There’s a bylaw that Richard Hykawy is eager to mow down.

For years, the Winnipeg man has been fighting the city over an overgrown boulevard adjacent to his home -- a boulevard that a municipal bylaw says is his responsibility to mow, even though his house has no lawn of its own.

"We don't even have a lawnmower,” Hykawy told CTV Winnipeg.

Until recently, the boulevard, which is separated from Hykawy’s home by a wooden fence and sidewalk, was brimming with grass and weeds. The city had never regularly cut it since Winnipeg’s Neighbourhood Liveability Bylaw orders homeowners like Hykawy to mow boulevard grass next to their properties, provided it isn’t located on a major thoroughfare. But because the land the boulevard is on is owned by the city, Hykawy believes that mowing it would be tantamount to voluntary enslavement.

"Slavery is when they own the property, you're forced to work for them for little or no money time after time after time,” Hykawy said. “So the legal definition of ‘slavery’ does absolutely apply here."

Now, after receiving a new ticket, Hykawy is taking his battle to court.

In 2013, Hykawy worked to fight a similar ticket, but the city eventually dropped the case citing a technical error. This time, Hykawy hopes that the case goes forward so he can win outright.

Winnipeg lawyer Norman Boudreau, however, thinks that legally speaking, Hykawy is in the weeds.

"He has to prove that the bylaw creates an undue hardship on him; and that this is unmanageable, that he can't do this,” Boudreau told CTV Winnipeg. "I don't think the court is going to buy that."

Neighbour Trish Paterson certainly doesn’t.

"I get someone to do my lawn and grass,” she said. “I think he can do that too."

Although the city wouldn’t comment specifically on Hykawy’s case, it did issue a written statement about anti-mowers.

"Most people who cut their lawns also cut the boulevard,” the statement read. “(O)nly occasionally does the City come across property owners who do cut grass on their property, but leave the boulevard uncut.”

But for Hykawy, the issue is more than about a patch of grass -- it’s a matter of principle.

“It's not my property,” he exclaimed. “I'll keep fighting it. I'll keep going back to court time and time again till the city realizes that they can't treat people that way."

With a report from CTV Winnipeg’s Jon Hendricks