Man Sues 40 People Over 5K Horn Honks

ABC tries to defuse the tension on tonight's 20/20
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted May 2, 2014 10:23 AM CDT
Man Sues 40 People Over 5K Horn Honks
Might want to lay off the horn past Rick Krlich's house.   (Shutterstock)

Here's a phrase you never thought you'd read: Per ABC News, there's "a vast conspiracy of horn honking" going on in Hubbard, Ohio, and one man says he's had quite enough. "In the beginning, it was 100 times a day," says Rick Krlich, who explains drivers have been honking their horns as they drive past his house so often—some 5,000 times over the last seven years—he "can tell an import horn from a domestic horn." According to Krlich, the honking started when he sued the town's then-fire chief in an attempt to buy the house next door, which had been in John Clemente's family for generations.

Krlich failed, Clemente moved in, and the horn-honking started, at Clemente's urging, Krlich alleges. But Clemente says he never instigated the honks—though his son's friends do honk as a means of saying goodbye. Krlich went on to train surveillance cameras on the street, and says he has caught a fireman and a police officer blaring their horns. (He has also started a website proclaiming it a case of "small town terrorism.") Now, he's suing at least 40 alleged honkers. Says Clemente's wife, "Just a regular beep or just to beep at the neighbors across the street, he'll take you to court." ABC will have more on the case on tonight's 20/20; it notes it invited the whole town to a "Peace and Reconciliation Barbecue." Vindy.com talked to attendees, who didn't report much in the way of reconciliation. (More honking stories.)

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