With neighbors like these, who needs enemies?

This family was having a heck of a bad year, capped off by a fire that totally destroyed their marina.

While they were waiting for the insurance money, the neighbors decided to sue them for anything they could come up with.

It all worked out in the end – though the neighbors might not agree.

Check out the details!

The Litigating Neighbors

My family has had a run of bad luck this year. We had a saying last year. “It’ll be better in 2015.”

Well, early in the winter, we were greeted with a call of “did you know the Marina is on fire?”

No, we did not know that. (It’s our Marina, by the way.)

My mother was in denial. We’d gotten this call a few times, because the fire trucks fill up by the marina sometimes, and she figured it was just that.

I didn’t want to counter that the ice was over ten inches thick, at least. I just hoped it was a small fire.

It was not. All that was left of the building was a tiny metal frame, on one end.

They saw a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

For a bit, it seemed like we could twist this fire into a good thing.

That building was crap, and we’d never have been able to afford to bulldoze it. It happened in winter, when we never make any money anyway.

If there was a time for a fire to happen, winter was a good time.

The insurance called it a total loss, so anything we salvaged didn’t count against us for payout, but we were able to salvage things.

A brief rumour started that it was arson started by us–I might do a post on who started that rumor and why it died so quickly–but it was going good.

Which was quickly blotted out by their horrible neighbors.

Then the lawsuit came in.

We’d had problems with these people before, but a lawsuit felt a bit over the level of the nastiness they were capable of.

They were suing us for “harassment” over the other issues, “destruction of family heirlooms” (it was a tree, a baby tree), “trespassing” (on property legally declared as ours), and other property-related stuff. We counter-sued on the not-ridiculous stuff.

The property lines were confusing at best.

So, an important thing to know about this area is that the property lines are dumb.

When my family got the marina, we were sorting out the property lines with four different entities. The parcels were in bizarre places. (One was in the middle of the building, surrounded by another parcel.)

The reason for this is because we’re on the edge of two counties, who both tried to determine the property lines, and they did so by markers that don’t exist anymore, or are now underwater, as the lake levels rise every year.

Markers literally in the original property lines are “the old oak tree.” We did find that one; it’s a stump.

They were the only people who refused to settle. We had to call in surveyors.

But they kept coming out ahead.

Our surveyor gave us 10ft of land.

They didn’t like that. So they called in a surveyor. Their surveyor gave us another 30ft.

Oh yes, we enjoyed that. But on their lawsuit, they tried to go back to the original agreement before any of the surveyors.

They had… less than a stable case.

We took photos of the property line from the water, and lined it up with old photos.

We got a new survey done after we heard they’d tried to trick the system by giving a surveyor the property line and getting him to sign off of it.

We used the same company they did. The surveyor gave us even more property. (They aren’t pleasant people to deal with.)

The rest of the community was on their side.

We had kept this really quiet, taken the high road.

However, they shot themselves in the foot, as expected. They put up orange, plastic, fence around their “supposed” property line.

(Which their lawyer told them to take down, and my uncle did rip down in front of them, but it was too late.)

One of the gossips of the lake asked us what was going on, and we were kinda “don’t spread this around, but…” knowing he’d spread it around.

He did. The whole lake knew that these people were suing us, the people who just had a catastrophic fire take our livelihoods.

Oh did it get nasty.

We had people pouring in, sneaking gossip to help our case. They had a history of doing this.

We were told to get a look at this legal document, and that.

People with motorcycles offered to drive by multiple times at inconvenient hours, which we explicitly condemned while looking pleased with the idea.

In the end, so were the arbitrators.

Because these people were just being so stupid, I was expecting them to be stubborn through arbitration and shoot themselves in the foot during the court case.

(And thus, according to state law, pay all our legal fees.)

They did actually give in at arbitration. We got the property. They brought in three lawyers from a nearby large city.

We had one local lawyer.

Now there might be an extra little bit of revenge of their own in the cards.

They then fenced in their tiny, hard-lost, property, with their lawyer watching the whole time.

Someone dropped by to let us know their fence wasn’t up to county codes. If we report it, they would have to rebuild it.

We’ve been a little busy, but I think summer, in the middle of their busy season, is the best time to do that anyway…

Sometimes you have to take the long way around.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this one.

The top comment has some good advice.

There’s always a critic.

This person is a little confused.

Everyone loves to be amused – even lawyers.

This happens all the time.

I don’t understand why some people have to be so awful.

Just be good neighbors, y’all!

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.