Christmas Lawyer who went to war with HOA spends windfall on holiday cheer

'Christmas Lawyers’s' war with HOA comes to an end, so who came away smiling? An Idaho lawyer recounts a decade-long legal fight with his HOA over Christmas lights, ending in a major settlement after federal court, appeals and Supreme Court involvement. The "Christmas Lawyer" was facing the possibility of owing a huge amount of money over a lawsuit that he previously won over a festive Christmas display that was also helping raise money for childhood cancer. The Supreme Court kicked the case to the appellate court. Then everything turned around. Idaho lawyer Jeremy Morris spoke to Fox News Digital about his staged elaborate holiday displays in defiance of his former homeowners association that led to a protracted legal battle. The case was overturned by the judge after he was previously awarded $75,000 in 2019. He then appealed to the 9th Circuit in 2020, before his saga got all the way to the Supreme Court. When the case reached SCOTUS, it was kicked back to the appellate court and the HOA reached a settlement, leaving Moore triumphant. 'CHRISTMAS LAWYER' FILES FOR SUPREME COURT REVIEW IN BATTLE WITH HOA OVER HOLIDAY LIGHT SHOW "They (HOA) ended up paying us significantly more, ironically, than the jury awarded us many years ago. The jury previously awarded us $75,000 (in 2019), and I will tell you that we actually settled for significantly more than $75,000," Morris said. In 2018, a jury unanimously agreed that the HOA discriminated against the Morris family when it tried to stop their Christmas show. But the following spring, the federal judge who oversaw the trial made the rare move of flipping the verdict. (Courtesy Jeremy Morris) Instead of going through another trial, there was a mediation because the HOA realized Morris would keep appealing. According to Morris, the HOA, which he calls "grinches", "undoubtedly paid over a million in attorney fees to overturn the $75,000 verdict" over the years, resulting in paying Morris more than the jury awarded him. What is Morris doing with the money? Spreading even more Christmas cheer and not letting any Grinches stop it. "Well, I can tell you that I'm buying a lot of Christmas lights, and I'm enjoying it every time that I screw in a light bulb. I think of my HOA and their effort to shut down Christmas," he said. This all began in 2014, when thousands of people showed up to his house to celebrate Christmas and raise money for kids with cancer. In 2014, he repaired an antique cotton candy machine he'd inherited from his grandfather and made it the centerpiece of his Christmas display . He created a Facebook event and was shocked when hundreds of families showed up to look at lights, sip hot chocolate and meet Santa Claus. "Not long after that, unfortunately, our family found ourselves at the center of a national, actually international, controversy that went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court," he said. In 2015, he decided that the celebration...

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