"Garrett, this is a nuisance suit. They're not expecting to win. They're expecting you to settle, maybe eight or ten thousand dollars, because fighting it costs more than that." This is the second trick worth knowing. A nuisance suit is designed to make the cost of defending yourself exceed the cost of settling, which is why documenting everything from day one is the only real defense.
I told Beverly I wasn't settling. I also told her what I suspected, that Delores was likely involved in crafting this strategy. The suit had her fingerprints all over it. Preston didn't strike me as the kind of guy who spontaneously retained a personal injury attorney. Delores, however, was exactly the kind of person who knew one.
Beverly filed our response, a motion to dismiss, backed by my county permit, the property survey establishing the wall's location, the code enforcement hazard report, which had now officially cleared the wall as compliant, and a reconstruction analysis from a structural engineer Beverly brought in, which concluded that the wall's position presented no road hazard, and that the accident was caused entirely by the driver's speed. While all of this moved through the courts, Delores escalated on the HOA front. She was, apparently, not capable of fighting one battle at a time. She called a special HOA board meeting and issued a community-wide notice that my property was under investigation for code violations that may affect property values. No specifics, just that.
A vague poisoning of the well, designed to make my neighbors look at me sideways. She also sent a letter to the county tax assessor suggesting my workshop lean-to was an unpermitted structure worth reassessing for tax purposes. It wasn't unpermitted. This went nowhere, but it cost me two hours of phone calls to document that it went nowhere. She put a lien notice on my account for unpaid HOA fines, fines that had been rescinded 18 months earlier, which she was apparently trying to quietly reinstate in the records.
Here's where being a documentation obsessive pays off. I had every letter, every rescission notice, every email. I had a folder, an actual physical folder, two inches thick with tabs labeled Delores that went back almost 3 years. I sent Beverly the folder. Beverly's paralegal spent 4 hours going through it and came back with something interesting.
Three of the fines Delores had reinstated in the HOA ledger had never been properly voted on by the full board. Under North Carolina HOA law, fines above $100 require a board vote with quorum, documented in official minutes. These fines had been issued by Delores alone, recorded only in a ledger she controlled, and never appeared in any meeting minutes. That wasn't just improper. That was potentially fraudulent misuse of HOA financial records.
Beverly sent the HOA board, all five members, not just Delores, a formal letter outlining this finding and requesting a full financial audit of HOA accounts for the past 3 years. Delores responded by calling me directly. First time she'd called me in 2 years. Her voice was controlled, professionally pleasant, with just the thinnest wire of threat running through it like rebar in concrete. "Garrett, I think this is getting out of hand.
I'm sure we can resolve this without involving the whole board." "Delores," I said, "I think involving the whole board is exactly the right call." She hung up. 2 days later, she withdrew the reinstated fines. But here's the thing about people like Delores, they don't retreat.