin. Although small, there is the possibility Zagustin could keep her house.

Zagustin, a civil engineering professor, could not be reached Monday, and her attorney declined to comment.

Her case has attracted national attention over the years and was featured in 1998 in a television news program about feuding neighbors.

“The last 10 years especially have been a real nightmare,” Goulette said. “She had no running water and used a bucket for a toilet and dumped it throughout her yard. We’ve seen it and smell it when it rains or we’re downwind.”

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In November, a jury convicted her in a criminal trial of 69 health and safety code violations at the home. She was sentenced to three months in jail, but the sentence was stayed when a judge found Zagustin had been cleaning up the property.

Another judge in January ordered her to sell her house to satisfy the $315,000 in judgments her neighbors had won in small claims court over the years. In February, the judge sentenced her to five days in jail for contempt of court for stalling the sale.

The professor attempted to avoid selling the property by filing suit in a phony court run by survivalists in South Dakota.

Zagustin was able to forestall previous sales by filing 10 bankruptcy petitions in the last three years in California, Texas and Nevada, McCurnin said.

McCurnin said the pending sale was made possible when a judge ordered Zagustin not to file bankruptcy petitions.

Thursday’s sale is intended to satisfy only $50,000 of the $315,000 in damages awarded to Zagustin’s neighbors.

The minimum bid for Zagustin’s home, which is located one block from the water and near $1-million waterfront homes, will be $270,000 he said.

Because it is a marshal’s sale and not a foreclosure, McCurnin said he is not ready to say that Zagustin’s neighbors have seen the last of her.

“She can come in before the bidding and pay the $50,000 and it’s over. She can have her house back,” McCurnin said. “But it’s a pretty stiff price to pay for doing it in a bucket.”

Even if that happens, the neighbors can force another marshal’s sale for the remaining $265,000 in judgments, McCurnin said.

“It’s wacky, just like this case. If she pays the $50,000, it’ll end it, but it’s not the end of it,” he said.

Because of the rundown condition of the house, McCurnin said whoever buys the property will have to tear it down and put up a new house.

“But I’m not betting $100 that we’re going to sale,” he said. “She might go to Bora Bora and get a court order to stop the sale.”