Introduction
203 Content Introduction …...... i
Reality, v Fiction, vii The Fountainhead, ix Atlas Shrugged, xiii Nonfiction, xvii Published, xx
Prologue, Dandy Nerts and Rollie …...... 1
May 9, 2013, 2 Time and Money Spent, 3 Rollie, 6 Dandy Nerts, 8 Back on the Hook, 9
Book I
The Aisle That Separates
Chapter 1, We Thought You Fried ...... 11
Boom!, 11 Reagan, 14 My Forbes Avenue Helpers, 16 The Big Z, 17
Chapter 2, NYC …...... 19 Index
Queensboro Bridge, 19 th E. 85 Street, 21 One World Trade Center, 22 Mitsubishi Bank, 23 Sniff, 25
Chapter 3, A Hole in the Washtub …...... 27
May 22, 1998, 27 Emmet, 30 Safety Net, 31 1969 Mustang Convertible, 32 Eye Lashes on Babydolls, 34 A Few of My Favorite Things, 35
Chapter 4, Pump Jacks …...... 38
Saturday, 38 Winter, 41 Spring, 43
Chapter 5, Keowee …...... 44
At Home, 44 The Lake, 46 One Condition, 47 Kunstwerke, 48 Word of Mouth, 49 Gaudi, 50
Chapter 6, Trace …...... 52
K1200, 52 Trace's Eyes, 55 Index
Barcelona, 56
Chapter 7, Weasely …...... 58
The Weasely House, 59 Overextended, 62
Chapter 8, Tripinfal …...... 65
The Meeting in the Barn, 65 The Tripinfals, 69 The Tripinfal House, 69 $4,000, 71
Chapter 9, VanGrab …...... 73
April 2004, 73 Sculpt, 75 Curvy, 77 September 2004, 79
Chapter 10, Burn Rate …...... 82
The Good Stuff, part 1, 82 Concerned, 85 Things Cost What They Cost, 87 Two Small, Strange Eruptions, 89 Don't Tell Barb, 92 Furniture Polish, 92
Chapter 11, Stoked …...... 95
Icy, 95 Index
Avaricious, 96 February 20, 2006, 98
Chapter 12, Rollie …...... 100
February 16, 2006, 100 240, 104
Chapter 13, Rick …...... 109
Rick's Predicament, 109 Rollie's Predicament, 110 Explosion, 112 Nuclear, 116
Chapter 14, Nerts …...... 119
Nerts Wrote, 122 Bottom of the Lake, 126 The Practice, 128
Chapter 15, Barb …...... 130
Dateline NBC, 130 Merchants of Deception, 133 Blakey Report, 135 Heritage Foundation, 136 Dagny, 137 Index Book II
The Dandy Nerts and Rollie Show
Introduction, 142
Chapter 16, Jarndyce v. Jarndyce ...... 145
In-House and Close, 147 Something Had to Give, 148
Chapter 17, Firewall …...... 151
$100,000,000, 151 Grief, 153 Lady of the Lake, 155 Investor, 159 The Lady of the Lake Disaster, Part I, 160
Chapter 18, Cause of Action ...... 164
May 3rd, 2006, 164 Six Causes of Action, 165 Discretion, 167 Answer, 169
Chapter 19, Default …...... 174
$10,000, 174 Civilian Clothes, 176 Clash of Extremes, 177 Gloves Off, 180 Index
Wednesday Evening, December 6th, 182
Chapter 20, I Sued …...... 184
Thursday Morning, December 7th, 184 Don't Try This at Home, 186 Self-Defense, 187 Defamers, 188 Fighting Slander, 190 Bloodbath, 191
Chapter 21, Cameo …...... 194
March 13th, 2007, 194 Wilmer, 200 A Single White Sheet of Paper, 202
Chapter 22, Sting …...... 205
NNN Paving, 205 $7100, 210 April 12th, 2007, 211
Chapter 23, The Expert...... 214
Expert Witness Scam #1, 214 Expert Witness Scam #2, 229
Chapter 24, Disaster …...... 221
Res Judicata, 221 Index
Collateral Estoppel, 223 October 19, 2010, 225
Chapter 25, Bronson…...... 230
Ridgepole, 230 Cancun, 233 January 26, 2009, 234 Pisgah Fish Camp, 236 May 23, 2011, 237
Chapter 26, Casualties...... 238
Lady of the Lake Disaster, Part 2, 238 September 13, 2012, 244 Ripples of Harm, 239
Book III
The Verdict “For honest merit to succeed amid the tricks and intrigues which are now so lamentably common, I know it is difficult; but the honor of success is increased by the obstacles which are to be surmounted. Let me triumph as a man or not at all.” - Rutherford B. Hayes1
[Imagination is the forming of mental images, concepts, or sensations of what is not actually present.
Creativity is the process of bringing such images or concepts to life.]
1 Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States (5 vols. 1922 - 1926). Diary (7 November 1841)
i INTRODUCTION
“We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams;”2 we are the first-handers whose sparks of imagination become reality.
We fill silence with music and blank pages with words worth reading. We project our films onto blank screens and fill theater seats all over the world. From raw materials we imagine, design, and produce cars, clothes, buildings, smartphones...
We create the wealth that moves the world and makes everything else possible. Whether by art or invention, we are the ones who initiate it all. We have been the world’s movers and shakers since forever, it seems.
While others seek the comfort of processing a process for a paycheck, we venture solely by merit and boldly risk what others won’t. We confront failure with a white-hot passion to succeed the next time. We love our lives.
We do not fake reality in any manner whatsoever - why would we want to?
2 O'Shaughnessy, Arthur. Music and Moonlight (1874), Ode (line 1) Quoted by Willy Wonka to Varuca Salt in the lickable wallpaper scene of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Paramount Pictures 1971
ii Introduction
Beware of those who envy the life you love. Anyone can accumulate material wealth if that is the only end to their means. But even thieves understand that material wealth is relative and fleeting. Self-worth and happiness can only come from the means.
A failed venture or experiment is not the greatest threat to your achievement and happiness. Such failures are expected and necessary. As long as man has free will, your greatest threats are those risks over which you have the least control: those maliciously inflicted on you by another man’s volition.
Envy will always turn to spite – or worse.
iii Introduction
Reality
There may come a day in which you desperately reach for that which exists independently of the mere thoughts of anyone’s mind, even your own. You may confront an evil from which reality is your only refuge and means of survival.
You may one day reach beyond the apparent or understood and grasp for the real. Some avoid reality as a refuge because it is at once too objective, empirical, tangible, harsh, brutal, and unrelenting. Fiction is preferred because it is safe, subjective, and lacking in causation and consequence. Reality offers no such filter. It offers no “safe space.”
“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” TS Eliot.3
Reality exists independently of what you and I may believe or want it to be. The reality that people fake to themselves is the most convenient lie there is because it is the easiest to get away with; it is kept safe and hidden from scrutiny. But reality is that much harder to bear if you cannot first to your own self be true.
A is A, not what someone thinks it to be. Our thoughts themselves cannot shape reality. Truth exists indepen- dently of what you and I may think or hope it to be.
One can only temporarily avoid or fake reality - usually
3 Eliot, T. S. Four Quartets, Burnt Norton (1935)
iv Introduction at the expense of others and usually by some kind of force.
Every tick of the clock brings a new reality - for better or worse. Somewhere along the path of maturity, a person who reasons realizes that there are no genuine contra- dictions in nature. There are never two genuinely con- flicted sides to any issue or story. Somewhere there is a false premise. You may be engaged in a process in which the objective truth is being sought out, but you will ultimately find only one correct premise. That is, if you dig deeper – as deep as you can.
Situation ethics, moral relativism, deception, fraud, or any other faked reality exists only because someone is seeking an end that merit would not otherwise afford them. Fakers create a false premise to prevaricate conjecture as truth.
But there is a hard line drawn between reality and fiction. We didn’t draw it, and we can’t budge it, either. Schemers and frauds may try to shade or blur the line, but it cares nothing about a billionaire’s dollar or a lawyer’s silver tongue. This line that separates the real from the fake is absolute and impenetrable.
Is it not your experience that those who venture and achieve by merit acknowledge and depend on this line the most? Humans are unique creatures who possess free will and can choose their own destruction. An honest man chooses to make an honest living. Those who are self-
v Introduction made-by-merit rely most on the laws of nature, reason, and causation to achieve and force truth. “If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make a difference how beautiful your guess is. It doesn’t make any difference how smart you are who make the guess, or what his name is; If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.” - Richard Feynman4
“Shallow men believe in luck or in circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson.5
There may come a day in which you will make this line your wall (or aisle) of protection. It may be all you’ve got.
4 Dr Richard Feynman, Nobel physicist. Quote from lecture on the scientific method. Cornell University (1964)
5 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England" (1867), published in The Atlantic Monthly (October 1883)
vi Introduction
Fiction
I am not a professional writer, nor would I consider myself to be an avid reader. I rarely have the time. But I do enjoy classic, timeless fiction by gifted authors who create characters and situations so compelling that I assume their story actually occurred and I imagine the characters to be old acquaintances.
There are countless writers who fill blank pages with their own unique writing style and write fiction worth reading, as F. Scott Fitzgerald did in the 1920s, or as Michael Chabon does today.
My favorite novel is Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. I don’t remember consciously choosing it as such. It just is.
I first read The Fountainhead during my college years when I was far too young to fully grasp it. My experience with reality was as brief as my wisdom and maturity.
It was only natural to follow up The Fountainhead with Rand’s next novel, Atlas Shrugged. I remember slogging through all 1,000 pages thinking that it was “okay,” but wishing it were 500 pages. I had not yet experienced enough reality and met enough real-life Randian heroes or Randian antagonists to fully appreciate the symbolism of both of these works.
The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged are a major inf-
vii Introduction
luence on the book that follows this introduction (mostly The Fountainhead). I make no apology for writing with the assumption that the reader has already read them both.
At first glance, it may seem odd that my own nonfiction book - a tale of cold, hard reality - would be so strongly influenced by fiction novels. It is not so odd if you consider that the genius and popularity of Rand’s fiction stems from how well her symbolism applies to the reality of her intended readers, including my own reality.
viii Introduction
The Fountainhead
“Howard Roark laughed.”6
So starts the first of 727 pages of The Fountainhead. I could not imagine a better introduction to Howard Roark and to the novel that I have never stopped rereading.
“He laughed at the thing which had happened to him that morning and at the things which now lay ahead.” (That morning he had been expelled from the Stanton Institute of Technology on graduation day. What value was an architectural degree to someone like Howard Roark, anyway?)
He stood naked on a cliff above a small lake framed by granite and trees - raw materials he would one day shape. He had been expelled that morning for being too original and non-conforming.
He laughed, before diving head first.
Howard Roark is the ultimate Randian Hero.7 He would
6 Rand, Ayn. The Fountainhead. Indianapolis : Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1943. ISBN 10: 0451191153. OCLC 300033023
7 Wikipedia: The Randian hero is a ubiquitous figure in the fiction of 20th- century novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, most famously in the figures of The Fountainhead 's Howard Roark and Atlas Shrugged 's John Galt. Rand's self-declared purpose in writing fiction was to project an "ideal man"—a man who perseveres to achieve his values, even when his ability and independence leads to conflict with others.
ix Introduction be self-made by his own merit and on his own terms. He could have been an enormous financial success early on, if he wanted to be. The talent was certainly there. If only he had played along, used the connections he was offered - compromised his values.
Years later on page 710, Roark stands alone in front of a jury box - without a lawyer - with his life’s work and very existence at stake. The jury hears, and we read, an anthem to all of the self-motivated and independent creators of human history. In the end on page 727, Roark stands alone again on the edge of a cliff. But this is his cliff shaped by him from the raw materials of his choosing: girders of steel. The rest of Manhattan lies far below. Twenty-five years after the publication of The Fountainhead in 1943, Ayn Rand wrote an introduction to a 1968 printing of the novel in which she stated:
“Let me stress this: my purpose is not the philosophical enlightenment of my readers. My purpose, first cause and prime mover is the portrayal of Howard Roark [or the heroes of Atlas Shrugged] as an end in himself.”
“I knew only that it was a book that ought to live. It did.”
“I write - and read - for the sake of the story. My basic test for any story is: ‘Would I want to meet these
x Introduction characters and observe these events in real life? Is this story an experience worth living through for its own sake? Is the pleasure of contemplating these characters an end in itself?’”
Who did she expect would read her fiction and be entertained by it? “It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature—and the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning—and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me or The Fountainhead that they will betray: it is their own souls.”
Google “Howard Roark laughed” and you will find tee shirts, mugs, and even tattoos with a phrase familiar only to those few for whom The Fountainhead was written. We do not read fiction like The Fountainhead to be philoso- phically enlightened. It is entertainment - our entertain- ment.
No one convinced me at a young age to embrace the merits of individualism over collectivism, reason over altruism, or objective merit over situation ethics. My own reasoning mind, love of life, and self-respect demand that I settle for nothing less than who I am.
“Because I don’t intend to build in order to serve or help anyone. I don’t intend to build in order to have clients. I intend to
xi Introduction
have clients in order to build.”
“...I don’t intend to force or be forced. Those who want me will come to me.” “But you see,” said Roark quietly, “I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.” - Howard Roark
xii Introduction
Atlas Shrugged
In 1957, The New York Times Book Review panned Ayn Rand’s follow up to The Fountainhead as a book “written out of hate.”8 Alan Greenspan, an Ayn Rand devotee at the time, responded by letter to the New York Times: “Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”9
This is Rand’s Magnum Opus. It is dystopian science fiction bursting with symbolism. Society’s brightest creat- ors, producers, and innovators are crushed under the weight of the state and the looters who control it. They abandon their fortunes and the nation itself, go “on strike,” and create a new society at Galt’s Gulch. The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is “the role of man’s mind in existence.”
Thirty-four years after its first publishing, a 1991 survey done for the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club identified Atlas Shrugged as second only to the
8 Hicks, Granville (October 13, 1957). "A Parable of Buried Talents". The New York Times Book Review. pp. 4–5.
9 Martin, Justin (2000). Greenspan: The Man behind Money. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus. p. 47. ISBN 0-7382-0275-4
xiii Introduction
Bible as the book that most influenced the lives of the 5,000 individuals surveyed.10
An extended video at the end of the 2011 film version of Atlas Shrugged features a large number of people of various backgrounds who appear individually on the screen and announce “I am John Galt.” Generations of readers have so closely identified with Rand’s fictional characters and situations that they choose him to symbolically represent them - just as Rand intended.
Who is John Galt? No one knows for the first three quarters of the story. The phrase Who is John Galt? is nothing more than a cliched expression of helplessness and despair spoken by Rand’s fictional public until John Galt appears and commandeers a national presidential broadcast and introduces himself.
Galt’s speech is an anthem to the rational mind of the producer: those individuals who trade value for value and cause real progress. While much of the world reaches for anything other than reason (altruism, ideology, religious dogma...) to force an end that the merits of something might not otherwise afford them, Galt represents those who refuse to fake reality in any manner whatsoever.
“I am a trader. I earn what I get in trade for what I produce. I ask for nothing more or nothing less than what I
10 "Bible Ranks 1 of Books That Changed Lives." Los Angeles Times. December 2, 1991.
xiv Introduction earn. That is justice. I don’t force anyone to trade with me; I only trade for mutual benefit. Force is the great evil that has no place in a rational world. One may never force another human to act against his/her judgment. If you deny a man’s right to reason, you must also deny your right to your own judgment. Yet you have allowed your world to be run by means of force, by men who claim that fear and joy are equal incentives, but that fear and force are more practical.” (Galt’s speech.)11
John Galt is an inventor, engineer, and philosopher, but his character is intended to be more symbolic than real. He represents those in every generation who refuse to embrace mediocrity in the name of egalitarianism. He re- presents the rational man’s struggle against the collectivist social and economic “systems” that a rational mind cannot defend. We are John Galt because his character symbol- ically speaks for us and responds as we would.
The genius of Atlas Shrugged and the reason for its longevity and popularity lies not in the fact that much of it is a treatise for Rand’s own philosophy which she named Objectivism. (Rand’s Objectivism espouses a non-sacrific- ial morality. Your life belongs to you and you are responsible for it. No one has a right to force sacrifices from you, and you have no right to sacrifice others. You interact with other people by your own free will, not by
11 Rand, Ayn. Atlas Shrugged. New York : Random House, 1957. ISBN 0394415760. OCLC 412355486
xv Introduction force, threat, or compulsion.) Atlas Shrugged remains relevant because millions of nonfiction John Galts confront their own Randian antagonists every day.
In all of Rand’s novels there is one constant: every Randian hero reaches a point where he must seek the refuge of reality and a reasoning mind. For Howard Roark, the line of refuge was an aisle in a courtroom; for John Galt, it was a force field in the Colorado Rockies.
xvi Introduction
Nonfiction
A pyramid scheme heiress from Georgia is upset. She may have to postpone her family's first summer visit to her newest multimillion dollar resort house for a few months. She had already made plans. She told me that she absolutely loved the new lake house that I designed and built for her in South Carolina – she said so days before the explosion.
Her husband had been hiding something from her. He will later testify that it was his idea to send a family bodyguard/goon to the construction site on a cold February morning in 2006. This particular goon had no fear of con- sequence – just strict orders and a quick job to do.
My plate was full with six other projects when I accepted her commission to design and build one of my creations on Lake Keowee in September 2004.
Two other projects were nearing completion in February 2006 and both happened to be owned by injury lawyers. Both lawyers were over-extended financially and both owed significant construction debt.
The goon discovered their plight and contacted the lawyers. A carefully controlled explosion was supposed to provide cover for what happened next.
The lawyers? They will stoke the fire and take advant-
xvii Introduction age of the explosion, it's what they do.
On February 15th, 2006, $500,000 was looted from my client construction accounts in a cheap, tawdry, white- collar, lawyer-assisted scam.
The heiress? Her pockets are too deep to care about $500,000. She will spend more than that on legal fees - mostly out of spite - once the scheme backfires. Not every looter loots for money.
But these scammers had to know that it was an impossible scam from the start – sloppily executed by an incompetent goon. The point is they didn't care. I had fallen into the rabbit hole of deceit that was their world – a world where merit is cheated without consequence.
There were too many contractual breaches, too many laws broken, too many good people needlessly harmed. It should have been easy to expose and right the wrong. In the normal, legal world of contracts and the law, it should have been easy to pick myself up and just move on.
Unfortunately for me, I was too well-protected and the lawyers became more desperate. One of them bragged that he “owned” the local courthouse. A partner of the other lawyer cornered me and threatened “you are going to prison!” Me? For what crime? It didn’t matter, he had connections.
If desperate enough, would they try to pin their scam on
xviii Introduction me?
It's probably a good thing that I didn't fully understand back then how dangerous my situation had become when I resolved to fight and expose them.
My only real hope was the civil courts of South Carolina. Subpoenaed records would be my preemptive protection.
But where does one find a lawyer who will sue a billionaire’s goon, his bosses, and two fellow lawyers – especially when my pockets were suddenly empty? Could I be my own lawyer?
I was warned that suing pro se (representing myself without a lawyer) with no experience as a litigator would only make the situation worse. The legal system would eat me alive. It would be suicide. The counter-attack would be brutal. It was good advice.
But it's not like I had a choice.
I sued.
No warning could have prepared me for the bloodbath ahead.
Today, ten years and twenty lawsuits later, the rabbit hole has been blown wide open and I can now safely tell you about it. This nonfiction, first-person account does not want or need to be told, it ought to be told.
xix Introduction
Published
Cold and Greedy is reality. It is my reality. It is nonfiction written by one of those that Rand sought to address by writing The Fountainhead.
This is a true story - nonfiction characters being themselves. This is raw, unscripted reality that cannot be faked. Fiction is much easier. The writer exposes nothing real. There is not much courage there.
There is an urgency to Cold and Greedy. Most of it is written in real-time as events occur. The most significant and climactic of these events is occurring as this intro- duction is written.
The writing style is first-person and it merges creative literature with research nonfiction. In other words, I am narrating events through the lens of my personal exper- ience. Together, we explore the real.
We explore a world of multi-million dollar resort homes and extreme architecture. We explore the hubris of deep pockets in the real legal world. The courtroom drama you see on television is very different from what goes on in reality behind the scenes. Trial lawyers won’t write this. I did.
