It all started innocently enough. Last summer, Jim Ficken left his modest home in Dunedin, Florida, for Columbia, South Carolina, to tend to his late mother’s estate. He asked a friend and local handyman to keep an eye on his lawn, lest it grow too long in his absence. After Jim left, sadly, his friend died unexpectedly. And, left unattended, Jim’s grass did what grass in Florida does during the summer: It grew. The city’s code enforcement department noticed. Labeling Jim a “repeat violator” because he’d once let his grass grow too long some four years earlier, the city began...