We have gone through two years of a grueling and expensive lawsuit that did not have to take place. We had made a reasonable and simple request of our neighbors: attenuate the noise from their equipment at their retirement home, River Landing at Sandy Ridge. The equipment can be heard in the "Video Room."
For years, our request was simply ignored. Then we retained an attorney, and requests from our attorney were ignored. We then filed suit in 2004.
We have endured threats from one of the defendant's attorneys that "they" were going to bankrupt us. That same attorney stated that the reason for sleepless nights was menopause, not the noise from the equipment: "You know how women get at menopause."
At times when we filed a Motion, the defense attorneys would tell our attorney that if we had the Motion heard, they would ask the judge for their costs, if we lost on the Motion; a scare tactic they used frequently.
In the end our case went before elected Superior Court Judge Lindsey Davis. It was a two-week trial that should have lasted three-five days or so.
In the end twelve jurors, many of whom dozed or slept through the trial, and a jury foreperson, a church secretary, whose body language showed great hostility to plaintiffs' lawyer, decided against the plaintiffs. To this day, we cannot understand the reason for this apparent hostility. Might someone else know?
Of course, the judge's written instructions to the jury were confusing.
But confusing or not, everyone in the court room could hear the jury in the deliberation room laughing the entire time of deliberation. Did the jury not understand that we had paid a large sum of money to our attorney out of our own pocket to get to the court room? We did not have an insurance company fronting for us. This case was important to us. The jury owed both the Defendants and the Plaintiffs due consideration of the facts, and to deliberate in earnest.
Did they not hear the evidence both literally and from testimony?
North Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure should be changed to allow the jury to know when an insurance company is paying for the defense of a party.
In any case we made a Motion for a new trial, but the Motion was denied by Judge Davis.
We decided not to spend two more years or so of our lives in a legal battle; but instead to tell our story here, without spin, just facts the way they happened.
Our civil court system in North Carolina needs drastic changes.
The legal expenses involved in this case were estimate to be in excess of a half million dollars ($500,000.00+). The noise could have been attenuated in 2003 for a small fraction of that amount. Why did the decision makers at a retirement home that operates tax free, and depends on the goodwill of the public decide to fight a neighbor rather than doing the right thing? And what about the Board members of the Presbyterian Home, and especially the Board of Governors, which has decision making authority? And this question would be especially important to ask a retirement home that supposedly operates under the tenets of a Christian church; one of the tenets being to "love thy neighbor."
And the noise continues on to this day...
By the way...
"The Presbyterian Home of High Point, in North Carolina, has received an unexpected gift of $6 million from the estate of David Craig Purcell, the Greensboro News-Record reports."
The above was reported in the summer of 2005, almost a year before going to trial. A conclusion would be that there was plenty of money to fix the noise problem. The Presbyterian Home chose not to.
Why would anyone choose to remember in their will the Presbyterian Homes, Inc., River Landing at Sandy Ridge or any place that would show disregard for a fellow human being? Why would anyone choose to donate money to an organization such as this?