In the courtroom, I was not part of the expensive legal dance across the aisle. I made many mistakes. I danced
xx Introduction more like a bull in a china shop - but it worked, and I did what had to be done.
Too often, wrongs like this are never righted. It's too expensive and dangerous to fight. My antagonists were counting on that. And they came very close to getting away with everything.
As for these pages, there is no ghost writer. Every word is written with the first-person passion this story deserves. My writing has not been compromised by a need for commercial viability. This is not how I earn a living - nor how I need to, for that matter. There is no publisher to convince or please. It is just you and me.
Cold and Greedy could not exist if individuals did not have the right to represent themselves in a court of law and force a room full of legal discovery. I could not have represented myself in a matter so large and complex as this, against pockets so deep, if it were not for the internet. Most everything I needed was a Google search away.
Cold and Greedy could not exist if this story were not first told in courtrooms and fully supported by the proven truth of evidence, settlements, and verdicts of twenty legal actions spanning nine years.
If Cold and Greedy reads at times like a legal drama, it is not my intention. The legal process was merely the appropriate and lawful method to investigate and obtain the
xxi Introduction proven truth I needed to protect myself while telling you what happened. I have avoided focusing too much on complex legal terms and procedures.
The names of the antagonists have been changed in the body of the narrative because I would rather the focus here be placed on the type of people we confront every day rather than specific individuals.
I did not come up with the phrase which gives title to this book, and you may be surprised to discover who did.
Cold and Greedy is a celebration of the spirit of youthful ambition, creativity, and perseverance. It celebrates ach- ievement fueled by the self-interest of creators and makers - the prime movers of the world.
It is a celebration of those who deal with others by trade and mutual benefit, exchanging value for value.
It exposes and lays bare man’s only wellspring of self- respect: individual merit.
xxii
Prologue
Dandy Nerts and Rollie
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny. I laughed more out of a sense of accomplishment, and maybe a little bit out of disgust that things had gotten to this point. Thanks to a couple of horrible “mistakes” by a couple of judges in South Carolina, four years had been wasted chasing a goon named Rollie.
Defendant Rollie was just days from trial four years earlier in 2009 when a judge gave him a stay he wasn’t entitled to. A year after that, his attorney, Dandy Nerts, convinced another judge to ignore South Carolina law altogether and dismiss my case against Rollie entirely. But on this spring morning in 2013, in a Court of Appeals courtroom, this was all about to change.
I had already spent an exhausting seven years chasing the attorneys involved in this cheap, tawdry, white-collar, lawyer-assisted scam that needlessly harmed so many good
1 Dandy Nerts and Rollie people. As for Rollie and his bosses, it all came down to this moment, in this courtroom.
This may be a good time to mention that I am not a lawyer - I’ll introduce myself later.
May 9, 2013
I sat alone on the appellant’s side of the Court of Appeals courtroom in Columbia, South Carolina, waiting for a three-judge panel to enter and hear oral arguments. Written briefs had been submitted by me and Rollie’s team of lawyers months earlier.
A court official approached me, perhaps sensing I was a novice, and explained how the light on the podium would alert me when my time was up, and that it would be another ten minutes before the judges entered. I had time to take in the moment.
Time had not discouraged me a bit - it had only steeled my resolve. This would be ten minutes tacked onto seven years. Dandy Nerts and his assistant were sitting on the respondent’s side of the court room chatting quietly about other cases.
I noted that ole Nerts would be perfectly happy to tack on another seven years. Rollie's bosses' pockets are very deep, indeed, and I had been told that they would spend whatever it takes.
2 Dandy Nerts and Rollie
The odds of a pro se litigant (someone representing oneself, without a lawyer) getting this case to this point after it had been dismissed were supposed to be over- whelmingly slim.
I was years beyond being nervous or apprehensive in such new and unfamiliar situations. If anything, I felt enormous confidence as the judges entered the room and we all stood up.
So quietly and mostly to myself, I laughed.
Time and Money Spent
There really wasn’t much that could be argued beyond the written briefs already submitted. This appeal had to do with whether or not South Carolina allows the doctrine of collateral estoppel in cases of default - it never has. I know that sounds far too technical for this narrative, and we are getting far too ahead of ourselves.
The three Appellate Court justices were all business and weren’t there to hear speeches. They interrupted often with questions. As the podium clock was winding down, I pointed back to Nerts and his assistant behind me and argued: “If they had a single South Carolina case they could reference, they would have done so, but they don’t.” That was pretty much it. Objective merit isn't forced - it’s quick and succinct.
3 Dandy Nerts and Rollie
Nert’s assistant then gave Rollie’s oral argument. She is relatively new to the Rollie/VanGrab legal team and since arriving in recent years appears to be the one doing the talking and writing these days. Nert’s specialty seems to be emoting and shading the truth before abandoning it altogether. I pondered how many times in seven years I had sat on the left side of a courtroom listening to the same garbage.
It is important to understand just how unique and almost impossible of a situation I have lived through these past nine years as a pro se litigant. For me, all of this is very personal. I am not part of a team of emotionally detached lawyers - legal whores saying or doing anything for a fee. I was fighting for my own survival.
I used to take what they said too seriously, and it would make me needlessly angry.
This was the first time I had ever been in a Court of Appeals courtroom, and I couldn’t help but notice the familiar aisle down the middle that separates plaintiffs and defendants - or in this case, appellants and respondents. I sat there calculating how wide I thought it was. It looked like six feet, perhaps, maybe a little more narrow than the average Circuit Court courtroom.
(Before the explosion of 2006, I had never even been inside of a courtroom, much less involved in any kind of
4 Dandy Nerts and Rollie legal matter.)
Maybe I’m just hardwired to recognize spatial qualities, but this room-dividing aisle that separates the parties in a courtroom has acquired a deeper, symbolic meaning for me. It has come to represent more than the space between two supposed “sides” of an issue.
True, I have experienced many raucous hearings and trials in which the aisle seemed more like a demilitarized zone. But I understand far better today that there are no genuine contradictions in nature. There are never “two sides” to a story. You may temporarily be in a process in which the objective truth is being sought out - but there is only one truth. There can only be one correct premise. Dig deeper.
As I sat there listening to some of the exchange in which Rollie’s attorney was being repeatedly badgered with questions from the panel of judges, the aisle separating us seemed to grow wider the more she spoke. From the moment I sued in December 2006 until this moment, this case had never been a process of seeking out objective truth or resolving anything - Rollie's whole defense has been one of avoidance and delay, and for good reason.
All of this time and money spent avoiding what?
Me?
5 Dandy Nerts and Rollie
Why?
I was reminded yet again how comfortable those who sat on the other side of the aisle seemed to be. Most of us have lived through enough experiences and have known enough people to understand that this boundary has always existed. We notice it when people interact. We notice it most when there is a conflict.
The hearing was much shorter than I expected. Rollie's case was first that morning, and as I turned into the aisle to walk out, I noticed the teams of attorneys that had been sitting behind us on both sides of the aisle, listening, waiting for their cases to be heard.
Rollie
Rollie is just an average middle-aged guy from Michigan. I would describe his appearance, but there is really nothing noteworthy to start from. He works for the VanGrab family of Atlanta. Rollie had previously worked as the “Executive Protection Administrator” for the elder VanGrab until his death in 2004. The elder VanGrab made billions as co-founder of the product-based pyramid scheme Amway.
Also in 2004, the elder VanGrab’s daughter in Atlanta and her husband embarked upon a resort home building spree. Somewhere along the way, Barb VanGrab inherited Rollie. Earlier that same year, the VanGrabs had asked me
6 Dandy Nerts and Rollie to design and build a multi-million dollar lake house in South Carolina. Construction was 75% complete when Rollie was instructed to pay me a visit.
Years later, whether I had Rollie on the witness stand or in a deposition, I was continually frustrated at how ignorant he was about what he was supposed to be testifying to. I assumed that the VanGrabs could afford to be surrounded by the best and brightest people. As an artist and entre- preneur who succeeds solely on merit, I have no choice but to seek out the best and brightest to assist me in what I do.
But you will soon learn that the VanGrabs are very comfortable on the other side of the aisle and are safely removed from the world of merit and consequence. The business card Rollie handed me still said “Executive Protection Administrator.” He was there to provide “protection,” all right. The VanGrabs needed a goon.
The word “goon” quickly came to mind as his role became clearer to me. I Googled goon to make sure I understood the term correctly. Let's just say that a goon by definition is not hired for his intellectual abilities; he is hired to terrorize or eliminate opponents with someone else's resources. And if the scam backfires, the goon is the fall guy.
Dandy Nerts
Nerts is one of four lawyers we encounter ahead, but he
7 Dandy Nerts and Rollie is the only one without direct personal interest and involve- ment outside his role as a lawyer.
I had attempted to sue Nerts for his early involvement with the VanGrabs at the time of the March 2006 explosion. He had written scores of fraudulent letters on their behalf that furthered their scam. The same Circuit Court judge that let Rollie off the hook for three years dismissed my case against Nerts, stating that he was merely acting as an “agent” on behalf of the VanGrabs.
I took note, however, that it should then follow that this “agent” relationship works both ways. The VanGrabs are personally responsible for everything that Nerts has said and done all these years on their behalf.
Nerts was the fourth of five named partners of a law firm once located on Pettigru Street in Greenville, South Carolina. Eugene Weasely's name appeared first. Eugene and his lawyer wife Susan are personally connected to much of what lies ahead.
Nerts and Rollie are more similar than they will ever admit. They have their own special place on the other side of the aisle.
Nerts is not a goon because he is bright enough to pass the bar. Otherwise, the roles of these two men are essentially the same. Without the Rollies and Nertses of the world, the VanGrabs among us can’t do what they do.
8 Dandy Nerts and Rollie
If it weren’t for that connection, neither of these men would be worth a second thought to you the reader and all of us who live and work on our side of the aisle.
Back on the Hook
Driving back to Greenville, I checked in with my parents who predictably asked: “How did it go?” I won- dered aloud if there were ever instances in which Appellate justices ruled from the bench. Probably not. I tried not to take the fact that they hadn't as a bad sign.
A few months later, the Appeals Court agreed unanim- ously with me and ruled in the form of a nine page opinion that would quickly become important case law in South Carolina. Rollie was back on the hook.
Shortly thereafter, Nerts and his team appealed the Appeals Court decision to the State Supreme Court. Another year would be wasted.
But I could not escape the significance of this ninth day of May, 2013 - after seven long years, it all came down to this one hearing with Nerts defending Rollie.
And so once again, I laughed.
9 Book I
The Aisle That Separates
10
Chapter 1
We Thought You Fried
Boooom!
“We thought you fried!”
At least that’s what I think I heard.
My ears were still ringing from the explosion as two teenagers came running across Forbes Avenue toward my hot dog stand asking “You allright?”
I nodded and one of them said, “We thought you fried!” It was a bit disconcerting that they were the only ones who made an effort to run over and check on me - I was convinced that half of Pittsburgh heard the explosion.
11 We Thought You Fried
Most people just walked by - and around - the relish and onions. Oddly enough, there was no chili on the sidewalk - it went straight up and covered the underside of the umbrella. The force had blown me back onto the knee high wall immediately behind me. This was a busy and highly visible street corner on Forbes Avenue in front of the old Schenley Hotel.
Back when Forbes Field was across the street, the hotel housed visiting baseball players. Many baseball legends such as Ty Cobb, Casey Stengel, and Roger Hornsby could be seen relaxing on the Schenley’s broad porch on summer evenings in the early 1900s. Long before I was born, the hotel had become the University of Pittsburgh Student Union. On this day, the corner was as busy as ever.
I was sixteen and the $6,000 hot dog push cart I had just financed through the manufacturer a few months before was now covered in dents - all of them pushing out.
Even at sixteen, I did not want to work for someone else. Why should I, when there were so many other opportunities out there? I didn’t care much for school, either, so I worked hard and graduated high school early. This gave me a couple of years to earn some income before I started college. I wanted to pay my own way.
A few months earlier, I had discovered an ad in Auto Trader Magazine placed by a man in Maryland who
12 We Thought You Fried manufactured really nice, top-of-the-line hot dog push carts. A phone call and loan application later, and there it was in our family driveway, complete with a flatbed trailer for traveling. Like a caravan, my hot dog stand and I headed out every morning from the eastern suburbs to the city.
I remember it was a perfect spring Thursday morning. In my first two weeks, I had built a little business on this corner and had a regular lunch crowd. I was busily preparing for a new day.
The grill ran on propane from a tank that was housed inside. Apparently, a gas leak had developed within the sealed compartment. Just before 11:00 a.m., as the first hot dogs cooked and just when the chili was piping hot...
BOOOOOM!
Like the chili, the grill also went straight up carrying with it the first dozen dogs - my brain recorded it all in slow motion. Unlike the chili, the grill fell straight back down, which accounted for the second loud bang heard by half of Pittsburgh.
My first reaction was embarrassment: this can’t be good for business. I needed to clean up, pack up, and get out of there quickly. The bun cabinet was still full of the bags of hot dog buns I had purchased at Giant Eagle earlier that morning. My little metal money box sat alongside the buns
13 We Thought You Fried in the cabinet with my usual eleven dollars of starting change.
The two boys who thought I had “fried” hung around and helped me retrieve things. They were both about six- teen as well, and probably lived nearby. It would have been obvious to anyone that they were from a very different background than me.
Most other sixteen-year-olds out in the burbs were mired in the teenage angst of the 11th grade and were still a year or two away from being “counseled” toward a career path. You may think me strange, but I didn't consider other sixteen-year-olds to be peers. I felt nothing in common with them.
In a real-world kind of way, my Forbes Avenue helpers were probably more interesting and entertaining. I will never know why they, like me, were not in school at 11:00 a.m. on this spring morning in the late 1980s.
Reagan
These were great years to be a teen. Reagan was in his second term, and I understood enough to admire him greatly. He was self-made-by-merit, and I was determined to be one day, too.
Unionized Industrial cities like Pittsburgh contradicted the national mood at that time and were not the most
14 We Thought You Fried optimistic place to be. Government-forced unionization of heavy industry had finally confronted free market reality. 150,000 Pittsburgh industrial jobs were lost, seemingly overnight. But it didn't appear to affect hot dog sales.
The name Carter and the leftist ideology it represented was a bad word in our house when I was very young. I can remember the explosion of optimism when Reagan was elected. Democrat Carter and the Republican establishment of Nixon, Ford, and Bush had finally been defeated, and...
Boooom!
It was morning in America.
When Reagan was a teen, he dug foundations at con- struction sites for twenty-five cents per hour. He saved four hundred dollars - enough to pay for tuition, room, and board for college. No entitlement, no silver spoon, and no safety net.
Reagan's personal reading list included the deeply intellectual works of Mises, Bastiat, and Hayek. He studied these men extensively and they shaped his free market economic thought.
Forbes is a one-way street moving east. The sign on the front of each bus announced different eastern neighbor- hoods or suburbs. Bus after bus belched diesel fumes taking people home to “Squirrel Hill,” “Wilkinsburg,”
15 We Thought You Fried
“Monroeville...”
The knee high wall behind me became a bench much of the day. I occasionally made eye contact with bus pass- engers as their buses idled. I probably looked very sixteen to them. I was six feet tall, red-haired, and skinny.
Today, the smell and taste of an all-beef hot dog with relish races me back to those days standing under a yellow and white umbrella with a mild breeze blowing with the cars and buses down Forbes Avenue.
My Forbes Avenue Helpers
I had tightened all of the valves properly. Perhaps the sealed compartment should have been vented better. But Thursday's explosion was too much. It would be my last day in business in Oakland.
It took only a few minutes for me and my Forbes Avenue helpers to retrieve things and clean up. Many of the hot dogs were still sitting on or around the grill, and the ketchup and mustard surprisingly had not traveled all that far.
I got out a package of buns and said, “Help yourselves, if you want.” They loaded up and walked off.
It wasn’t until I loaded the cart back onto the trailer and put the money box on the front seat beside me that I noticed
16 We Thought You Fried that my “helpers” had also helped themselves to my eleven dollars in change money.
“Now that’s low,” I mumbled to myself, taking advant- age of a guy when he’s down. I had already forgotten about the petty theft by the time I got home.
I called the hot dog cart man in Maryland, and before I could say much, he asked repeatedly, “Are you okay?”
“Don’t worry about me,” I forced into the conversation, “what about the machine!?”
He retrieved the cart in a matter of days and had it as good as new in a matter of weeks.
It didn’t occur to me until some years later that the manufacturer probably feared a lawsuit. The thought of finding a Dandy Nerts or Mike Tripinfal (whom you’ll meet later) and a neck brace had never crossed my mind.
The Big Z
I decided to switch from gas to electric (go ahead and laugh, if you want) and rent space with an electrical outlet in a department store in front of the cash registers. It was a Zayre department store; we all called it the “Big Z” because the big A, Y, R, and E on the sign out front was often burned out at night.
I added a popcorn machine, and at Christmas when the
17 We Thought You Fried
Big Z was open 24/7, I had to hire help. The more popcorn I sold, the more the machine would pop. After a while, the entire Big Z smelled like fresh popcorn, and the cash register filled up.
I worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 16 months before leaving for college in South Carolina. I sold the business where it sat.
I don’t remember at sixteen making a conscious decision as to which side of the merit aisle I belonged.
18 Chapter 2
NYC
Queensboro Bridge
For five years I woke up under the Queensboro Bridge. My father pieced together a wall mural of Manhattan from a series of wall-paper rolls that covered a wall and a half of my little suburban Pittsburgh teenage bedroom. I was fascinated by New York and its sky- scrapers.
I spent countless hours as a kid making model buildings for a pool table-sized city I built in our family game room. Could a grown-up make a living having that much fun?
Wide-eyed boyish imagination sooner or later crashes into the harsh reality of earning a living. So when it came
19 NYC time for college, I got a business degree. My hot dog stand had spoiled me early for the taste of entrepreneurial freedom, but I needed to earn real business capital and experience – even if it meant working as an employee for a while.
If I had learned anything from Howard Roark and the Stanton Institute of Technology, it was that a formal education is mostly a left brain endeavor. The creative side of things would find its own way.
I chose accounting because it offered me the most earning potential right out of college. I was determined to be among a small group of seniors who received an offer like the one my brother John had eight years before me from one of the “Big Six” international accounting firms that recruited on campus.
I had to study much harder than those who appeared better suited for accounting. I somehow received four Big Six offers. Some classmates had much better grades and received no offers whatsoever.
“Big Six” firms had offices in most decent-sized cities and I could choose a preference. For me it was a no- brainer. I wanted my business boot camp to be New York.
I chose Deloitte & Touche which, at the time, had offices in both midtown and in the original One World Trade Center (floors 93-101) downtown.
20 NYC
I took the days-long, grueling CPA exam with 2,000 other New Yorkers in a long building on a pier jutting out into the Hudson River, and after two years of public accounting experience with Deloitte and Touche, I became a CPA.
I didn't plan to stay with Deloitte long enough to ever need a CPA license. I really only took the exam to prove to myself that I could pass it. E. 85th Street
I had already lived in Manhattan for years through movies, TV shows, and maps. I already knew where most things were in a city where practically every street corner is a landmark.
From my little basement studio apartment on East 85th Street, I could hear, and feel, the 4, 5, and 6 subway trains rumble along 90 feet away day and night. My 22-year-old senses were electrified. I was on my own, hungry to experience the real world.
It was a culture shock not having a car. My bicycle hung on a wall like a Seinfeld backdrop, and I rode it for miles and miles all over Manhattan.
I often woke up early on Sundays, before sunrise and before most taxis were awake, and cycled the length of Manhattan, down Park Avenue and Broadway, to Battery Park at the tip of the island. I had a favorite spot: a bench
21 NYC on a pier facing the harbor. On Monday morning these streets would be dangerously crowded with battling taxis. But at five a.m. on a Sunday morning, the streets were mine.
In a few years, I will be introduced to Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Yellowstone, and the Tetons cycling alone on two motorized wheels – exposed to every possible element along the way. I recall a particular June hail storm outside of Greeley that sounded like a stampede in my helmet.
