Shutterstock

It would be awful enough to have a fire destroy your business, but it would be even worse if a neighbor sued you afterwards.

That’s just what happened to the family in this story. They lost their business in that fire, but the neighbor decided that was the right time to argue about property lines.

The drama led to a day in court.

Keep reading to see who wins.

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.)

Her mother assumed it was actually something else.

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 tried to see the bright side.

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.

It gets worse.

A brief rumour started that it was arson started by us.

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.

It was hard to determine the property lines.

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

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.

The surveyor says…

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

Our surveyor gave us 10ft of land.

They didn’t like that. So they called in a surveyor.

It gets even better for OP.

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.

It’s really getting worse and worse for the neighbors.

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.)

Then the gossip started.

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.

Many people offered to help.

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.

It didn’t work out exactly the way OP expected.

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.

But they’re not done…

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…

Yikes! The neighbors were truly awful, but it sounds like every surveyor and the whole community was on OP’s side.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

Here’s some advice about the fence.

A surveyor weighs in.

A lawyer loved it.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a homeowner who doesn’t think their painters should use their water spigot on the job.

Here’s another story about the results of hiring a surveyor.

The property line isn’t always where you think it is, but it’s crazy that the more surveyors that came out the more land OP’s family got. The neighbors should’ve simply stopped.

I’m glad the law and the community were both on their side.