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Families Involved In Chicken Battle Head Back To Court

FORT LAUDERDALE (CBS4) - A Hollywood man who lost a bitter battle last August against his next-door neighbors when he was ordered to get rid of his chickens is involved with a new legal battle.

Steve Kohn was back in court Friday trying to get permanent restraining orders against next-door neighbor Grant Einhorn on behalf of his 17-year-old daughter. Kohn's 21-year-old daughter also testified against Einhorn in her own bid to get a permanent restraining order as well.

Hannah Einhorn refused to speak with news crews outside the courtroom but she testified before Circuit Judge Michael Kaplan that Einhorn had threatened her and her sister and had groped himself in front of them as well.

"Have you ever witnessed Mister Einhorn groping himself?" asked attorney David Low of Hannah.

"Yes," she whispered, looking down at a table.

"Have you ever witnessed Mister Einhorn groping himself in front of your sister?" Low also asked.

"Yes," said Hannah.

She also stood up in court and stood right next to her father, demonstrating how close she said Einhorn was to her when he verbally threatened her.

"It's disgusting and completely untrue," Einhorn told CBS4's Peter D'Oench. "And I have a lot of evidence and witnesses who will attest to that. It makes me angry. There's nothing I can do about it. I understand the way they are. I knew that they would retaliate. I did not know which form it would be in."

"It is completely absurd, the claim that I groped myself in front of them, " Einhorn said. "And they have never been able to produce any surveillance tape to prove that I did that despite all the surveillance tape that they have."

Steve Kohn countered, telling CBS4, "My children are in danger. This guy's a pervert. This guy can't keep his hands to himself. The important thing is his behavior, the sick and abnormal way he behaved towards my children. He has been filming them unnecessarily for a year and a half. He has made constant
Inappropriate gestures to them."

"I'd like to see Mr. Einhorn stop it," said Kohn. "I find that he is threatening and frightening and dangerous and I wish he would leave them alone."

Einhorn and his wife Sandra in the past had shown CBS4 video that he took of Kohn's wife heckling them and Kohn's daughters dressed in black robes and parading in front of their home.

"The only surveillance video I took of Kohn's family was from inside my house," Einhorn said.

Einhorn's attorney Marshall Geisser told CBS4, "I think the truth will come out. I think it is plain to everybody that much of what they are saying is fabricated. We expected this. We have independent witnesses who will come in and refute what they are saying.

Sandra Einhorn said she was outraged by the accusations leveled in the new bid for a permanent restraining order months after temporary restraining orders were issued.

"I am disgusted," she said. "I am not surprised that they would stoop to this and the lies that they fabricated. It's disgusting. We've set up a judicial system that allows you to allege anything and you can lie under oath and face very few consequences if any."

The legal battle is far from over.

There will be a status conference on June 6th. And there will be more testimony about the bid for a permanent restraining order on August 2nd and 3rd before Broward Circuit Judge Michael Kaplan.

It was last August that Broward Judge Michele Singer ordered the Kohns to remove than a dozen chickens from the back yard of their home in the upscale Emerald Hills section of Hollywood.

Hollywood has an ordinance prohibiting residents from having poultry at their homes and the Kohns were being fined $250 a day for the violation.

Steve Kohn had maintained that his chickens are pets and that his family had the right to raise them as pets. He said at the time that his family was misunderstood because they are Arab Jews. Judge Singer ruled that the chickens were causing irreparable harm to the Einhorns. The Kohns were ordered to stop keeping chickens, ducks or goats in their yard.

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