But daybreak on a bicycle peddling down Park Avenue, through the echos of the Helmsley Building tunnel, the smells of Chinatown, and the dark canyon of Wall Street, in my mind, will never be topped. One World Trade Center
There was a power blackout in lower Manhattan early in my first year. A group of us newbies ran down all 94 flights of stairs for fun, laughing like crazy. It took forever. Once in the emergency stairwell, there was no re-entry to any of the floors below other than the lobby. The horror of 9/11 is beyond my ability to comprehend.
I was lucky to be at a client's office in midtown at the time of the first World Trade Center bombing. I later saw soot on the faces of friends who had just run down the same emergency stairwell we laughed in a year before. Deloitte
22 NYC
& Touche found new office space elsewhere in lower Manhattan and the World Trade Center office never re- opened.
The New York office was huge. I was one of 160 recruits. We were encouraged to specialize within the audit practice from the start. I ended up in the banking group.
I worked mostly with foreign banks with operations in the United States. My clients included Bank Austria, Mitsubishi Bank, and Bank Leumi (Israeli). I was part of a smaller group that studied and audited the loans that these banks participated in, such as loans to developing countries or to large international companies.
We didn't do much number crunching, we functioned more as analysts. We had to determine if the loans were as collectible as the bank said they were, and explain why in writing. Mitsubishi Bank
In the summer of my second year, during the slow season, my senior handed me a folder containing the previous year's audit papers of one of Mitsubishi Bank's pension plans. He told me to follow last year's papers and gave me a contact name at Mitsubishi's human resources. “Call this guy and set up a meeting to get what you need.”
I arranged to meet my contact the next morning. I only needed a few documents and I expected to meet him in his
23 NYC office or in a small conference room. Instead, he guided me into a large conference room full of a dozen Mitsubishi Bank human resource executives who all stood up and nodded as I walked in. I hoped that my face was not as red as it felt.
My contact must have expected a Deloitte partner and a team of audit professionals in need of a formal meeting. Instead, in walked an inexperienced twenty-three-year-old who only needed a few documents to audit a small pension plan he knew little about.
I can't remember exactly what I said. I somehow con- ducted a respectably long enough formal meeting without saying much more than “where can I find these reports?”
At that moment, my school grades did not matter. So much of the real world of business and human interaction depends on natural instincts and character. You don't really know what you are capable of until the unexpected hits you hard – out of nowhere – and you don't have time to think about your reaction.
These were a tough and competitive three years. At times, I felt like I was in way over my head. Half of my fellow first-year New York recruits were terminated their first year. Somehow I survived and left Deloitte and Touche on my own when it was time to leave. It was the ultimate business boot camp.
24 NYC
I hated to leave, but I had already picked out my first mountain property before heading back south to where I had attended college in the upper part of South Carolina, where the Blue Ridge Mountains rise from the orange dirt of the Upstate - as far from the coast as you can get, and to where my parents had retired.
I also had a white collar job waiting for me in Green- ville, with a dependable paycheck until I was ready to venture on my own for good. Sniff
The Mitsubishi pension plan was a small engagement intended to keep me billable during the slow season. It had a forty hour time budget. Be that as it may, the plan was being audited by one of the top accounting firms in the world. Deloitte spent enormous resources training auditors to detect errors or misstatements, and even sniff out theft or fraud.
Those vested in the plan depended on accurate numbers based on objective contractual terms. What if there were a fraction of a percentage point being skimmed from a multi- million dollar account? If it were hidden well, the stench may be undetectable to the average observer.
The looting that causes the most harm in the real world does not occur through a broken Ferguson storefront window. It occurs within computer programs, business
25 NYC fraud, and government corruption – where cheating merit has far greater consequence.
This was boring stuff for me as I carried a sketchbook around in my audit bag, much more fascinated by New York architecture than financial statements. But I could endure boot camp as a step to something else. In my mind, I was already hanging off of a mountainside pounding nails into the wooden frame of my own creation on my own property.
When I left the objective CPA world of audits and boring contractual details and put on a tool belt, I could have never predicted that I would one day be thrown into a rabbit's hole of a scam that would so exhaustively test my character and everything my old profession taught me to do.
If I had chosen a different path, I would have never been able to climb out of that hole, fight back, and safely tell you about it. That is how close the other side of the aisle came to getting away with it.
26
Chapter 3
A Hole in The Washtub
May 22, 1998
I slid a white cardboard box of office stuff across the gray vinyl seat of my Nissan truck, pushing aside a tool belt and nail gun. The framed CPA certificate that had hung on my office wall in Greenville for five years protruded from the box. I will let my license expire.
It was my last day as an employee, and my last hour- long commute from Greenville to home – up the mountain to the top of Caesar's Head.
I made this same commute on Highway 276 eleven hundred times in five years since moving south from New York. This last commute would be the one that I remem- ber most.
27 A Hole In The Washtub
Caesar's Head Mountain soars to 3,200 feet above sea level along the front range of the Blue Ridge Mountains. A stone cliff somewhat shaped like Caesar's head stares at Greenville from twenty miles away.
Weather seems to happen here more than anywhere else in South Carolina. Cars creep from reflector to reflector climbing along two curving lanes of steep asphalt when low clouds cover the mountain.
Life in your twenties should be about devouring a deluge of new adult experiences. I wished my daily commute had been between New York and Caesar's Head these five years. I wanted both.
I phoned my mother just before my commute became vertical and my phone signal dropped - so she would know when to have dinner ready.
“I did it, I put a hole in the washtub!”
She knew exactly what I meant. Her youngest child had just put a hole in a perfectly good washtub - and it was precisely what she expected me to do.
There was a white envelope in the box containing a heartfelt letter from my former employer Dan:
Dear Scott:
It seems like yesterday that we were discussing the
28 A Hole In The Washtub possibility of you joining the Agency. It is hard to believe that five years have passed. I am certain that I had no idea five years ago that your contributions to our organization would be so significant.
There is no way for me to enumerate all of the significant accomplishments that you have had over these years. Some are certainly more visible than others such as our technology improvements, the complete renovation of our facilities, and our new marketing identity and campaign. Most significant to me, though, is the consistent quality of your decisions, opinions, advice, and leadership.
You have given selflessly to [this organization] many times at the expense of your own personal interests, to guide us down a steady road. Words seem insufficient to express the personal regard and appreciation that we have for you and the work you have done during your stay here. On behalf of [all of the owners], please accept our genuine thanks for a job well done.
We'd like to have a business and personal relationship that continues into the future. We appreciate your offer to provide assistance during our transition and are grateful for your generosity in this regard.
Scott, please accept our best wishes to you for the future. You are most deserving of success and we look forward to following your business career. Thanks again
29 A Hole In The Washtub for creating a better [organization].
A copy of this letter was tucked away in my personnel file at my former employer and left undisturbed for twelve years until a disappointed defense lawyer subpoenaed the file desperately looking for any kind of dirt.
Emmet
Emmet's widowed mother eked out a living taking in laundry. There was going to be a local talent show with a $50 grand prize, and Emmet was convinced that if he and his friends formed a jugband, they would easily win.
It was almost Christmas and he wanted to buy his mother a special gift. Emmet was assigned washtub bass because his mother had a washtub. Should he take the risk and put a hole in the washtub? You can find it on Amazon.
Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas12 became a Christmas family tradition when I was young.
As a teenager I understood the entry quote to The American Adventure at Walt Disney’s Epcot by Ayn Rand's fictional hero Howard Roark: “Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.” Even younger, I understood Emmet when he quoted his father: “A person’s
12 Based on Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas by Russell and Lillian Hoban. Produced for HBO by Jim Henson 1987
30 A Hole In The Washtub got to take some chances or life will never come to anything.”
The moment Emmet hammered a hole in his mother's washtub (complete with cheesy sound effects), there was no turning back.
Safety Net
Dan had arranged, through connections, an offer with stock options from a telecommunications startup. He advised that I should accept the offer and delay my plans until I had more capital and was better set to strike out on my own. I was still in my twenties.
A formal offer letter from the venture capitalist behind the start-up was folded away in my wallet as a souvenir as I drove home on that final commute. I kept it there for years afterward as a reminder, until a few accidental trips through a washing machine washed it away.
Looking back, I should have punched a hole in the washtub much sooner. That is the only regret most entrepreneurs have. Through blood, sweat, and construc- tion loans, I will succeed beyond anything I imagined back then - without connections. That feeling is indescribable.
The plan was set in motion before I left New York: design and craft extreme houses on a speculative basis in a mountain-top resort community I had discovered on
31 A Hole In The Washtub
Caesar's Head. It was an older, largely undeveloped community with lots of potential that had never sold well, and the lots were almost free.
My plan was not financially feasible unless I did most of the physical work myself. I became a licensed builder by necessity and built my own designs.
My father had been retired for a few years and vol- unteered a lot of time working alongside me. Neither of us had ever built a house before, but it never occurred to us that we couldn't.
I built part time at night and on weekends two houses on the mountain before this last commute. Both sold before completion. But I still had my Greenville salary and the option to live in a project if it didn’t sell.
I drove through the front gate of Cliff Ridge on this last commute as a full-time entrepreneur. No more salary – just construction loans for future projects that had to sell.
1969 Mustang Convertible
“How did you learn to do this?” my father asked me in 2007 when I handed him the first of dozens of witness deposition transcripts. (He read every one).
I laughed, “the same way you learned to saw two Mustangs in half and make one better Mustang.”
32 A Hole In The Washtub
I was a little taken aback that he asked, because it has been he who has told all of his children: “You're a Kunst, you can do anything.”
My father supervised the production of large electric generators at a sprawling Westinghouse plant in Pittsburgh for thirty-five years. I have a hard time keeping up with him intellectually – he is one of those people who can converse about anything.
Thirty years ago he purchased a dilapidated 1969 Ford Mustang convertible. The engine was gone - he rebuilt it. The back end of the car was rusted out from Pittsburgh winter road salt - he bought another Mustang from a junk yard, cut both cars in half, and fused the good parts together. All in our home garage.
He had never done something like this before, but it never occurred to him that he couldn't. He painted it light green, installed a new white convertible top, and drove it for another 100,000 miles.
Just as Caractacus Potts' children danced with con- fidence around Chitty Chitty Bang Bang after Dick Van Dyke pushed it out of the workshop, I never doubted the Mustang would run – and run well for a long time.
A large piece of machinery was shipped to the Westinghouse plant from France in a large wooden crate. Dad thought the wood was salvageable. He brought home
33 A Hole In The Washtub the boards and built me the coolest clubhouse a kid could ask for. It was a perfectly crafted, little 10 foot by 10 foot house with a hip roof. The back side hung off of a cliff on stilts. No one was quite sure where he learned carpentry.
I was raised with a tacit assumption that I was expected to be able to do anything - no excuses, just pick what made me happy. This may explain why he has always had a quiet confidence in all his children and has never attempted to control.
The motor of the world runs, and runs well because of men like my father – you just won't hear them brag about it. The John Galts of every generation all possess this same quiet self-confidence that gets things done.
I don't think that anything I have done has genuinely surprised him. I am his son.
Eyelashes on Baby Dolls
My mother was a stay-at-home mom. Growing up, I never needed to worry, she was always there. She still is. My father often says, “all that creative stuff – you get that from her.”
I learned from her an enthusiasm to stay busy. She always has to be doing something productive. For many years, she had her own kiln and hand-crafted historical replica porcelain dolls. She could hand paint amazing life-
34 A Hole In The Washtub like eyelashes using a brush with bristles too small to see.
She has handed down many of her tools to me - her hands are no longer as steady for this kind of work. I still use some today making architectural models.
She, more than anyone, expected me to put a hole in a perfectly good washtub each time I did it.
I came up with a crazy idea of crafting little buildings for miniature railroad displays and selling them through a hobby store in a local mall when I was thirteen. I made four different models and their packaging. It was never going to be feasible to provide these models profitably to a store, but she didn't say a word. I got all dressed up and she drove me to the mall to meet the store owner. She probably had better things to do, but she was there.
I don't think that my portfolio of work today has surprised her in any way. I am her son.
My parents have been married for 58 years. To be blessed with loving and devoted parents is not all that unusual – I know. For that love to be reciprocated by a grateful son is not that unusual, either. But I have good reason to be uniquely proud and grateful. I am their son.
A Few of My Favorite Things
A woman named Margaret appeared one day at moun-
35 A Hole In The Washtub tain project #4 while I was working on the roof. She told me that she published a local builder magazine and wanted to feature me and my business in it. She never said how she heard about my work or knew where to find me. The writer she assigned came up with the title: “Scott Kunst: Living a Dream” (friends and family refer to me by my middle name, Scott). In her “from the publisher” section she wrote:
These are a Few of My Favorite Things
Headers on jack studs and hearths under mantels.
Chair rails on wainscot and load-bearing lintels.
Foundation batter boards tied up with string.
These are a few of my favorite things.
Guys in white pickups, in jeans and sunglasses.
Cheerful oak floorboards and wood window sashes.
Houses that grow from the red dirt in spring.
These are a few of my favorite things.
“I guess you can tell I love my work!
With apologies to Julie Andrews and Oscar Ham- merstein, I think I was inspired to flex my creative muscles this month by our cover story on CPA/designer/
36 A Hole In The Washtub builder/craftsman Scott Kunst.
This is an unusual story for us, because Scott is an unusual guy. He may even be unique.
His projects are not so much houses as works of art – large, hand-made, expensive, all-wood-and-stone sculpt- ures that people inhabit, on the weekends, at least.
'If I build it, they will come,' has been his un- conventional business plan, but so far it has worked. You have to admire someone who is willing to risk everything in order to craft the kind of life he wants to lead, doing the work he wants to do.
Scott is passionate about the architecture of the Blue Ridge and Rocky Mountains. He vacations every year in Jackson Hole, WY, which he reaches after four days on the road on his BMW motorcycle.
I would not be surprised to get a postcard from him someday telling me he just sold a lodge home in Telluride to Brad and Jennifer. Actually, I would be shocked, but only that Brad and Jennifer are still married. Scott I have more faith in.”13
13 Builder/Architect, Upstate South Carolina. Summer 2001
37
Chapter 4
Pump Jacks
My father peered out of the hole in the tower and yelled to Nicholas and me four floors below: “Here, grab this rope and tie it onto the window in case the wind takes it, and I’ll try to control it from here.” The other end of the rope was secured to a wall stud inside the tower – just in case. He had his tape measure and again checked the window opening size - the window had better fit, because we had one shot to pop it in once we got up there.
Saturday
A heavy window install waited for a Saturday. It was the busiest construction day of the week on Caesar’s Head - the only day Nicholas, my regular helper was available.
In a few years, we would have the resources to hire a
38 Pump Jacks crane, but for now we had to use what we had: pump jacks.
I had designed a rustic shingled cottage that appeared to be two stories on the front from the street, but opened up to four levels of panoramic views on the back, cliff-side.
Trace, whom you'll meet later, was on the mountain spending the weekend at her parents’ house and hanging out at my latest project. Someone needed to get a picture of this, so she climbed down the mountainside with her camera.
I was only four years removed from auditing foreign banks on Wall Street and my construction worker resume would not impress, but I was learning quickly. I had seen pump jacks at other construction sites and marveled that something so simple could function so well.
A pump jack is a metal jack with a foot lever and an extended arm to hold a walkboard. With each press of the foot lever, you and everything else on the walkboard scale a few inches up a 4x4 post. After a while you develop the skill to move up fast by pumping the lever quickly.
A typical three-section 5 foot x 6 foot window is heavy. This was a metal clad, well made, Pozzi brand window that was extremely heavy. Nicholas and I would be able to lift it off of the walkboard a little when we got up there, but not for very long. It had better fit.
39 Pump Jacks
With one foot pumping the lever and one hand holding the window upright, we started climbing. This construction site was not the place for those afraid of heights. As we climbed, we didn’t have the luxury of gauging how high we were based on the ground extended to a horizon. The view behind us was the entire Upstate of South Carolina - 2,000 feet below.
On a clear day such as this, you would swear that you could see the Carolina coast 200 miles away, if it weren’t for the curve of the earth.
We stopped climbing once the walkboard was level with the bottom of the window opening. There was a one foot gap between the walkboard and the house.
“On the count of 3...”
There is a certain thud when a window fits perfectly.
My father grabbed the window from the inside to keep it in place and checked to make sure the gap around the win- dow was uniform. “quick, nail it!”
So much work goes into a house this complex. Too often, I rode the pump jacks alone - walking from end to end pumping each side a few inches at a time.
In 1998, I was not yet at a point where I could afford to complete a project 100% before selling it. But once a
40 Pump Jacks structure began to grow out of the hole and the design became apparent, there was always a lot of interest.
I funded my projects through Greenville National Bank, a one branch, privately owned bank. Normally, loan officers visit sites often to inspect them and make certain that their money is being spent on the project and that it is on schedule. Greenville National never once inspected my projects.
I had worked hard to build a business track record they could trust. I was happy to be just a banking customer on top of the mountain range they could see thirty miles in the distance who called up occasionally asking for construction draws.
Every year and a half or so, there would be a real estate closing in which a family from somewhere like Atlanta or Texas would purchase the bank's mortgaged property and pay off the construction loan. And, like clockwork, I walked back into the bank a few weeks later with a pre- construction appraisal, plans, and some sketches - ready to do it again. This process repeated on Caesar's Head six times.
Winter
At 3,200 feet, the climate is more like Pittsburgh than the rest of South Carolina. Project #2 was excavated, framed, and covered in plastic by December.
41 Pump Jacks
I remember heading into winter more worried about this project than I would any other that followed. The construc- tion loan was getting tight, and I hadn’t even purchased the windows yet. I was confident that with this design and that view, someone would come along and buy it early. But then, my market was very limited.
Stone and mortar were relatively inexpensive, so I focused on interior stone work that winter. I could never convince myself to take a night off, so I hung a light on a tree and mixed my mortar outside.
I was more exhausted and worried than usual on an unusually cold night – and frustrated as my water hose kept freezing up on me.
As I walked up a plank to go inside with my last full, heavy bucket of the night, I slipped and fell in the icy mud below, spilling the mix. My eyes welled up from exhaus- tion as I sat without attempting to get up.
I hadn't noticed until this moment how eerily quiet the snow covered woods can be this late at night. In the summer, the view below is mostly hazy, but on this cold winter night every street light sparkled. I stared at the lights of Greenville and Spartanburg in the distance and questioned whether it would ever be worth it.
42 Pump Jacks
Spring
An ideal buyer came along some time in April and helped make project #2 into a million dollar showplace featured in a magazine. I bought more mountain lots.
This is a good time to mention that all six of my mountain project “buyers” were exceptionally good people. I never had a contract of any type once they came on board, just a handshake.
43 Keowee
Chapter 5
At Home
Greenville Orthodontist Tom Atkinson - or Dr. Tom as he’s known to his patients, colleagues and friends - tells the story of the former patient who ultimately became the architect and builder of the Atkinson family’s Lake Keowee dream home.
”In his first life he was a CPA,” Atkinson says of Greenville resident Scott Kunst. “I remember the day he came into my office and told me it was the happiest day of his life because he had just quit his job to build one-of-a- kind spec homes on Caesar’s Head. I thought he was crazy.”
But when the two men’s paths crossed again a few years later, it didn’t take Atkinson long to realize Kunst was more
44 Keowee than just your average builder.
It all came together quite ironically.
Atkinson and his wife Cathy had been enjoying the mountain views near Caesar’s Head State Park when they stopped to dine at a local restaurant. There, they came across one of Kunst’s brochures.
“I thought to myself, Hey, I know this guy,” Atkinson remembers, as excited as if he were seeing the brochure again in his mind. “So, I called him up. When I saw the houses he had built on Caesar’s Head, I knew he was the one, I didn’t want anyone else to build it.”15
The vertical part of Highway 276 that climbs Caesar's Head is much busier on summer weekends than weekdays – full of low country tourists escaping the heat. Only a dozen or so people lived on the mountain full time back then.
I kept a supply of brochures promoting whatever my latest project was in a restaurant called the Mountain House on Caesar's Head. It was the only business on the mountain other than the State Park gift shop.
On Weekends I had lots of visitors. I called them “tourists.” Many were couples who already had land in Cliff Ridge or some other nearby community and were
15 At Home magazine, July 2005
45 Keowee looking for a “builder,” or ideas. Some asked if I would be interested in doing a project on their land. I always said no.
The Lake
Dr. Tom called twice asking: “How can I convince you to do something on my property on Keowee?”
