The war of attrition between two River Hill families, an eight-year campaign that endured more than 100 police visits, 13 criminal court cases and even a snippet of jail time, concluded Friday afternoon.
It was more of a court-ordered cease fire, really.
Timothy Cerny, who in February was found guilty of second-degree assault and sentenced to a weekend in jail for spitting at his neighbor, appeared before Howard County District Judge Neil Axel to ask the court to reconsider his sentence.
The intended target of Cerny’s phlegm, David Elliott, did not attend the hearing.
Cerny served the weekend in jail, but he requested the judge give him probation before judgement, in effect scrubbing the second-degree assault conviction from his record
His attorney, Berry Helfand, told the court the conviction would create problems for Cerny’s financial advising career.
“It’s very important for himself and his family to not have this on his record,” Helfand said.
Axel said he was “satisfied with the sanctions imposed and the lesson learned” from the jail time. The judge, in his ruling, also took into account an anger management class that Cerny recently completed and voluntary community service that Cerny had completed since the sentencing, Axel said.
Axel, who in February underscored his disgust with the whole affair by sentencing Cerny to jail, said little about the case, submitting only that “it is in many respects an offense against the community.”
The state reluctantly went along with Cerny’s request, glad, perhaps, to dispense with the matter, which has cost the state’s attorney’s office thousands of dollars to prosecute.
“The state’s main concern remains consistent – and that, ultimately, is that all this stops,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Ned Curry.
Axel ordered that Cerny have no contact with Elliott or his immediate family and gave him a year of unsupervised probation.
The February trial, which played at points like an episode of Seinfeld — “That’s one magic loogie!” — featured camcorder footage of an April 2006 argument between the two men over the placement grass clippings near Cerny’s property.