Lake Keowee appeared on South Carolina maps back in 1971 when Duke Energy built a dam on the Keowee River. The dam created a 26 mile long lake resembling a Christ- mas tree branch, with thousands of needles poking around the newly flooded Carolina Blue Ridge foothills. One of these needles, Tom's acre of property, juts out into Lake Keowee in Oconee County, South Carolina.
Duke Energy sold large parcels of land surrounding Lake Keowee through the years to private residential developers. In the northern, more hilly part of the lake, building sites are steep and more difficult to build on, but the design potential within this hilly landscape is out of this world.
Two new gated developments had just opened not too far from Tom's property in this northern part. The Reserve at Lake Keowee and The Cliffs at Lake Keowee were well marketed and booming.
At the time Tom called, I was finishing my sixth project on the mountain and had two empty lots remaining. But the reality of the Cliff Ridge market continued to limit my
46 Keowee potential. I knew that I needed to be where the full financial value of my work would be better realized. I was tempted to do a project for Tom if it took me a step closer to where I wanted to be. It was time for the next step.
One Condition
I agreed on the condition that the design and con- struction process be the same as my own projects. I had never designed and built a house for someone on their property and had no desire to do so beyond a special, temporary arrangement.
We had no written contract - I knew that Tom could be trusted with a handshake. And the next fourteen months proved that my trust was well-placed.
It was a nice break of sorts from the worry of a construction loan and a project that had to sell to an unknown future buyer. It became Tom's responsibility to reimburse my company after-the-fact as he received a weekly billing statement of contractor and supplier invoices. This was an unusual arrangement for a design/build relationship – I paid for most things before he even knew about them.
It was generous, but I was well-protected. I could, by law, place a lien on the property and foreclose on it if necessary, ahead of other creditors, to collect debt if it became past-due. This fact will become critical to this
47 Keowee story later on.
Design/build firms normally add a percentage fee to the cost of construction. It is how they get paid for their work. It is like a 25% tax on every piece of lumber or plumbing. If a typical fee were charged for Tom's house, it would have added more than a hundred thousand dollars to it's cost. And it would have never been built as it sits today.
Instead, I charged a small $25,000 fee to cover my com- pany's own cost of managing the project. My time and effort was free, just as it had been on Caesar's Head.
I traded profit to make Tom's house a reality and to get my portfolio of work to this next level. This is how real business works and it was an investment in myself – I had not yet tapped my full potential.
My own speculative profit would return at a much higher level than before whenever I decided to go back to doing my own thing on my own land again.
Kunstwerke
My grandparents immigrated from Düsseldorf to Pittsburgh in 1923. My German surname just happens to translates “art.” I formed a temporary S Corp. to fund and build on someone else's land in this special arrangement and named it Kunstwerke (“works of art”).
48 Keowee
Word of Mouth
Tom fell in love with my first sketch and plans were quickly drawn. A track hoe took its first big bite of earth within a few weeks. And my first finished lake house was celebrated in the pages of At Home.
Tom recommended a friend, an eye surgeon, who had property in The Reserve at Lake Keowee. Lots there are priced in the $300,000 to $1,000,000+ range, and it boasts amazing golf courses and club facilities. The surgeon agreed to all of the same conditions as Tom with a handshake. Kunstwerke charged $40,000 to cover its own costs and my time and effort was free. The project was finished at a final construction cost unheard of in The Reserve. The next fourteen months will prove that my trust in the eye surgeon was also well-placed.
Word of mouth will make or break you in a tight-knit,
49 Keowee gated resort community like this, and I worked hard to maintain the same reputation I had earned on Caesar's Head.
This was one of the first houses built in The Reserve and it quickly became popular with the sales staff. Some tourists began to ask me to do the same on their land.
Between 2002 and 2005 (the year I permanently returned to doing my own thing on my own land again), I agreed to do a total of nine of these special projects – all under the same strict conditions as Tom's. Each one was bigger, more expensive, and more complicated than the one before. Each took my portfolio to places I would have never imagined. For the sake of this story, I will refer to these nine project owners going forward as "patrons." This story is mostly about patron #8.
Gaudi
Nothing worthwhile comes easy. It takes years of hard work, creating a portfolio and business track record, to arrive at a point where the first time you are introduced to someone's vacant land, they shake your hand and say “do what you would do here, and I'll pay for it.”
It is an altogether different world of business if your livelihood depends on your ability to imagine something before it exists - turning your creative effort into a physical
50 Keowee product for a profit.
Real creativity occurs on the edge of one's competence, always in a perpetual state of question. It is always humbling.
Barcelona's Antoni Gaudi (1852 – 1926) sculpted phys- ical models as part of his own trial and error process and approached his work as an artistic sculptural form. He designed only what he built and saw no separation of roles between designer and builder or between imagination and construction.
It is indeed one act – one whole.
“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”16
16 Gilbert K. Chesterton. Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens. Chapter III Pickwick Papers (1911)
51 Chapter 6
Trace
K1200
Trace leaned forward, lifted her visor, and yelled “It doesn’t feel like a hundred if you put your head down!”
It was date night, and there was a 1200 CC, four- cylinder, canary yellow BMW motorcycle between our legs that could leap from 0 to 60 mph in 3.55 seconds with just a slight twist of the wrist.
We were on the straight two mile stretch in Cedar Mountain, North Carolina off of Highway 276 near the Dupont Plant on our way from Caesar’s Head to Asheville. There are not many remote stretches in the Blue Ridge Mountains this straight for this long where you could put your head down and have a blast.
52 Trace
I was at the dealership a few months before when they opened the crate from Munich. It was now July 1998 and I had already run it out to Wyoming where the roads are much longer and straighter - the type of place where it is engineered not to feel like 125 mph - if you put your head down...
From 1998 to 2005, every Friday and Saturday night on Caesar’s Head was date night. Once construction work ended, Trace and I would take off on an hour long trip to Hendersonville or Asheville. We let the weather decide if it would be motorcycle or truck. On Sunday nights, Trace would head back down the mountain to her house for another work week in Greenville.
These years were crazy busy - there were sixteen pro- jects in total, starting from a $149,000 cottage on Caesar’s Head to the extreme multimillion dollar resort houses on Lake Keowee.
These years raced by. Our leisure time was compressed into weekends and a couple of trips a year. We had no reason not to expect that each new year would be better than the last, and each year was. We started a tradition of ushering in each new year somewhere special - a favorite spot.
For New Year’s Eve ‘99, we stood for six long hours in Time’s Square waiting for the ball to fall. It was so cold
53 Trace that we wrapped hotel towels under our coats. The NYPD corrals each block with barricades and the crowd gravitates towards the end closest to the ball. We were packed like sardines against a young Asian couple and a large group from Bucharest who spent the entire night singing what may have been the Romanian Anthem. Whatever it was, they swayed back and forth as they sang - so we and the Asian couple had no choice but to sway as well. We had a blast.
For 2000, we decided we wanted to be in Jackson, Wyoming and Yellowstone to usher in the new millennium. There is nothing quite like snowmobiling in Yellowstone and the Gros Ventre Wilderness when the traffic and tour- ists are gone. Slide Lake sits on the edge where Jackson Hole ends and the Gros Ventre Wilderness begins. The rental agency delivered our snowmobiles to the cabin. We stood in the dark on the narrow bridge that crosses the creek feeding into Slide Lake and watched the sky light up with fireworks from the other side of the butte in Jackson.
We returned to Jackson and Times Square a few more times for New Years Eve.
December 31, 2005 was a bit more simple - we drove up to the ‘Burgh, took in a Steeler’s game, and watched the fireworks from a bench under the Andy Warhol Bridge, away from the crowds. This New Year’s Eve was different - Trace was now wearing a ring with a princess cut dia-
54 Trace mond. Plans were made to make 2006 very special.
As we watched the fireworks shoot skyward from a barge near The Point, we could relax and celebrate the years of hard work and risk that had finally paid off. This kind of success is not measured in money, but rather in those factors which further secured my freedom to do my own thing.
Those 12 hour/7 day work weeks handing popcorn and hotdogs over the counter at the Big Z, the months of study and long days with 2,000 other New Yorkers on a Hudson River pier laboring over the CPA exam, the late nights alone on a roof with a rope around my waist struggling with a sheet of plywood. It was all worth it.
And I was never alone. Every success belonged to my parents, too - and since 1998, Trace.
Professionally, I could not have been more happy and proud of my portfolio of sixteen houses. But Trace meant more than all of this and made me even happier. I think that is how it is supposed to work.
Trace's Eyes
Some men who share my reading taste might opine that a beautiful, determined, independent, highly intelligent and rational - yet loving and devoted - woman like Dagny Taggart is pure fiction. Not so.
55 Trace
Add sky blue eyes and natural hair that is blond or red depending on the sunlight, and you would have met Trace.
The fact that she knows tonight’s Pirate starting line-up and could give the manager a suggestion or two, or that she rarely misses a Penguin puck drop - that is all just a bonus.
We met when we were both twenty-five during one of her weekend visits with her parents on the mountain. We just clicked. She is not the type of person that you need to make an effort to get along with.
She is well-educated and hardworking, and asks nothing of anyone other than to exchange the value of what she has earned. At twenty-five, she was already having her first house built in a neighborhood in Greenville.
A couple of seasons ago, there was a controversial call at home plate that went in the Pirate’s favor late in a game. Trace turned to me emphatically: “Oh no! I don’t want us to win that way.” I just smiled. Life is so much sweeter with someone so comfortable on this side of the aisle.
If eyes are the window of the soul, every day I see a soul utterly incapable of harming another creature and a heart full of love.
Barcelona
In September 2005, Trace and I took off from Atlanta for
56 Trace a special week in Barcelona. I had visited Barcelona before to study Gaudi's work. We rented a car and toured the south of France and the Mediterranean coastline for two days. The rest of our time was spent in the city doing all of the typical tourist Gaudi-related stuff. There was no safe place to hide the ring that I had purchased in Greenville two weeks before, so I kept it in my pocket with loose change all week.
I had the perfect spot in mind. Parc Guell is a garden complex designed and built by Gaudi in the early 1900’s. The park climbs a steep hillside and offers spectacular views of the city from the top. There is a series of stone balconies at different levels of the park that blend with the natural landscape. We made it to the top and to an ideal balcony just as the sun began to set. We stood for a moment reminiscing about the past week as though it were already an old memory worthy of a scrapbook.
Trace had no idea. We had never even discussed it. I will never forget the look in her sky blue eyes the moment I knelt down and asked her to marry me.
If anyone ever deserved a special moment and a special memory, she did.
We planned a small, family only, destination wedding somewhere in New York City and set a date for March 2006.
57 Chapter 7
Weasely
Eugene Weasely’s name once appeared first in the list of five names of a law firm in Greenville, South Carolina which specialized in personal injury cases. Nerts appeared fourth.
It is hard to explain exactly why, but Weasely reminds me of John Edwards, the former VP candidate and injury lawyer - except without the hair, smile, and silver tongue. Eugene is a bit raspy. Come to think of it, there is no physical resemblance whatsoever - but they both leave me with the same gut feeling.
His second wife, Susan, is also an attorney. I am not certain of the exact reason, but she was not part of her
58 Weasely husband’s firm. She has her own law office in a little house on Augusta Street in Greenville where she primarily does real estate closings. Through connections, she closes many of the lot sales at The Reserve at Lake Keowee.
She handled most of the real property transactions re- lated to this story.
The Weasely House
Susan was closing early lot sales for The Reserve at the time that the eye surgeon's house was rising out of the ground and becoming popular with the sales staff. The Weaselys had purchased a lot in one of the first sections to open.
Susan had heard about me from the sales staff and asked me to come up with some ideas for her property. She was very specific, she wanted a French chateau/ storybook look. The other eight patrons had specific requests for living spaces and amenities, but beyond that, they all said “do what you would do.”
After a few sketches and a couple meetings at the Weasely home in Greenville, Susan was ecstatic and quick- ly became my biggest promoter in The Reserve. All nine “patrons” came to me by word of mouth - many knew each other before they knew me.
There was no written contract. The Weaselys agreed
59 Weasely with a handshake to the same conditions as Tom and Gravely Excavation's large mustard-yellow trackhoe took a big first bite of dirt in April 2003.
For two years, the Weaselys reimbursed faster than any other patron. In fact, they had deposit slips for Kunst- werke's checking account and made deposits the same day they received a statement.
The Weasely project began with a relatively small, 2,500 square foot, whimsical cottage. The earliest construction cost projection was $750,000. This was in line with my previous projects. From there they controlled cost and timing and could expand or contract their project at any time, for any reason.
This project was a breakthrough of sorts because it allowed me and my organization to prove to ourselves that we could design and build pretty much anything. The building site, at times, seemed like a Gaudi workshop tucked away on some side street in Barcelona.
An underground wine cellar for the hillside across the
60 Weasely courtyard from the main entrance added $120,000. A guest apartment added $140,000. An edgeless reflecting pool with underground storage added $130,000. The project never stopped evolving and growing, and nothing was ever scaled back. The finished house will take almost three years to construct and the cost will explode to over $2.5 million.
Tourists by land or water first notice the copper and clay tile roof. In December 2003, as the roof system was being framed, I was asked to use clay tile that Susan had seen on the entrance gate building of a nearby community, rather than the over-the-counter tile originally planned. This tile was hand-crafted in Provençe and purchased through an importer. My crew made custom slats to give the roof a sagging, aged look. The project was delayed three months waiting for the tile.
The underground wine cellar is a dome that extends to the floor and defies description. All of the interior and exterior stone and brick arches are genuine structural arches. This may be the only modern structure in the Southeast with functional flying buttresses.
My artistic mason and his crew spent two years perfecting the brick and stone look. Brick lines sag and wave when least expected, in a way that works with the whole composition. The brick is handmade and laid with a special mortar mix sea sand - to make the exterior appear
61 Weasely hundreds of years old.
Every ceiling in every room features a dome with hand painted artwork. A furniture maker handcrafted cabinets to resemble antique furniture.
In 2004, I engaged a landscape architect who spent his time mostly on my projects. Special Provençal grasses and other plantings blend like they have been growing for cent- uries on the machine sculpted landscape. We installed a shoreline erosion control system that avoided using large pieces of gravel (rip rap). Instead, natural grasses grow along the shoreline and plunge seamlessly into the water.
Overextended
Into 2005, everyone was anxious to be done – me most of all. It was a long, long project. Some of the other eight patron projects began a year later and finished months before.
25% of $2,400,000 is $600,000. That is what other design/build firms in The Reserve would have charged for their efforts. But I had promised the Weaselys that they would get a finished product at my raw cost, just as I had promised Tom. Kunstwerke's total management fee through February 2006 was a minuscule $48,000.
$48,000 was half of what Kunstwerke needed to charge to break even for a project this long, and I could have easily
62 Weasely recovered this loss if I wanted to. But I didn't. In the big scheme of things, my Weasely losses – even though they came out of my pocket - were relatively small.
I had an exceptionally good relationship with the Weaselys. Susan was my biggest promoter and handled my legal matters. I trusted her. Eugene was always pleasant. The Weaselys and I toured prospective lots by boat and discussed partnering on one of my own speculative projects once theirs finished.
In January 2005 I did indeed return to doing my own thing on my own land with the help of an investor from Florida. Susan handled the transaction.
I expressed concern to Susan some time in late 2004 that they may run out of money for their own house. Every option chosen for the past eighteen months had been the most expensive. This was not my first rodeo. Sticker shock comes toward the end of an open ended project. It's easy to bite off more than one can chew.
“We are not going to run out of money” was the reply.
On February 24, 2006, during the final weeks of construction, I received a fax from Susan's office stating that they needed to have an attached builder’s affidavit signed and returned for a mortgage closing. This affidavit is used to ascertain that everything is paid up and that there is no possibility of liens. Liens can be a significant legal
63 Weasely issue, especially if there is a construction loan on the property. It could preclude a permanent mortgage.
I wouldn’t sign it.
On February 15, 2006, for the first time in three years, and without reason or warning, the Weaselys didn't make their weekly reimbursement deposit into my account. A quick account reconciliation further revealed (as expected) an additional $100,000+ reimbursement balance due. Calls were made and past due notices were sent, but to no avail. I had been stiffed.
At this point I was still well-protected. And they knew the law better than anyone. But something bad was about to happen to me in two short weeks – so bad, they must have been convinced that the law and our agreement could be ignored with impunity.
The Weaselys were really in a bind. They will even feign concern to others about my well-being for a few months after the explosion, until their own role revealed itself.
Rollie's arrival on the scene could not have come at a better time for the Weaselys. It seems everyone was warned but me.
64 Chapter 8
Tripinfal
The Meeting in the Barn
“Where’s my money?” Mike Tripinfal asked angrily. He sounded like a fifty-eight year old bully demanding someone’s school lunch money.
Bronson, my site manager, sat quietly in his chair. I sat to his right - directly across the table from Tripinfal. It was July 26, 2005, and Tripinfal had demanded a meeting in his red barn. The barn sits on acreage on a bluff in Six Mile, South Carolina.
The “barn” is actually an air conditioned facility which houses vehicles and equipment in one half and has a livable area in the other. Tripinfal regularly hosted Clemson
65 Tripinfal football parties in a large gathering room. We were sitting at a table in the big room.
The barn had been built in a lower part of the property a few years before Susan Weasely called me asking that I contact a lawyer friend who was looking for someone to design and build a house.
After a few months of design meetings with Mr. and Mrs. Tripinfal around a large conference room table at his law firm in Greenville, we shook hands. The Tripinfals agreed to what Tom had agreed to and became patron #4. Gravely's big yellow track hoe took its first bite off the top of the bluff in January 2004.
The house on the bluff above the barn was in its 17th month of construction. The little farm house the Tripinfals had once envisioned had evolved into an 9,500 sq ft. stone mansion that was roughly 70% complete and had just broken the $2,000,000 mark.
Why did Mike demand a meeting?
66 Tripinfal
Why was he demanding money?
Tripinfal had no complaints that he'd shared with me. $2,000,000 at this point was a steal. There were no delays other than those caused by a cast stone supplier in Dallas - we were both frustrated by that. I had made two trips to Dallas at my own expense to resolve that issue.
$500,000 is the average he would have paid any other designer and builder so far. Tripinfal had paid Kunstwerke only $84,000 to date – definitely no gripe there.
Tripinfal had been paying a flat $4,000 monthly fee from the beginning. Patrons #6 through #9 were paying $6,000 to $9,000 monthly in July 2005.
Van, the Tripinfal law firm’s bookkeeper, called me a week before and said that Tripinfal had noticed that in some of his early weekly billings, the $4,000 fee description stated that it would be limited to 16 months (the estimated timeline of the original, smaller “farmhouse”).
The “16 month” caption had disappeared after a few months when it became obvious that the scope of the project was expanding rapidly. Tripinfal insisted that the fee was capped at $64,000 (16 x $4,000) and that he had only “accidently” paid his monthly fee for five months after that. He demanded a $20,000 refund. This was the first instance of any kind of trouble (if you can call it that) with a patron, and it hit me out of nowhere like a kick in the
67 Tripinfal stomach.
Tripinfal was well aware, as were patrons #1 through #3 before him, that Kunstwerke was barely covering its own costs and that my efforts were essentially free. That $20,000 had long been spent building his house.
Tripinfal's extortion attempt really angered my father, who advised me: “don’t refund that man a dime.” What Tripinfal was doing was underhanded and dirty, but my gut told me he was capable of far worse (trust your gut).
A week later, there had been no refund. That's why he demanded the meeting.
By July 2005, the last of my nine patrons were less than a year from completion. I had finally made it to where I wanted to be, and I really didn’t want any trouble from someone like Tripinfal. It is important to recognize when there is much more at stake than money.
So I handed him a check. Bronson remained quiet. I am glad he was there as a witness.
After handing Tripinfal the check, I sat there staring at him, making direct eye contact.
This must have unnerved him, because his face turned red and he asked angrily “is there a problem?” He then blurted out: “because if there is, we can just part ways right
68 Tripinfal now.”
I didn’t react - I just kept staring.
Suddenly, as if turning a switch, Tripinfal calmed down and apologized. He then made a remarkably candid admission to us, perhaps in an effort to explain away his behavior. He said that he was “just an old trial lawyer” and that there were only two men he respected: “the man in the black robe and the man upstairs.”
It sounded more like a confession than an admission. He should have never been a patron and I cursed Susan in my head for recommending him.
The Tripinfals
Mike’s name appeared first in the name of a three- partner law firm in Greenville, SC which specialized in product liability and personal injury. It was mostly his firm. He dabbled once in state politics and ran for office as a “yellow-dog” Democrat.
Mrs. Tripinfal was always pleasant and polite to me and everyone in my organization.
The Tripinfal House
After the meeting in the barn concluded, there were typical construction issues, such as samples to approve, up at the house. So we agreed to meet again there. Tripinfal
69 Tripinfal got in the ATV that he used to drive around the property and drove up.
Bronson and I took our time walking up the hill, discussing our options. This memory is so vivid to me tonight at my Grant Street post, I can remember how high the grass in the field was as we walked. Bronson reminded me, as he had at least once a week for months, how much he hated Tripinfal and wanted to manage a different project. But Bronson assured me that he would stay on if I needed him to.
We could easily negotiate a departure and be rid of Tripinfal. There was no written contract. The house was far enough along that Tripinfal could act as his own builder and finish it. It was about to be mostly interior work now, and the decorators, Fowler Interiors, were primarily man- aging this aspect.
I was determined to stick it out, because my reward is my work and the creation of something tangible - not serving Tripinfal nor anyone else for that matter.
The open ended farmhouse was no longer a farmhouse on the inside, either. The entry hall features a twenty foot dome and a sweeping curved stairway. A steel bridge trimmed in wood crosses the second floor of the main hall. Elaborate, over-sized trim moldings kept two trim crews busy for months. This was also my first experience with
70 Tripinfal residential elevators.
Earlier in construction, as the house was beginning to be framed, Tripinfal had asked me to come up with a pool design which flowed with the initial plan. I spent a few weeks, at no additional fee, designing a two-level pool with a pool house. For budgetary reasons, the pool idea was canceled before it began.
Kunstwerke also agreed to manage the construction of a one-acre man-made lake on the property. The dam con- struction and engineering coordinated through my land- scape architect was an enormous undertaking. Kunstwerke funded it through its regular weekly reimbursement bill- ings.
Tripinfal knew that Kunstwerke's added role in the pool and the lake was generous to say the least and they both occurred before Tripinfal's petty $20,000 extortion.
$4,000
Since that July 2005 meeting in the barn until January 2006, Kunstwerke hadn’t charged a fee to cover its own costs managing the project and was losing money. I had to do something.
Since Tripinfal threatened back in July that the language of the billing became a “written” agreement, I placed a line in the January 26, 2006 weekly billing stating that I needed
71 Tripinfal to reinstate the $4,000 monthly fee and recover those months lost. I billed for $4,000 in that statement and braced for a battle. To my surprise, he paid it without comment.
Good news? New “written agreement”?
No.
In a few days, the calendar flipped to February 2006. Tripinfal’s last payment, like Weasely's, was also February 15th. Tripinfal didn’t mind paying one of the $4,000 fees because he, too, knew that something big was about to happen.
Rollie's arrival on the scene came unexpectedly like a gift from “the man upstairs” to Tripinfal.
72 Chapter 9
VanGrab
April 2004
“Do you have time to meet some people today? I’ve got two couples coming in, one in the morning and another in the afternoon.” A salesman at The Reserve called me early on an April 2004 morning.
He knew my plate was full and that I really wasn’t accepting any more patrons. I assumed that he was just asking for a favor.
I was at The Reserve seven days a week and available to the sales staff. They knew that I could quickly size up a building site and sell my vision of where and how a house should sit on a property. Steep terrain is not a negative and
73 VanGrab there are no bad lots – just different challenges.
As early as April 2004, there were already too many boxy houses scattered around The Reserve that appeared forced onto sites they weren’t designed for.
I had been very selective choosing my patrons. If you were to look at a map of The Reserve in 2004, you would find that most patron projects were on choice million dollar “point” lots surrounded by water.
The salesman continued: “The afternoon couple are real heavy hitters. They manage their own private island in the Caribbean.” Perhaps this was his way of telling me that I may be particularly interested in this meeting. I am not sure if “heavy hitters” was the actual term used. I just remember a phrase with similar meaning.
These “heavy hitters” were, of course, the VanGrabs, who later told me that the salesman had given them two contacts: me and a firm in Atlanta.
I was introduced to the VanGrabs in the parking lot of The Reserve sales office. The three of us hopped in my SUV and took a tour of my projects. I explained how I did things while we explored my four active construction sites. The VanGrabs had a two-lot site that would soon be expanded to three. It was Barb VanGrab's decision to make, and she decided two weeks later to commission me to design and build on her property.
74 VanGrab
They seemed like a nice couple, and we got along well.
Sculpt
The next meeting occurred at the VanGrab home in Atlanta and was all about function (number of rooms, amenities, etc.). From there, as agreed, they left it up to me (and a blank sketch pad, a blank computer screen, and a table full of model making materials).
Everything begins with the land. If this were not a gated community with strict architectural guidelines, I would have placed the house largely underground, with a lot of glass above ground, in such a way that it blended seamlessly into the natural landscape. Architecture cannot replace or improve the natural beauty of any landscape. It is always an intrusion. The best architecture is barely noticed.
I always start with a land surveyor and a topographical survey of a site detailing every foot by foot change in elevation. I then sculpt with foam board and plaster a 1/8" = 1’ scale model of the property as it exists before any excavation.
My Exacto knife carves and experiments with driveway, house footprint, and foundation possibilities on the scale property model long before computerized plans are made and before trackhoes dig real dirt. A 1/8” scaled toy car drives many driveway routes and parks in many different
75 VanGrab garage options long before the first real tree is knocked down.
There is nothing like the thrill of that first bite of machine into raw ground – digging a big hole exactly where I imagined it. It's the moment imagination becomes reality and the race to craft a full-size version of a model begins. It doesn't matter how many times I take that first bite, it always shakes my confidence. Whatever grows out of the hole is permanent and will be publicly critiqued.
The spot where the VanGrab house needed to be - as close and accessible to the water as possible - was the steepest part of a steep hillside. The function they re- quested required 9,000 square feet of living space. I had to figure out a way to nestle 9,000 square feet into a tight ledge without overwhelming the property with a large 9,000 square foot box.
3D architectural imaging technology allows me to create video walk-throughs and remarkably life-like renderings. But it still doesn't allow me to bring mental images to life and sculpt aesthetic form the way physical modeling does. I could not imagine designing and building something so complex, permanent, and expensive as the VanGrab project without first sculpting and experimenting with a smaller physical version of the real thing.
If Gaudi were alive today, I would like to think that he
76 VanGrab would still physically experiment with sculptural models first and worry about the computer renderings later.
Forget what a twentieth century architectural professor may have told you, aesthetic form doesn't follow practical function. They do not compete for priority nor are they mutually exclusive. A good designer will create one perfect whole. And to create that whole, one must imagine, experiment with, and morph countless possibilities before one would ever consider bringing a concept to life.
Curvy
This project was going to be for a large family with young children. I was determined to make it a fun place to be from the moment one drives onto the property.
9,000 square feet of living space along a narrow ledge required at least three levels. I placed all six bedrooms on the top level within the sloping roof structure. Curvy hall- ways connect odd-shaped rooms on all three levels. The hallways on the kids' bedroom side of the top level funnel to a spiral stairway “silo” which takes them down to the busiest part of the kitchen mid-level, and down further to their space on the lowest level - feet from the water.
A sweeping stairway descends from the master suite side of the top level and lands in the largest living area with the biggest view. The mid level is completely surrounded by covered outdoor living spaces.
77 VanGrab
A rambling kitchen hub is the center of activity. Long, steel joists support the concrete floor of this mid-level hub before extending outside to support a stone-covered canti- levered balcony that runs the length of the hub and overlooks the water.
A steep driveway splits and swoops down on one side and through the structure before climbing the hill on the other side. This drive-through at mid-level allows carloads to get out and enter the busiest hub of the house sheltered from the elements. There is an underground parking area dug into the hillside within this covered area.
The lowest level is completely underground except for a long bank of glass doors opening out, feet from the lake. There is a gym, second kitchen, play area, and theater on this level. The foundation walls surrounding this level are a curving maze of poured concrete laid out with laser guided precision.
78 VanGrab
September 2004
Some of my patrons had construction loans with Wach- ovia Bank, these heavy hitters did not.
Wachovia required that borrowers have a written con- tract with Kunstwerke. But the funding agreement I insist- ed on contradicted Wachovia’s standard contract that anticipated “draws” which the bank would pay directly to the builder to hold for disbursement to vendors and subcontractors.
I removed Wachovia's funding language and replaced it with a simple line requiring a patron to “reimburse” Kunstwerke for costs it had already “incurred” - due upon receipt of a billing statement. It was the same special agreement going back to Dr. Tom. Wachovia was okay with it as long as there was a signed agreement.
I had a blank contract with me at a VanGrab design meeting in Atlanta in September 2004. When the subject came up, neither of us insisted on a written contract, but we
79 VanGrab signed one anyway. The VanGrabs became Patron #8 and agreed to my conditions with a handshake and a signature. One could argue that I was better protected than I had ever been.
The VanGrabs said that the other firm told them it would be an eight month process before plans could be completed and actual construction begun. Design costs alone by that point would likely be six figures.
On September 13, 2004, just three months after the first meeting, I walked into The Reserve’s architectural review meeting and presented the VanGrab house - I was carrying a thick roll of prints, graphics, and the model.
Gravely Excavation moved onto the site almost immediately and took a big first bite of dirt. Bronson was appointed site manager and everyone was excited to get started. At this point, the VanGrabs had paid a total of only $20,000 in design/build fees.
In February 2006, just 14 months after the first concrete was poured, the house was 75% complete and the cost up to that point was $2,385,060. Considering the complexity of the structure, its high-end amenities, and the open-ended construction process, the cost and timing was miraculous.
A typical 9,000 sq. ft. boxy house with the same amenities would be priced in the $500+ per sq. ft. range in The Reserve. This is a five million dollar property. The
80 VanGrab average design/build fees charged by other firms would have exceeded $800,000. At the time of the March 2006 explosion, the VanGrabs had paid Kunstwerke a grand total of $128,000 in design/build fees.
Rick VanGrab wrote days before the explosion that they were “very happy with the house.” They should have been - they were getting one of my houses at my cost, before profit. What could possibly go wrong?
81
Chapter 10
Burn Rate
The Good Stuff
“Every now and then it’s nice to pause and reflect on what we are truly thankful for. I was doing just that this morning and wanted to drop a note to say thank you for allowing us to put the ‘icing on your cakes.’ I have always told you that I think you are a wildly gifted artist and over time I am learning you are also a really neat person who is sensitive and gentle in spirit.
I look forward to working with you on many projects over the coming years as we both develop our art. Thank you for the chance to help create something that will last long beyond ourselves. That’s the good stuff! The stuff that is
82 Burn Rate really fulfilling. Artist to artist.” - Tracy Fowler, 2005
Rick VanGrab asked me in late 2004 if I knew any local decorators that I would recommend. The VanGrabs were going to need a lot of furniture.
A year earlier the Tripinfals had engaged Fowler Interiors on North Main Street in Greenville. Tracy has a talented staff of decorators and the infrastructure it takes to handle large projects. After working closely with her for a year, I felt very comfortable recommending her firm to the VanGrabs.
I invited Tracy and her staff to accompany me to one of my early design meetings with the VanGrab's in Atlanta. This was a huge favor to Tracy, because the VanGrabs would also engage her firm for a new ski house in Colorado. She also scored the VanGrab guest house at The Reserve.
So many houses needed so much furniture.
2005 was full of “the good stuff” and was a great year all around. Tripinfal's $20,000 fee extortion in July was just a small blip on the radar, and a sober warning of what some people are capable of.
Since Tripinfal was a mutual client, I told Tracy what he had done. I had a moral obligation to tell her, and I prefaced it with a warning to be careful.
83 Burn Rate
The same month I handed Tripinfal a $20,000 check, I didn't hesitate to provide a full list of past and current patrons (as I had done for a decade) to a prospective patron.
Within a week I got this email in response:
“Scott,
Such accolades I’ve received from your clients!!! They all confirm our feelings about you, your talent and the quality of your work. We are very excited to be honored to work with you.”
When Trace and I returned home two months later in September from Barcelona and announced our engagement, there was a celebration among my patrons and the entire Kunstwerke organization. The general consensus was “it's about time you settled down!” Rick VanGrab probably heard about it through Tracy Fowler, and he sent me a nice congratulatory email.
As Trace and I enjoyed New Year's Eve 2006 in Pittsburgh, we fully expected that 2006 would be even better than 2005. My work was gaining more exposure and I was attracting an increasingly exclusive clientele. I was back to doing my own thing again on my own land but at a new level. My own Lady of the Lake project – which I will get to later - was under roof and sat on the greatest lot ever sold on Keowee.
84 Burn Rate
I was only seven short years removed from those solitary nights mixing concrete by hand and riding pump jacks alone. What could possibly go wrong?
Concerned
“I’m concerned about the burn rate.” I read these words in an email from Rick VanGrab with a bit of my own concern as to what he might be up to. We had just finished December 2005 and the one-year construction mark. For most of the first year, the weekly wire of money from the VanGrabs to the Kunstwerke checking account averaged roughly $30,000.
We were in the homestretch now, and invoices were pouring in from contractors and suppliers. The average weekly wire had shot up to $60,000 in December, and we had just passed $2,000,000 in total cost.
Every week, for the past sixty weeks, I had written the amount that needed to be reimbursed in an email to Rick; I also attached to the email his weekly spreadsheet statement and budget summary.
Rick must have looked back on the past sixty wires and noticed a spike upward in the weekly amount of money he was wiring.
Back when we signed the contract in September 2004, I explained to both VanGrabs that their weekly reimburse-
85 Burn Rate ment statement would be thirty or more pages because it included copies of every invoice submitted by contractors and suppliers. I also explained that Kunstwerke made three copies: one to keep, one to send to the site manager Bronson, and another to mail to the VanGrabs.
Rick responded: “Just keep our copy there with you and send me the total, I don’t want all of that paperwork.”
I assured Rick that I would maintain a box of his copies of the weekly statements and that he could have them at any time. No other Kunstwerke project was this hands-off. Most patrons carefully reviewed each billing and often had questions. They could, and some would, contact the contractors and suppliers directly with questions. They were, after all, the patron's obligation passed through Kunstwerke, not mine.
I could choose to forward any contractor or supplier invoice to any patron to pay directly at any time. My reimbursement contract was a generous courtesy, but I was well-protected by contract and law.
Consider this: as of February 16, 2006, Rick VanGrab made 70 weekly wire transfers totaling $2.3+ million dollars without checking the details of what he was paying toward an open ended project.
Consider also that two months prior to the VanGrab's
86 Burn Rate first design payment back in June 2004, I was a complete stranger to them. My reputation preceded my introduction to the VanGrabs.
Things Cost What They Cost
Patrons regularly asked me for updates as to what I thought the total estimated cost of their project might be. The earliest projections during design meetings with the VanGrabs in Atlanta were in the $1.8 million range and started climbing from there.
Barb didn’t visit the building site more than a handful of times during construction - I saw Rick there a little more often. On their first visit to the site after much of the foundation had been dug on November 30, 2004, they both expressed amazement at the footprint and the size of the project.
As Barb and I walked along the orange excavated dirt of the lake side of the foundation, she asked me where I thought the cost projection was. Since it was open ended and the VanGrabs had a million decisions to make as their project evolved, a fixed estimate was impossible.
I replied: “We are well past $2 million.”
I think that she was taken aback by my bluntness and refusal to commit to a hard number. But there was going
87 Burn Rate to be no possible way to keep the house they wanted under $3,000,000. Things cost what they cost.
What advantage would there be for me to sugar coat my projection or to over-promise? If anything, it helped Kunstwerke financially to keep the scope of a project at a minimum and to finish as soon as possible. My fee structure and funding process were specifically structured to avoid any appearance of gouging or taking advantage of my patrons. They had full control.
She replied that the cost “needed to be kept under con- trol” and that they didn’t want it to become a “free-for-all.” It was a reasonable request. She then added something I thought was rather odd at the time: “otherwise my husband will be upset.” Based on my own observation those first few months, I already knew that she was the one tighter with money.
I also remember one of them mentioning in early 2005 that this house was going to cost more than the one in Atlanta, and that they loved it so much that they would probably wish they could live in it full time. After visiting the house in Atlanta, I would have predicted that the cost would be much more. One can’t stick a big, easy-to-build box like the Atlanta house on a cliff on Lake Keowee.
The only real option to reduce cost and speed up construction was to scale back (something that never
88 Burn Rate happened with any patron project).
Two Small, Strange Eruptions
At 9:00 p.m. on November 30, 2004, I received a strange voicemail message from Rick. It was the evening after their morning visit to the site. They were back in Atlanta.
Rick left a long, angry tirade about how they were not going to be taken advantage of, and how the project was not going to become a “free-for-all.” I had heard that phrase earlier in the day. I had a feeling that he was not alone.
I responded the next morning by voicemail and email:
“Hello Rick and Barb:
I left a message on your voice mail this morning and am emailing too, just in case. We need to get together soon and rethink the size and scope of your house. I am very concerned about the message I received Tuesday night...
I have been entrusted with the dream homes of many very special clients with discriminating tastes. All of whom have received incredible value for what they've invested. My projects are genuinely pleasant and fun experiences predicated on mutual respect and consideration...
89 Burn Rate
Here I have a house that now exceeds 8,500 [square feet] heated. Another 1,500 covered porches.
Two full kitchens, one ultimate custom with high-end appliances.
Two laundry rooms.
6 bedrooms, 9 baths.
Underground garages.
Large theatre.
And on...
The excavators continue to soften the high banks on the driveway. I have however postponed the foundation work and framing until I better understand expectations. The location and footprint is excellent. I would be glad to reconfigure the structure more conservatively reducing its size and curtailing some of the special design elements. Let me know your thoughts.”
Ultimately, nothing ever came of it. It was just a fake eruption intended to send some kind of warning about controlling costs. The scope and cost of the project will continue to expand at their direction until the end.
There was another eruption involving Fowler Interiors.
90 Burn Rate
I was asked to reserve a conference room at The Reserve Club for a design meeting so that Tracy Fowler could submit her initial proposal to decorate and furnish the VanGrab house. Both Rick and Barb were there, as well as Tracy’s staff.
We were all sitting around a large table when Tracy handed her proposal to Rick. I understood that it was a typical decorating proposal with a retail mark-up. Beyond that, I wasn’t privy to anything else.
Rick must have felt that something was too high - I am not sure if it was the total or the mark-up percentage used. He stood up, stormed out to the parking lot and sat in his Mercedes sedan, leaving the rest of us sitting at the table.
I laughed.
Because I thought it was funny. I was the only one who did. It was the type of irrational theatrics that everyone was supposed to laugh at.
I was beginning to understand the dynamics - the show was for his wife. Apparently, that was his role. Nothing wrong with that. Most men are in the wife-pleasing business.
It would have been irresponsible for me to ignore this dynamic, so I paid attention and just worked with it. Rick
91 Burn Rate had told me that he grew up with very modest means. Got it.
Don't Tell Barb
“Keep it [rising cost] under your hat and don't tell Barb.”
This phrase jumped out at me in an email from Rick VanGrab soon after the burn rate had soared past the $2 million mark. It was not the strangest communication I received from him during a fourteen month relationship that was becoming increasingly strange; but it would be the most ominous.
I expected another, much bigger, eruption back in Atlanta the moment things could no longer be kept under anyone's hat. I just didn't know when. This ticking time bomb had no clock face with a date or time - just an air of inevitability.
Furniture Polish
I need to inject some perspective here to keep this story in context. A $60,000 weekly “burn rate” may seem like a large amount of money for most of us. But it was only 2% of the cost of the project (like a $3,000 weekly burn rate for a $150,000 house). $60,000 has the same economic bite to the VanGrabs net worth as $5 or $6 would to the average American.
92 Burn Rate
The decorator’s fee issue was quickly resolved and everyone was happy. Kunstwerke's monthly fee was still fixed at $6,000, which was the same for every project started in 2004.
Then Barb sent me an email expressing concern about the time it was taking to build the big house. It was rare for her to write me directly. She referenced how her father took great pride in delivering products on time and how important this was in business.
I responded politely. In reality, it was a silly “apples to oranges” comparison. I could read between the lines and tell that there was trouble brewing. Timing will ultimately light the spark, not money.
Barb wanted in the house by June 2006 for their first summer visit – she had already made plans. The house would only be used for four weeks a year.
But this was an open ended, multimillion dollar, extreme resort house on a steep hillside evolving at her discretion. As late as January 2006, we were still modifying interior walls and ordering new windows based on her decorator's request. This was not a multi-level marketing scheme and I was not delivering furniture polish.
Bronson and I each kept detailed records of weekly progress for every project. At the end of 2005 and into
93 Burn Rate
2006, activity at the site sped along at an increasingly rapid rate - so fast that Rick became “concerned about the burn rate.”
Barb's email was just another reminder as to why I couldn't wait to do my own thing on my own land exclusively again. I could easily design and build a speculative project in this market with my name attached and have a line of potential customers waiting for its completion. It was just a matter of capital and funding.
Rick's “don't tell Barb” email will indeed be the official tipping point of no return. 2006 was going to be nothing like 2005.
94 Chapter 11
Stoked
Icy
January started much too quietly. That was the problem.
On December 29, 2005, I emailed Kunstwerke's usual weekly reimbursement statement to Rick VanGrab. There were 41 invoices attached totaling a burn rate of $38,988. $15,786 of which had already been paid out in cash to contractors and suppliers.
It said “due upon receipt” as usual. The previous sixty weekly statements had been reimbursed by Rick within 24 hours. But for the first eight days of 2006, I heard and received nothing. Something was up.
95 Stoked
By the time Rick wired his payment twelve days later, an additional $57,296 of contractor invoiced work had already been done. I was on the hook for hundreds of invoices through debt guarantees or disbursements of my own capital.
I began to keep a wary eye on VanGrab cash flows. January was indeed too quiet. That will change drama- tically February 2nd.
Avaricious
In late January, Rick visited the site and brought Rollie along. I had not seen Rick since before the holidays. The projected finished cost was now over $3 million and a completion date in June was going to be a tall order.
Rick needed an eruption and conflict big enough to buy some time and allow an equally big and exasperated loosening of the purse strings back home.
We lunched at The Reserve Club while Rick explained that Rollie would be taking over some “property manage- ment” responsibilities for the family.
Rollie's business card declared him to be “Executive Protection Administrator, Jay VanAndel Enterprises (JVA)” It was the same card he used when he assisted the late Amway co-founder until his death in 2004. Rollie was now
96 Stoked
“provided for Barb's benefit,” as Rick would later testify.
And so it begins: on February 2, 2006, Rick did something that no patron had ever done. He threatened by email not to reimburse Kunstwerke for that week's statement unless I gave him a hard finished cost and firm completion date. Apart from being a contractual breach that I could easily win, it was a stupid and childish threat.
Rick was looking for some kind of leverage and he hit me where he knew I was most vulnerable: funding. $60,000 is pocket change to Rick VanGrab, but he knew it could devastate me and precipitate a cash crisis when added to the weeks of invoices not even billed to him yet. I regret not shutting the project down at this moment and better protecting myself. It was all a game.
My instincts told me to communicate in writing, write volumes, and not leave anything out. When you are confronting the irrational and unscrupulous, leave a trail for objective truth – it will catch up eventually.
I emailed Rick and told him that withholding funds only hurt the subcontractors who had already been stretched thin in January. I prepared yet another cost projection based on the impact of late decisions they (the VanGrabs) still had to make. I provided a new time-line in a new format. He wired the money.
97 Stoked
But his next payment on February 9th would be his last. That time bomb clock had apparently expired.
There were many old emails from February 2006 that would sit on a jury's table nine years later as they deliberate. Two particularly long and detailed emails from me to Rick would remind a jury just how much Rick knew on February 10th – ten days before the explosion.
February 20, 2006
On February 13, 2006, I sat in my design studio in Greenville holding a VanGrab accounting ledger that listed all 908 invoices submitted by 86 different suppliers and contractors through that date totaling $2,656,492. As of February 13th, Rick had so far reimbursed a total of $2,554,087 of it. I was on the hook for $102,405 (and counting at a burn rate of $10,000 in new costs each day.) Every dime was accounted for. My records were objective and complete and could be easily audited.
Rick bought more time on February 20th by emailing an idiotic pile of nonsense about $200,000 he thought was missing.
Rick flatly refused to pay his latest statement until he got his “arms around where we are at” and he announced that Rollie would be his “point man” to “sort through all of this” going forward.
98 Stoked
There ultimately will be little “sorting” and Rick knew exactly “where we are at.” It was all a ruse.
I will discover too late that Rollie was already on the ground in South Carolina doing the unthinkable.
Rick's February 20th email would be his last words to me for nine years.
I made sure to ask Rick as a court reporter typed if there were any issues with his project back then other than his supposed “missing” money. He couldn't remember any.
99 Chapter 12
Rollie
February 16, 2006
You can't blame Rollie for trying to impress his new boss. It was, after all, a gesture of kindness that led the VanGrabs to offer him a position in Atlanta and allow him to stay within the family business. He told me that he was not much more than a nurse for that last year back in Michigan. Now he had a chance to shine and really prove his worth.
Rollie may have been provided for “Barb's benefit,” but he reported to Rick and did whatever Rick told him to do.
Rollie referred to Rick as his “boss” in a tone that made you think that he was trying to distance himself from
100 Rollie something. As if carrying out someone else's orders might exonerate him from personal responsibility.
A week before being officially designated “point man” in Rick's February 20th email, Rollie was instructed to ask for a formal meeting with me on February 16th in a confer- ence room in The Reserve Club.
“Purpose of the meeting?” I asked. Rollie's boss was reportedly “angry that his project had gotten 'off-track.'”
Years later I will dig many dry wells during legal discovery attempting to force an explanation from Rick or Rollie as to what specifically was “off-track.”
Legal discovery will, however, later confirm as I expected, that Rollie was wholly incapable of compre- hending my contractual business arrangement with the VanGrabs and what a reimbursement contract was. Rollie had never even looked at the VanGrab contract until I had him read it years later on a witness stand. In other words, Rollie was perfect for the job.
I never expected the VanGrabs' dysfunctional dynamic to be rational. And if you think about it, a line had already been drawn, and a meeting like this inevitable, the moment I was instructed to keep the real cost “under my hat.” Rollie's arrival on the scene had become just another piece of the same dynamic.
101 Rollie
I called my father and asked him if he would tag along with me and Trace just to be an extra witness to whatever Rick and Rollie had up their sleeves. As we parked the car and walked in carrying boxes of documents, the furthest thing from my mind was obtaining evidence for any future courtroom drama. I just felt safer with more ears in the room.
At that time, I could not tell you the first thing about civil procedure and it was not as though I had suddenly adopted a litigious mindset when I decided that starting February 16th and thereafter, I would not meet anyone, anywhere alone.
Rollie sat to my left at the end of a long table. Trace and my father sat across from me. Rollie put on a ten minute show that would please his boss.
Rollie pulled out a business card, laid it on the table, and slid it slowly across to me while asking: “why has this guy [Fireplaces Plus] not been paid.” The only thing missing was a bright light aimed at my face.
I referred to my Fireplaces Plus sub-ledger and explain- ed the status of the account. Rollie moved on.
Rollie followed with a card from a stone mason and said “this guy is unhappy with you because he has not been paid in a while and refuses to do any more work.”
102 Rollie
Odd. This was news to me. This was one of my top artists who had worked exclusively on my projects for years. I had just seen him at the Weasely site. I checked the ledger and it showed him paid up. I challenged Rollie to call the number on the business card and confirm if I was correct. Rollie did, and was forced to move on.
Rollie's attempts to cherry-pick a “gotcha” moment were pointless because his premise was wrong. There was indeed growing angst among the workers at the site and there was indeed a cash crisis brewing. My ledger showed me who was owed past due balances on any given day – these records were not secret - and the list grew each day the VanGrab's failed to reimburse for work already done and paid for.
In a rational world, Rick would have been the one answering my questions on this February morning, such as: Why are you going to such extreme lengths to intentionally create a cash crisis? Or: For what purpose are you making something so objectively simple so complicated?
After two more such exchanges, Rollie ran out of material and became visibly frustrated as I countered each assault with logic: “If your boss would simply reimburse all of the 908 invoices incurred by Kunstwerke on his behalf as required by the contract, there would not be a cash flow issue. If your boss has any issue with paying a single one
103 Rollie of these 908 invoices, let's all go to that contractor or supplier and resolve it.”
At this moment, I braced myself for the possibility that Rollie might follow Rick's script too closely and bolt from the room and sit in his car.
A few days before this meeting, Bronson mentioned to me that Rollie had been poking around the site and asked him for the contact information of all the contractors and suppliers on the VanGrab project. Bronson asked me what he should do. I told Bronson to give Rollie whatever he wanted. What did I care?
240
There were only eighty or so individuals who were involved with the VanGrab project. So I was shocked to discover years later during legal discovery that Rollie had contacted a total of 240 individuals in my circle: contract- ors, suppliers, patrons, investors, etc., the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with the VanGrab project.
But Rollie had a big problem, there was nothing to dig up. Not one of these 240 will be called as a defense witness by Rollie at trial. Put simply, the coming explosion was not fueled by what the 240 said to Rollie, but rather by what he said to the 240.
104 Rollie
With that in mind, back to our meeting.
Rollie: “If Rick wired money promptly every week, why isn't this money sitting in your account waiting to be disbursed? What did you do with my boss's money?” Rollie was stuck with his false premise.
I was stern: “Because it is a credit contract and your boss is paying after-the-fact. And if Rick does not reim- burse very soon, I will shut the project down and place a lien.”
This was not what Rollie wanted to hear. And it would definitely not be what his boss wanted to hear when Rollie got back to Atlanta. He did not expect me to counter Rollie's pugnacity with my own.
I slid the big box containing the VanGrab copies of weekly billings in front of Rollie, it was now his to keep. I was glad to get it out of my studio. I pulled out a typical weekly statement and explained the billing system and a reimbursement contract. I explained the weekly budget summary and how it reconciled to what Rick had wired so far. I also showed him the copies of contractor and suppliers invoices attached to each statement as support.
I felt like a community college accounting professor attempting to explain simple debits and credits to a student who did not belong in the classroom and was going to flunk
105 Rollie out anyway. I knew I was wasting my time. Rollie was not there to learn or resolve anything.
Rollie appeared uncomfortable – like a man who was trying to be mean to people he had no business being mean to.
I explained: “All of my patrons approached me first and agreed to my terms. I have a very unique and exclusive business with a very select group of people helping me do what I do.”
Rollie replied: “They [VanGrabs] don't care about people, this is just business right now. This is just one of many houses all over the world.”
Rollie's tone became increasingly sympathetic and even conciliatory as the conversation and meeting wore on. Rollie tried to relate: “During the time that I worked for Barb's father, he only thanked me twice for anything.”
A bright spot occurred when Rollie stated that his boss wanted him to handle all payments to vendors directly and control it all from Atlanta as their new property manager. Passing invoices through Kunstwerke was just a courtesy and not a contractual requirement. The only requirement was that they reimburse immediately if an invoice had been passed through. The VanGrabs were already paying approximately 25% of the project directly anyway. I was
106 Rollie glad to be rid of the paperwork.
Besides, there was no reason for Kunstwerke to act as a middle man and advance free credit only to have someone like Rick attempt to use the balance owed as leverage for some other purpose. My billing process was a generous courtesy – intended for better people than the VanGrabs.
But I warned Rollie that the VanGrabs did not have a contractual or legal option to walk away from their balance owed and yet continue construction by paying all contract- ors and suppliers directly. All Kunstwerke sub-accounts needed to be reimbursed, reconciled, and closed. The subcontractors and suppliers had a legal stake and were protected by lien laws.
As we got up to go, I reminded Rollie again that there were two weekly statements on top of the stack that must be reimbursed and that there would be a final reconciling statement.
Rollie replied: “I think I can get these paid.”
Our forty-five minute drive home along Highway 183 through downtown Pickens and back to Greenville gave the three of us plenty of time to compare notes and discuss what had just happened. We all agreed that the meeting was very strange and seemed to be conducted by someone who just needed to be able to say that it had occurred. I
107 Rollie was right to have requested other ears in the room.
We couldn't shake the feeling that something else was going on.
The mere fact that this meeting even took place was about to be blown away by a chain of events that had already been set in motion. My world was about to ex- plode, and Rick and Rollie were just buying time until it did.
It was Rollie's comment about being thanked only twice by Barb's father that stuck with us the most. It obviously still bothered Rollie enough to mention it. To us, it said less about the elder VanGrab, and much more about Rollie and whom he was willing to work for.
108 Chapter 13
Rick
Rick's Predicament
Imagine Rick's predicament when Rollie got back to Atlanta with the big box and my warning. Rick's role was to handle the business side of things, have the house ready for the summer, and keep an eye out for “free- for-alls.” Rick had his own boss to please.
If the VanGrabs were paying more for the same value than their boxy neighbors' were paying to other builders, or if construction had truly slowed or was mismanaged, or if they were unhappy in some way with the house itself, then they might deserve your empathy.
It would be a simple, domestic excuse that would spark
109 Rick the explosion: Money intended for contractors is missing! I think the builder took it, and it put us months behind!
Of course Rick's lie would quickly leak beyond the VanGrab estate in Atlanta. But who would even whisper such an accusation or even speculate about such a thing if it weren't true?
Rollie.
Rick wasn't going to get his own hands any dirtier going forward.
Deep pockets have a way of exposing character. What would you do if you thought you or your boss could afford to get away with it? Rick and Rollie and Barb are about to answer that question.
Rollie's Predicament
I had lunch with Rollie at The Reserve Club in late January and he asked me a lot of questions about Bronson's role in construction.
Bronson was my top site manager and a critical part of my organization. He alone knew enough to finish the Van- Grab project without me and get it somewhat close to what I intended. He had the construction model and my sketches on the front seat of his truck. He had control of Kunst- werke equipment on site.
110 Rick
There were not many ways left to speed up construction at this late date. A month or two might be saved by scaling the exterior finish back from how I imagined it. But my creative claim to the finished product was my only value (or profit) in the deal and I insisted that it be done right. There was also the lien problem that loomed larger every day Rick refused to reimburse Kunstwerke for those old invoices. But, any payment would negate the “missing money” lie. Rollie was in a tough spot.
I had become Rollie's predicament.
If I were no longer involved with the VanGrab project for any reason, Bronson and my crew would go with me – they were needed elsewhere. Rollie needed to somehow surgically remove just me and my corporate entity, Kunstwerke, which held the building permit and contract, but still retain those in my organization that were needed to finish construction. There was no honest way to do this as quickly as Rollie needed it to be done.
And remember, Bronson was also site manager of the Tripinfal project. Rollie contacted Tripinfal and discussed what he was trying to do. Tripinfal knew about Rollie's meeting with me on the 16th and what was going to be discussed before it took place. The timing could not have been better for Tripinfal's own financial situation and he pounced on the opportunity.
111 Rick
As you already know, neither Tripinfal nor Weasely would make their required reimbursement payments after February 15th. I found this out a week later when their billings were ignored. My cash crises had just tripled.
With a lot of help from Tripinfal, Bronson became Rollie's first target. Everything that was about to happen at the VanGrab site was mirrored at the Tripinfal site. Both needed Bronson to agree to stay before they acted.
Scammers scam and their goons play dirty.
Brace for the explosion.
Explosion
Rollie told Bronson that he had uncovered hundreds of thousands of dollars of embezzlement from the VanGrab project. He described the kind of crime that could lead the nightly news and the front page of newspapers. It was the kind of lie that causes an immediate explosion, regardless of whether or not anyone actually believes it.
He told Bronson that this stolen money was “hidden somewhere” and that he was sent by the VanGrabs “to investigate where it went” and demanded that Bronson cooperate because I was “going to jail.”
Rollie feigned anger: “I would just like to get my hands on him.” If Bronson wanted to keep working, anywhere,
112 Rick he had better cooperate.
At the same time, on the bluff above the red barn in Six Mile, South Carolina, Tripinfal told Bronson that he had been in contact with Rollie. Tripinfal claimed that he too had discovered “red flags” and warned Bronson that he had better cooperate or else he could be in a lot of trouble, too. It was the same scam, but with legal polish.
Bronson agreed to stay and on March 3rd Rollie terminated Kunstwerke's involvement in the VanGrab pro- ject. He sent me a letter warning me not to trespass.
Rick's contractual payment breach and the threat of liens would have halted construction and forced a resolution. Rollie's explosion obliterated that roadblock. The scheme was to have the VanGrabs replace Kunstwerke on the building permit and act as their own builder with Rollie in charge of Bronson. It was quick and seamless.
Rollie would later testify about going through a list with Rick of those contractors and suppliers that were needed to finish the project. Rick paid in full only those that were needed going forward, regardless of their Kunstwerke account status. A lot of money was thrown around. Some were overpaid. The rest were left with nothing.
It was a sloppy and dirty hit job.
113 Rick
Gossiping construction workers, understandably looking out for their own interests, repeated what Rollie had told Bronson faster than Rollie's fingers dialed 240 phone numbers.
“I'm not supposed to be telling you this, but to give you an idea of some of the criminal things Scott has been doing...” Rollie spoke freely to random workers standing around the construction site. Who would say such things if it weren't true? My crew was comprised of good people who projected their own character onto Rollie and the VanGrabs.
Rollie told contractors and suppliers that were “unpaid” that the VanGrabs had already paid for everything and that I had taken money intended for them.
Rollie needed a final order of windows released, so he contacted my window and door company contact and told him that he was a former detective and was in the process of investigating my financial dealings with my clients. Rollie told my contact that I had taken $400,000 from the VanGrab project and had left my other patrons in a similar situation. Rollie assured him that he was in contact with my other patrons (he wasn't). Rollie also claimed that I had provided my patrons with “dummy invoices from dummy companies” in order to steal money from them.
Meanwhile, on the bluff in Six Mile, Tripinfal gave long
114 Rick
“legal” explanations to contractors at his site about what was going on.
My reputation, track record, accounting records, or anything I screamed was not going to stop the explosion caused by Rollie's grenade. Most people run from an explosion and sort out the cause, and blame, later.
It will never matter whether anyone personally believed anything Rollie said. He never offered any evidence because there wasn't any. Rollie didn't need anyone to actually believe his slander in order to trigger the panic he wanted. He didn't even try to convince.
Everyone dependent on me was going to be harmed by the attack in some way - that was certain - regardless of what happened next. Years later, I will not be able to find anyone to depose as a witness who actually believed Rollie's slander.
But by March 7th, it was rumored among a few workers who didn't know me well that I had been arrested and had actually been seen in the Pickens County jail. This arrest rumor in particular spread like wild fire throughout The Reserve and beyond. One contractor who knew better spoke up and said that the rumors needed to calm down until more was known. He was fired by Rollie.
My other patrons (other than Tripinfal and Weasley, of
115 Rick course) heard the embezzlement slander and panicked. It didn't matter that no patron I talked to actually believed any of it. It was the nature of the attack and the deep pockets behind it that caused the panic.
Trace and I made multiple, frantic trips to patron living rooms in Atlanta and elsewhere to explain what was going on. But nothing I said was going to convince anyone to pay their reimbursement balance to Kunstwerke in the midst of the explosion. My reimbursement cash crises exploded to $500,000.
Nuclear
As March wore on, that jail cell in Pickens rumor fizzled and only Tripinfal and VanGrab had severed ties with Kunstwerke. And the truth was slowly beginning to matter again. All I needed to do was collect the money owed by contract and law, and maybe send a cease and desist slander letter or two and clean up the damage.
My remaining patrons Weasely, Rocko, and d'Rocko were still on board and agreed to pay all contractors and suppliers directly so that their projects could keep going while we determined their final account balances. Every- one assured me that they would pay what was owed.
There was ultimately no legal way for any patron to avoid their part of the total $500,000+ hole created by the
116 Rick explosion. And the 90-day window of time allowed by law to file liens continued to tick away. I would have to act soon.
Rollie's grenade did not buy near enough time to finish construction and obtain an occupancy permit and get Fowler Interior's furniture moved in for Barb and the kid's first summer. The hurried exterior was beginning to look like a stuccoed asylum. (It still does today.)
Rick and Rollie had no idea that so much money was owed by so many other patrons. In other words, not only was Rollie's slander a horrific lie, but the exact opposite was now true. Weasely and Tripinfal forgot to mention this huge snag.
The hit was supposed to be just temporary, explosive force to get beyond the delay of contracts and lien laws. Perhaps it was something Rollie thought he could walk back later and blame his slander on bad information.
But things had snowballed out of Rollie's control and had caused irreparable damage to a lot of good people. It was far too late to walk anything back.
Slander law anticipates the explosive nature of such business scams. Common law malice and damages are assumed and don't need to be proven.
117 Rick
Rick needed to buy Rollie more time and perhaps some legal cover. The purse strings were about to open very wide.
Tripinfal recommended Nerts.
118 Chapter 14
Nerts
A small, red, rusty pickup appeared out of nowhere in my rear view mirror, practically touching my back bumper. Trace hadn't noticed until it pulled up beside us. I swerved and checked my mirrors.
“What was that!”
It disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. “That truck tried to run us off the road!”
It was probably not a good idea to be on Highway 183 headed to The Reserve in late March in an SUV so easily recognized. We were going because Luke, my site manager at the Weasely project, wanted to talk.
Who could blame us for being on edge? Just when I
119 Nerts thought my efforts were beginning to contain some of Rollie's damage, there came a much more devastating punch that struck an almost knockout blow.
My sources were telling me that the arrest threats and rumors had returned with a vengeance at the VanGrab site and that it was also rumored that I was no longer permitted to be in The Reserve. This new attack seemed to be more sophisticated and better coordinated than anything Rollie could have come up with.
I proved one rumor false with a swipe of my card as the back gate opened and we drove in. I was a property owner, after all.
Luke site-managed the Weasely, Rocko, and d'Rocko projects and had become a vital source of information. We met him along a deserted street, away from other houses. Many of The Reserve's steep, hilly roads had no houses at all.
Luke was telling contractors a very different version of events than Bronson was and it bothered Bronson. He had called Luke the day before and demanded to know “why are you lying about Scott?”
By the end of March, Bronson was in a tough spot. None of Rollie's assurances were panning out and he had just burned a very unique bridge of opportunity he had earned working for me for years. You will better
120 Nerts understand later that it was a bridge Bronson really didn't want to burn.
Bronson was looking toward his future without Kunst- werke and began forming his own building company named Ridgeline Construction with a contractor named Kevin. Kevin had a builder's license. If things continued to snowball, there would be a void to fill where Kunst- werke once was.
But some contractors were beginning to turn on Bronson for his perceived roll in the explosion. Rollie needed help.
Trace took notes as we discussed Bronson's call and the latest rumors from the VanGrab site with Luke. My top priority was collecting the past due $500,000. Eugene Weasely owed more than $100,000 and Luke had heard nothing new on that front.
But Luke did say, almost as an afterthought, that Eugene seemed to know a lot about the VanGrabs and had referred to them as “cold and greedy.”
I laughed, then shook my head in disgust.
Of course, Weasely was right.
I have good reason to use much harsher terms to de- scribe the VanGrabs. But when a plaintiff’s injury lawyer, of all people, opines that someone is cold and greedy, I take
121 Nerts notice. The phrase stuck with me, and I made sure to confirm it (like so many other things) two years later at Luke’s deposition.
How Weasely knew so much about the VanGrabs and their intentions would be a short mystery. I was getting close to the source of the new explosion.
A few days later one of my contractors sent me a copy of a “legal threat” letter that he had received from an attorney addressed to my contractors and suppliers. Rollie got his much needed help. Rick had hired Weasely's partner Dandy Nerts.
Nerts Wrote
“TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
Please be advised that our firm has been engaged to represent Mr. and Mrs. [VanGrab] in connection with matters pertaining to the construction of the [VanGrab] residence and, particularly in regards to matters related to the construction of the [VanGrab] residence by Scott Kunst and his company, Kunstwerke.
Unfortunately, despite the [VanGrabs'] good faith payment of its contract sum to Mr. Kunst and his company, a number of subcontractors and suppliers have not been paid by Mr. Kunst and his company.
122 Nerts
We are currently in the process of attempting to determine how such funds were expended. However, it has come to our attention that many unpaid subcontractors and suppliers have indicated that they may place liens against the [VanGrab] property despite the fact that the [VanGrabs] contract with Kunst has been paid in full. In this regard, if you have any questions concerning the status of the payment to Kunst, I would urge you to contact [Rollie], who can provide you with complete documentation to establish that Kunst's contract has been paid in full.
While we are indeed sympathetic to the plight of subcontractors and suppliers who may have been stiffed by Scott Kunst, South Carolina law makes clear that no lien rights exist where the contract has been fully paid. S.C. Code Ann. 29-5-40 states in pertinent part:
...but in no event shall the aggregate amount of liens set up hereby exceed the amount due by the owner on the contract price of the improvement made.
Two cases from the S.C. Court make clear that this limits the owner's liability to the amount due the general contractor (at the time he receives the lien)...
In this case since there is no amount due Kunst, there is no liability for the [VanGrabs].
I would also hasten to point out that if any
123 Nerts subcontractor or supplier feels he can go ahead and simply file a lien to “leverage” the [VanGrabs] into making some sort of payment because there is no downside to doing so, the mechanic's lien statute would also entitle the [VanGrabs] to recover their attorneys' fees and costs for successfully removing an improper lien. See S.C. Code Ann. 29-5-20.
If you have any questions concerning this matter, please do not hesitate to contact [Nerts].
cc: Mr. and Mrs. Richard [VanGrab]”
Most of the contractors and suppliers who received this letter already knew that Rick had not paid all of his contractual reimbursements and that Rollie had no “documentation to establish that Kunst's contract has been paid in full.” Rollie would later testify that he didn't even look at the last three Kunstwerke weekly billings, nor did he make any attempt to reconcile the VanGrab account. Rick would later testify that he did not pay all of his Kunstwerke billing statements.
Nert's claim that I had “stiffed” contractors was an outrageous lie. He had written this letter blindly for his firm's new deep-pocket client, based solely on assurances from Rick and Rollie.
The scams that do the most damage in the real business world are not very sexy, especially if lawyers are involved.
124 Nerts
There are no chase scenes, disguises, or loud bangs to pique your interest, except maybe a swerving small, red, rusty pickup.
The fact that I now had physical evidence that the VanGrabs were willing to use an attorney to fraudulently avoid the lien process was overshadowed by how casually they were willing to do it, with no apparent fear of con- sequence. That is what gave the letter its intended bite.
Nerts' letter made the truth irrelevant, again, and threatened enough “downside” to keep the contractors and suppliers from filing their own liens. I was on my own.
The dollar amount of liens that might have come from unpaid contractors would have been pocket change to the VanGrabs. They could have easily afforded to take care of these small family-owned businesses that they alleged were “stiffed.”
Getting Nerts involved cost the VanGrabs far more than doing the right thing. But this was all about expediency and creating a legal fall-back position – more cold than greedy. When you are sitting on a pile of inherited wealth, you've got to be tough, cut-throat, and cold – even if your goon might have really screwed up. Plaintiff's lawyers are waiting to pounce on that pile of wealth. Right?
I wish I could tell you that this letter was the most unethical and vile thing that Nerts would do on behalf of
125 Nerts the VanGrabs in the nine years that follow, but it was just the beginning. With everything that follows, I almost forgot, until writing this, how underhanded and dirty this opening scene was.
Bottom of the Lake
Nerts talked to Bronson to reassure him of the trouble that I was supposedly in. Nerts warned Bronson that he was “going after jail time” for me.
Bronson continued on with his Ridgeline plans and did not keep quiet about the latest he had heard from a lawyer. His crew had a right to know. They had families, too.
Kunstwerke had grown significantly in recent years, and there were a dozen or more contractors and suppliers who did not know me all that well. Some were told that I had pocketed dollars that were earmarked for them. This caused a lot of anger, and some contractors became even more angry when a new false rumor swirled that I had filed for bankruptcy.
One brick layer that I didn't know that well said he wanted to “break my legs.” Someone else said “do not be surprised if Scott is found at the bottom of the lake.”
This is the environment into which we drove through the back gate of The Reserve to meet Luke.
126 Nerts
Meanwhile, on the bluff in Six Mile, Tripinfal warned Bronson that if I filed a single lien on any property he would contact the “proper authorities.” I needed to act to recover the money, but I didn't know what that could trig- ger in retaliation. Tripinfal was an “officer of the court,” after all. What connections did he have? I had to take his threat seriously at the time.
I, too, had lost my lien option.
Trace and I met with an attorney in Greenville to find out what Nerts could possibly do to me before I had a chance to respond in a way to protect myself and expose the scam.
One of my biggest concerns was the media. Sources told me that Rollie's embezzlement slander had grown to a million dollars and the VanGrabs had done nothing to quell it. How much attention would a million dollar heist get where you live? I was convinced that when the dust settled, the other side was going to be in tremendous trouble. What until then?
For most of March, Trace and I were holed up in my Greenville studio while the kitchen counter began to pile up with legal letters, notices, and threats. I expected the door to come crashing down at any time.
I was really down, Trace was much stronger. It is impossible to lose so much so quickly without feeling
127 Nerts down and being in shock. March was supposed to be our wedding month.
Only a few who read this will fully grasp that much of my grief had nothing to do with the financial devastation, even as horrific as it was. When you create and nurture something with the passion it takes to succeed artistically at this level for this long, you just can’t bear to see it lost – not like this.
The Practice
I found on Youtube “James Spader's big speech” from the final season of The Practice. In this episode, Spader's character represents himself at trial and attempts to explain his own legal profession to a jury.
Each line rang truer than the writers of this episode could possibly know:
“This business is not an ethical arena, our legal system is adversarial by nature.
Where it is often the very function of a lawyer's job to prevent the truth from ever coming out. We get paid to suppress, and squash, and conceal evidence.
Remember, this is the system that freed OJ but also convicted Reuben Hurricane Carter.
128 Nerts
Every first year law student is taught: don't ever, ever equate legal ethics with morality. They are almost always mutually exclusive. It's an ugly world where under- handedness is often celebrated.”
A legal advocate for a defamer is just as loathsome as his client if he intentionally avoids knowable truth and repeats his client's lie. Honest men want honest advocates to assist them honestly, and they pay close attention to make sure that happens. There is no “legal” substitute for individual merit.
Rick gave Nerts the same carte blanche he had given Rollie and then kept a safe distance.
I attempted to ask Rick about the specifics of Nerts' letter years later under oath and was met with a firestorm of objections from his attorneys, the loudest of whom was Nerts who objected: “you can't ask him questions about a letter I wrote.”
It is an “ugly (legal) world where under-handedness is often celebrated.” The aisle that separates is very wide indeed.
129
Chapter 15
Barb
Dateline NBC
NBC Announcer: “They are true believers in a golden promise.”
Idiot in tux screaming into microphone: “This is the best opportunity that exists - in the world – period!”
NBC Announcer: “A dream of wealth. They buy into it with all their hearts. But a year long Dateline investigation found a disturbing reality. Behind the dream. What will our hidden cameras reveal.”
“This may look like an old-fashioned revival meeting, packed with the faithful. But this crowd is worshiping the
130 Barb almighty dollar. Tonight, the inside story of the business behind these elaborate events which attract hundreds of thousands of people every year with the promise of easy money selling products like vitamins, cosmetics, and home appliances. Dateline’s year-long investigation found a whole trail of false promises and broken dreams. Here is Chris Hansen with a Dateline hidden camera investi- gation:”
Video of someone on a bus from New Jersey to Greenville: “Lord we ask you for a spirit of openness so that we might go down to Greenville, South Carolina and Lord that we might be changed, in Jesus’ mighty name” (Quixtar “Spring Leadership Conference”).
And so goes the first minute of a Dateline NBC exposé that you can search on YouTube. In June 2006, before my design studio began to look more like a law office, I found this video.
I would normally have far better things to do with my time than watch Chris Hansen expose a scam that most viewers already knew was a scam. Even more, my Libertarian mindset couldn't care less what an arena of consenting adults do to themselves or each other.
There was little left to learn about Rollie or the trial lawyers involved. I understood Weasely and Tripinfal too well. The fact that they took advantage of the VanGrab
131 Barb explosion never really surprised me, it was almost ex- pected.
But how could I have been so fooled by the VanGrabs who turned out to be nothing like the people I thought they were when we first met in 2004?
Rick and Barb told me that they ran a private resort island named Peter's Island. They never mentioned Amway. (Amway people never mention Amway when you first meet them.)
How could I have known that the greatest antagonist I would ever encounter in business, or in life for that matter, would be a conservative, Republican, “pro-business,” home schooling mother of six, and trustee of the Heritage Foundation? I was raised to give such credentials broad deference.
Every inch of my climb out of this rabbit's hole was going to be a David versus Goliath cage match. I had to be smarter and I could not afford to be blindsided again.
In the real business world where producers produce and makers make, ideology from the left or right is meaning- less. Harsh reality has a way of making morality very simple: the truth is the good and the false is the evil, and there is no in-between.
132 Barb
“The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pro- nounce upon your life.” - Francisco's money speech from Atlas Shrugged.
My verdict could not be more different than the VanGrabs'. And that is the only verdict that should have mattered in 2004 when I accepted them as patrons. I could have done this same research then, I should have known better.
Merchants of Deception
I watched on YouTube emoting speakers on the stage of the Greenville arena induce unison, college football-like chants from the crowd: “Oooooo...AH! Freedom!”
I imagined how cool it would be if the chants were interrupted by fictional Francisco d'Anconia walking out and crashing the stage with his “money speech.”
”Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards?”
In a good fiction novel, half the crowd would slowly walk out in quiet embarrassment and start real businesses.
133 Barb
Instead, the crowd chants their anthem: “flush that stinkin job!” Sounds a little bit like putting a hole in the washtub.
If only someone would tell this arena of gullible entre- preneurial wannabes that the rest of the world would prefer they be merchants of value - exchanging value for value - and not deception.
Chris Hansen refers to a book by a former Amway distributor Eric Sheileber entitled Merchants of Deception. I Googled it and read it.
Once the crowd flushes their “stinkin jobs,” a top level guy named Bill Brit gets up and declares: “I got into this business for 5 reasons. Good reasons. The first reason was money. The second reason I got in was for money. In fact that is all five of my reasons.” (crowd cheers.)
When you focus five times on the ends before the means, you are going to get yourself into trouble. The end never justifies the means in any human interaction. This Dateline investigation focused mainly on Brit's chunk of the pyramid.
One could bet that the NBC legal department did their due diligence before it aired. I was doing mine.
For my purposes, this brief, prime time network TV exposé did not go deep enough. The real significance of
134 Barb the exposé was that it didn't shock or surprise anyone. Amway has been around a long time.
A few Google searches found a lot of news stories about the FTC, Washington lobbyists, and the involvement of Republican politicians. The most recent articles were related to the efforts of other countries to ban Amway. Still, none of my research was all that surprising or interesting.
I was not on a crusade against Amway. I did not care enough about it to be. In my arena, these schemes are embarrassingly silly.
My research was still not deep enough.
The Blakey Report
And then I hit the jackpot. I was able to Google a copy of an expert witness report by a professor named Robert Blakey who was retained by Procter & Gamble when it sued Amway in 1998. Amway has been trying to keep this report private for years.
The report is lengthy, but I found a good summary by an investigative journalist named Evelyn Pringle entitled.: “Organized Crime Expert: Amway Just Like Mafia.”
She describes the trouble that Amway had when the internet came along and “details about the company’s
135 Barb pyramid schemes began appearing online.”
I quickly put aside any notion that Barb would ever care about what Rick, Rollie, Nerts, or any other stooge did on her behalf. I was chump change.
Besides, in her business she can't care. She can't open that door. Amway lawyers would definitely advise against that.
I have since met the legal branch. They are the only ones from the other side of the aisle still reading as far as page 136. Good day gentlemen.
Heritage Foundation
Limbaugh bragged on the radio some time back in 2005 during my hour-long commute to The Reserve about an achievement award he had just received from the Heritage Foundation. He played a sound clip and noted that the woman giving him the award was “Barb Van Andel-Gaby” (VanGrab). I later exchanged emails with her about it.
If you scroll down the list of trustees at Heritage.org, past names like Steve Forbes (whom I voted for in 1996), you will find a self-described homeschooling mother of six and member of the Perimeter Church of Atlanta.
Classical liberals like me have mixed feelings about conservative think tanks. There may be some good John
136 Barb
Galt-like thinking in the Heritage tank, but not enough. And it doesn't help their credibility to be in bed with Amway.
I believe in individual self-ownership and natural law and liberty. Real progress depends on objective merit, and neither government nor a free market mixes well with ideology, from the left or right. My vote is for free minds and free markets.
Dagny
I found blogger after blogger defending Amway after the Dateline exposé arguing that the Amway founders didn't know what was going on down the pyramid. But the only verdict that matters is what they should have known.
The thing that made Dagny Taggart the greatest protagonist and Randian hero of Atlas Shrugged was that she took charge and accepted responsibility when no one else would. As luck would have it, my greatest antagonist was the polar opposite.
I needed to cover all my bases and expose willful ignorance.
“Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to
137 Barb
correct it; ... But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. - Galt's Speech
I was not a disgruntled “down market” Amway dis- tributor suing someone up the pyramid. I was not the political left attacking her father's business. It was her house. It was her signature on the contract. This was her personal contractual matter with me. Rollie was provided for her benefit. She was the first and primary causal factor of this scam – the original “but for.” She is personally responsible for the explosion and all that would come after.
I would have preferred Dagny - a fictional character created by an atheist - to take control and resolve by reason. When you run an honest railroad, such is the nature of things.
I made certain from the start to place Barb on notice by publishing a steady flow of information that I knew would eventually find its way to her. I collected proof that it had.
There was nothing left under anyone's hat. Like Rick, Barb has an MBA, too. Any ignorance would be willful and intentional.
I don't think Barb ever expected to sit across a table from me eight years after the fact with a court reporter typing.
138 Barb
She had never been deposed before. Lawyers were sup- posed to protect her from that.
And they almost did. In 2009, I obtained a commission from a South Carolina judge asking for a Georgia subpoena. It was lawfully served, but Nerts signaled that he would fight enforcement.
On the eve of Rollie's trial five years later, Nerts sought a protective order from a South Carolina circuit court judge arguing that Barb had no information and should not be forced to testify. I didn't expect anyone on the other side of the aisle to understand nor care how morally damning that admission was, if it were true. (Why Rollie would be alone at trial is another story altogether.)
Nerts also argued that I only intended to harass her.
A judge disagreed and issued me a new commission to get a new subpoena from Georgia. Barb will be a no-show at trial and Trace will read aloud Barb's recorded testimony to the jury.
The aisle that separates is very wide, indeed.
...
For wherever this story may go from here, I can't promise you many shocking twists and turns. Nonfiction characters can be too predictable, and I fear that I may have
139 Barb introduced this story's characters too well.
But how did it happen that this woman who had so much handed to her in life would become the main antagonist in a story like this? She could have easily afforded to quickly right the wrong and distance herself from it. Instead, she will dig in and pile on needless harm for as long as she can get away with it.
My road ahead will be much narrower than hers. Self- worth limits options in a crisis. No battle is ever selfless and I will battle selfishly at great personal cost.
Because these battles aren't fought to declare a victor, they are fought to protect the verdict already placed on our lives. They occur by necessity to sharpen the lines that get blurred, to clear the aisles of clutter, to force sides and protect merit.
140 Book II
The Dandy Nerts and Rollie Show
141 Introduction
Evil is no accident; it happens by choice and damned be those who choose it. Life is hard enough without needless harm.
Civility is nothing more than a preponderance of good for a moment in time, and there is always but a disquiet- ingly narrow aisle separating civility from senseless brutality. The aisle is almost always breached when we least expect it. And don't count on anyone's notion of morality to right the breach, either.
Nature's primordial good and evil is not so subjective or complicated: The truth is the good and the false is the evil, and there is no in-between.
When the clerk of court date-stamped December 19, 2006 on the cover of my legal complaint, no one could have imagined that it would be almost a decade before a jury would ever see it. I did not know I was walking headlong into the introduction of a new story altogether.
142 Introduction
To be sure, this was more than just a nine-year diversion from civility and the law. Not even those who witnessed what happened from the innermost circle of its evil can explain why so much monied might was expended avoiding twelve random strangers, the only ones with the power to right this wrong. That is, I should say, the only ones other than Barb VanGrab.
There have been few cases in South Carolina that have litigated as long as the case that eventually became known as Kunst v. Loree (Rollie). Book II, The Dandy Nerts and Rollie Show, is the story of this case and the endless chicanery that postponed the trial to avenge the explosion.
I did not know I was walking headlong into a 21st century, must-read, non-fiction, Bleak House. I dare say Dickens would envy my real life cast of characters and witness transcripts.
There is, however, a key difference between Jarndyce and Jarndyce and Kunst v. Loree. Dickens' main antagonist was the old, inept English Chauncery Court system - I do not view the present day American civil court system so negatively. My chief antagonist is a living person upon whom I do not hesitate to place ultimate blame.
Any process intended for honest people to seek honest resolution and right genuine wrongs can be abused or corrupted by those individuals who choose to do so, but
143 Introduction only for a time.
Only those individuals across the aisle, whom you've met in the chapters before this, could have converged into such a malignant blight that devoured so much good for so long.
The fact that this story is unprecedented, and the fact that civil process was able to eventually overcome the VanGrabs' moneyed hubris, speaks well for the civil courts in South Carolina. What's more, the court system will ultimately use Rollie's case as precedent to strengthen existing law.
Today, Kunst v. Loree is cited in legal briefs and courtroom arguments as a controlling legal authority in South Carolina. A litigator may find these chapters to be an informative and thorough study of a case that has become important legal precedent.
In Book II, the principal characters are the same as those introduced in Book I, but you won't hear a peep from Rick or Barb VanGrab until the very end. This will be mostly Dandy Nerts's and Rollie's show.
144
Chapter 16
Jarndyce v. Jarndyce
“I have felt the cold here. I have felt something sharper than cold”20 in a perverted world that leeches from the productive; where success is measured in waste of precious, productive life. Time is the deadliest weapon on this battlefield better left to insurance company litigators and contingency fee hustlers. This is no place for a pro se litigant with newly emptied pockets and a deep-seated aversion to any kind of conflict. I had better things to do.
Nothing happens in a civil court unless it can be paid for by someone along the way. The legal profession has grown around and adapted to this cold, hard, but necessary, reality.
20 Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Chapter 5 - A Morning Adventure. Bradbury and Evans, 1853. ISBN-10: 1613826303
145 Jarndyce v. Jarndyce
There is no free lunch in any human endeavor.
I have no grievance with the legal venue where the battle takes place. The Thirteenth Circuit Court of South Carolina is comprised of Greenville County and its less populated neighbor to the west, Pickens County.
Together these counties climb north up and over the front face of the Blue Ridge Mountains until South Carolina becomes North Carolina. Below in the foothills, the eastern fingers of Lake Keowee form the western edge of Pickens County.
Pickens, SC can best be described as a nonfiction Mayberry stuck right in the middle of the booming 85 corridor between Atlanta and Charlotte. Native Southern- ers who've been here for generations wouldn't consider it all that unusual that I could build a business so dependent on a trusting handshake in their community, and succeed for so many years.
In-house and close
The scariest thing about April 2006 was that things seemed to have spiraled out of everyone's control, and only the VanGrabs could afford not to care. Weasely and his cross-town colleague Tripinfal had to care a little, but they both had the advantage and resources of their own law firms to leverage the legal side of things. Neither man
146 Jarndyce v. Jarndyce hesitated to use his firm's letterhead in this very personal battle.
And don't think for a minute that it was a pang of conscience or a moment of moral clarity that prompted Weasely to tell Luke that the VanGrabs were cold and greedy. Weasely needed to feign some distance from the VanGrabs and from what his partner Nerts was busy doing on their behalf. Weasely had a house to finish and a mortgage to close and needed Luke's help.
I learned very quickly that nothing would happen in this battle that would not benefit, or at least be neutral to, the interests of Weasely and Tripinfal. Nerts and Weasely will keep all legal matters related to me and the VanGrabs, and anyone else that got dragged across the aisle from me, in- house and close.
I can't tell you if Rick, Barb, or Rollie are bright enough to avoid being taken advantage of by attorneys conflicted by their own personal interests, because that could have only been tested if they were following closely. They weren't.
Rick? We won't hear again from Rick until December 2014. The gaping void left by Rick VanGrab's cowardice will be filled by Nerts for eight years, for a fee.
Barb? Willful ignorance and evasion will buy her
147 Jarndyce v. Jarndyce exactly two hours and forty minutes more time than Rick.
Rollie? He, too, will disappear from these pages, but only for a year. Nerts will need him for a very important 3- hour cameo role on March 13, 2007, that you won't want to miss (in 47 pages).
Among the many documents that piled up on the counter of my studio in Greenville in March 2006 was a letter from Nerts addressed to me. It was a typical legal representation letter stating that he was now repre-senting the VanGrabs, and that all communication to them must go through him. And, as is typical of such letters, it demanded the preservation of certain records in a tone meant more as a threat than actually wanting the records.
Time would prove that he really didn't want the records.
Something had to give
As late as late April 2006, two months after the ex- plosion, six sculptures that I imagined and crafted into models were still rising out of the orange dirt at various stages of completion along the fingered shores of Lake Keowee.
Bronson was busy managing former patrons Tripinfal and VanGrab. Luke was busy managing remaining patrons Rocko, d'Rocko, and Weasely. And, of course, there was
148 Jarndyce v. Jarndyce my own Lady of the Lake project.
As late as late April, I still fully expected Kunstwerke to be reimbursed soon for all of its patron balances. Bankers, suppliers, and contractors who depended on the terms of these contracts would force a resolution – there were just too many parties involved. There was no legal way for any patron, past or present, to walk away from their con- struction debt.
Any resolution would also refute Rick's “missing money” ruse or Rollie's slander or Nerts's letter.
But then it happened: the Weasely and Rocko per- manent mortgages closed in April without builder affidavits and without disclosing or paying their construction debt, and with Susan Weasely as closing attorney.
My only option now was some kind of civil collection effort, and Tripinfal and his colleagues across town on Pettigru Street were prepared to make that as difficult as possible for as long as possible. Neither was about to admit the truth about who stiffed whom and why. Not this early and never voluntarily.
The VanGrabs, on the other hand, left the fallout and legal mess for everyone else to deal with later, long after their first summer visit to the new big curvy lake house was over.
149 Jarndyce v. Jarndyce
Indeed, there would be eight more four-week long, VanGrab summer visits before twelve random strangers from Pickens County would hear about what happened.
Across the aisle in the VanGrab arena, that's considered a victory.
150 Chapter 17
Firewall
$100,000,000
The Music Man tried to sell steam engines until, as he confessed, “somebody actually invented one.”21
And he admitted that he really screwed up when asked why he stayed in River City so long. “For the first time in my life, I got my foot caught in the door.”
He had defenders: It's not a scam if actual band uniforms show up in the end.
Such is life across the aisle – always on the run, always buying time – gaming a system and cheating merit. One can always find a lawyer willing to work the system and
21 The Music Man by Meredith Willson. Quote by "Professor" Harold Hill played by Robert Preston in 1962 Warner Brothers' film version.
151 Firewall buy some time, but guys like Harold Hill didn't have that kind of money.
It was easier in the good old days before you could Google a music man's credentials, before Yelp reviews of medicine shows, before Chris Hansen, or before pages like these could be published in real time with words so real that the book itself becomes part of its own story. So much so, an earlier version of these first 17 chapters will sit on a jury table on May 28, 2015, labeled Exhibit 22, patiently waiting for its own conclusion.
You are reading a nonfiction book unlike any before it. We live in amazing times.
In 2007, a few years after the Dateline NBC exposé, Barb's brother and Amway chairman, Steve, settled a lawsuit filed by allegedly defrauded Amway/Quixtar distributors for $100,000,000 “economic value.”22 It was a pragmatic, deductible cost of doing business.
Small-hitters like Nerts, Weasely, or Tripinfal would have salivated uncontrollably for just a small bite of the $20 million cut shared by heavier hitting plaintiff's lawyers.
As part of the settlement the plaintiffs agreed to no longer refer to Amway as a “pyramid scheme” because, as
22 MLive.com. "Amway agrees to pay $56 million, settle case alleging it operates a 'pyramid scheme.'" November 3, 2010
152 Firewall everyone should know, the FTC ruled in 1979 that Amway was not a pyramid scheme as long as an actual product shows up in the end.
Google links to an old Michigan newspaper recollection of how dinner time at the elder VanGrab's house was supposedly like an “MBA class” in which Barb's father taught the youngsters “business.”
It was a good thing he home-schooled, too. These kids would inherit the business one day and MBA schools just don't teach willful ignorance as a means to an end.
So I didn't expect Steve VanGrab to care, or more wisely want to know, what his employee and late father's personal assistant did on behalf of his baby sister in South Carolina. I also expected nothing from the other employer/siblings Dave and Nan.
It has taken me years to fully grasp why the other side of the aisle is far more concerned with buying time than being exposed. The former is a pragmatic cost of doing their business and the latter is just an emotional flash point illuminating the obvious. Objective merit is always there, always exposing the obvious to those who choose to see it.
Grief
No one harmed by the explosion had any interest in
153 Firewall making this a legal matter, least of all me, Kunstwerke, contractors, suppliers, bankers, etc. There was no need for litigation or wasted court costs. An independent auditor's report and the mere threat of litigating the actual contracts would have filled the $500,000 hole rather quickly, if it came to that.
I received plenty of well-intentioned, free legal advice, too. “But you have a huge case against Rollie and the VanGrabs, and maybe Nerts, for slander! Not to mention a handful of other civil torts, or worse!”
I was not thinking that way. I was still the same guy who just wanted the hot dog stand fixed as soon as possible so that I could do what I do. Life is too short. I was still in cleanup mode and perhaps a bit naive that the looted money would be returned to the box.
Those two trips to visit the d'Rockos in Atlanta did some good. Steve d'Rocko, my biggest debtor, was “working out the numbers” and Julie had pledged to defend and “spread the word.” And, according to Luke, he and Weasely were going through the Weasely invoices one by one.
A patron and retired Washington lawyer whose house in The Reserve had finished just before the VanGrab explos- ion sent me an email not long after:
Subj: My House
154 Firewall
“Scott, I don't know how you got yourself into the current jam and am sorry that you didn't talk to me early on as I used to help people avoid situations like yours. I am not writing about that, however, with all the grief you now face, I just wanted you to know that Tina and I love the house. It looks spectacular and we love living here. We have been in the Coco [Rocko] house and it is great also. Frankly, your houses have the best look on the lake. I know you will have more grief before you are done, but I wanted you to know this and hope you get back to designing. Gene, Eugene M. Propper”
But beyond all this, in a worst-case scenario - even if none of the money was returned to the money box - I still had a firewall.
Lady of the Lake
“Till envious ivy did around thee cling” 23
The main club facilities of The Reserve can be found along the shore of a prominent Keowee “finger.” At the very end of this channel is a public boat dock. Jutting out into the center of it all is one lot - a virtual island - with a 360 degree view. I really wanted this land long before it was available for sale.
23 From: The Lady of the Lake, a narrative poem by Sir Walter Scott, Canto 1. first published in 1810
155 Firewall
It was one of those future building sites that I considered partnering in with the Weasely's on a speculative project in late 2004 as we three toured prospective sites by boat. I lucked-out when another possible future investor won a lottery to choose it first. It was the greatest lot ever sold in the Reserve and I now owned half of it.
I spent a few days in the English country-side touring old manor houses from Scotland to Sussex. I focused mainly on exterior spaces, sketching and absorbing inspiration. The Reserve requires historical and European influences with steep roof pitches. I felt enormous pressure to hit a home run on this lot.
I imagined a rambling house that snaked along the ground in an equal mixture of indoor and outdoor living spaces with banks of doors flowing between. It was my first flat building site and I decided that the entire structure would be nestled low into the landscape on a slab.
156 Firewall
All sides would be equally visible from the water, but I really wanted it to be barely noticed at all.
I found an old mill in the process of being torn down outside of Pickens and bought the recovered brick. It was red and porous and had already aged a hundred years. I planned to white-wash the brick once laid in a white/beige tone and allow the old red to bleed through with age. I imagined an old growth, old garden feel and for ivy to gradually climb and cover much of every exterior wall. Wood roof shingles would gray and age quickly.
This already old house – soon to be known for its three gables and prominent lighthouse of a tower - would mostly disappear one day into a bed of green on its own little island.
157 Firewall
I had finally taken that next step to a level unimaginable four years earlier when the excavators first bit the ground on Dr. Tom's peninsula. My 17th project was much more than just a number. I gave it a project name: Lady of the Lake, for the poem by Sir Walter Scott. It was named thus for one line that foretold it's future: “til envious ivy did around thee cling.”
At the time of the VanGrab explosion, Lady of the Lake was under roof, bricked, and the windows and doors had been installed. Insulation and mechanical installations were underway. My artistic stone mason moved his crew across the channel from the Weasely project and was very busy, mostly outside in the gardens.
I was in regular contact with a small group of Reserve “tourists” who had become potential buyers. Lady of the Lake was the talk of The Reserve and I was confident that it would sell later in 2006 when completed.
An island of shoreline and acreage required that my
158 Firewall typical 1/8” scale model be over four feet long – my biggest model to date. Throughout construction, my model sat prominently on its own table in The Reserve sales office. I owned and controlled my own firewall: doing my own thing on my own land once again.
Investor
I was introduced to an investor named Thomas from Florida by a Reserve salesman who set up our initial meeting. Thomas knew my reputation better than he knew me. To this day, I have only met him four times, that is, if you count his deposition in 2007.
I had been a complete stranger to him weeks before we inked an agreement under which he assumed more risk and required even more trust in me than my nine patrons had.
He was not the only potential investor at the time who wanted to help me do my own thing, but I knew he would be the most hands-off. Profit on this and possible future projects would be split 50/50. His obligation was to use his financial strength to help secure financing and pay the bills. He knew little else and had little control.
Susan Weasely handled our LLC agreement and pro- perty closings. I signed all of the papers in her office before she sent a package to Florida for his signature.
159 Firewall
With six months to go to completion, things were going well and we placed a second project in the pipeline – I was accepting no more patrons and had to keep work lined up for my crew. I partnered again with him on a site in a new Cliff's Blue Ridge mountain community. At the time of the VanGrab explosion, I had already imagined and designed a house for this second project and had crafted a model that was on display in a Cliff's sales office. We were about to break ground.
The Lady of the Lake Disaster, Part I
I learned much too late that my investor was on Rollie's list of 240. It sickens me tonight to think back on how little I knew at the time and just how much I would learn the following year once I started serving subpoenas on witness- es.
Much of the timeline came from a large stack of email communications that I subpoenaed from Carolina First Bank between Susan Weasely, Thomas, and a loan officer named Michelle.
Michelle had been recommended by Susan Weasely and had provided construction financing for our partnership. Michelle was also involved with the Weasely's and their own project.
After that strange meeting with Rollie on February 16th,
160 Firewall
I wrote long and detailed emails and saved the replies, even in matters related to my firewall, though I was convinced at the time that I had kept it safe from the VanGrabs.
I learned much too late that Rollie had spoken with Thomas in early March and that he had made a special trip to South Carolina to meet both Rollie and Bronson. I dis- covered all of this a week later after emailing a regular Kunstwerke billing statement to Thomas. His response was shock that I would even attempt to contact him or anyone else based on what he had heard.
Bronson had held nothing back when Thomas asked to know everything that Rollie and Nerts had told him. Even The Reserve salesman who had introduced us confirmed that there were all kinds of rumors flying around.
Imagine my investor's shock when he heard through the grapevine that Rollie had told some of the other 239 that a big chunk of this million dollars of supposedly stolen money had been spent on Lady of the Lake and that he was sent to investigate it. Of course, Thomas knew it was a lie, but Rollie's slander still enraged him because it essentially implicated him, as well, as my partner.
Thomas was convinced that he was about to be stuck with an unfinished investment that was suddenly less marketable with his partner, designer, and builder under legal attack by some very wealthy and “powerful people,”
161 Firewall as he would later put it.
Thomas should have contacted me first to see what was really going on before acting out of panic, but then would it have mattered? As long as Nerts was winning, the truth was irrelevant. Everyone dependent on me was going to be harmed to some degree, regardless of what happened next. Thomas had to act quickly.
Meanwhile, in a little red brick house on Augusta Street in Greenville that had been converted into the Law Office of Susan B. Weasely, Susan was acting quickly on a sudden “legal” issue that had supposedly arisen regarding her closing documents and the partnership agreement of Lady of the Lake. I was told nothing about this “issue.”
The worst possible scenario is to have your firewall breached long before you know it. I will piece the puzzle a year too late, but that's for a later chapter.
...
On that late April 2006 evening when Trace and I sat with the d'Rockos around their kitchen table in Atlanta, Julie repeatedly questioned me in a voice that suggested she trusted me more than her source: “Have you been sued? Have the [VanGrabs] sued you?”
It was understandably a big deal to her as it would be to
162 Firewall anyone who had a business interest in what happened to me.
“Of course not.” I was incredulous. What reason would they possibly have to sue me? If anyone had a reason to sue it was me, not them. The fact that I had a genuine reason to sue and perhaps file charges placed me in greater danger – I didn't fully understand this back then.
What did Julie know? She refused to name her source.
163
Chapter 18
Cause of Action
May 3rd, 2006
Don't blame me if this story now begins to read like a Grisham legal drama. Blame the VanGrabs.
Julie d'Rocko's prophetic source, it turns out, was right. Two weeks later, on May 3rd, 2006, the VanGrabs sued first.
I'm guessing that Julie's secret source had seen (or perhaps helped write) the VanGrabs publicly filed civil complaint and had warned her and many others in con- fidence to protect themselves. Because this was no simple complaint. It was a dangerous, childish eruption of a complaint with numerous frivolous civil torts.
164 Cause of Action
Rollie only needed four more months to finish. With a lawsuit - regardless of its merits or how it might be resolved - Rick would buy him a year.
Nerts's did not specify a dollar amount in the VanGrab lawsuit. Was it $0 or $1,000,000 that was supposedly missing (or, God forbid, embezzled!)? Rollie was given a figurative blank check to fill in whatever amount he needed for as long as Nerts could get away with it. The collective imagination of the rumor mill would run wild for a year until Rollie's future witness stand cameo appearance a year later would force his hand.
The lawsuit was as stupid as it was dirty. There were other ways to buy time.
But there oozed a noticeably different stench of urgency from Rick's final eruption: Weasely and Tripinfal's fig- urative finger prints were all over the technical legal jargon. Weasely and Tripinfal also needed this lawsuit to happen.
Six Causes of Action A man with a hurried, perfunctory voice announced on the phone Wednesday morning, May 3rd, that he had some papers for me. I imagined yet another document to pile high on the stack on the kitchen counter as I agreed to meet him on the sidewalk below my studio.
My eyes first focused on “Richard and Barbara Gaby
165 Cause of Action
[VanGrab] v. Kunstwerke and J. Scott Kunst.” I had been served.
I should not have been all that surprised. Julie, in a way, had warned me. Weasely, in a way, had warned Luke.
My first reaction was a deep feeling of betrayal. How could Weasely's firm facilitate something so cold and dirty? Surely there was a South Carolina Bar ethics rule somewhere that prohibited such an obvious conflict of interest. At the time, I was still that naïve.
There were six pages containing six “Causes of Action,” each one reading like a hot-selling tabloid, each one hoping to be more shocking than the next. It was as though Rollie's slander had been transcribed into a legal format, interspersed with the same legalese that Tripinfal had spewed to Bronson and the contractors at his project two months before.
Betrayal turned to anger as I read a cause of action alleging “conversion” and another alleging “breach of fiduciary trust.” Not only were Rick and Barb purporting to the public and a court of law that money had been taken from them, but they also speculated as to how it was spent.
I was too angry to get the irony. If any money had been taken from anyone, it was the other way around, and it was clearly spent on a multi-million dollar, seldom-used, per- sonal luxury resort mansion commissioned by a billionaire
166 Cause of Action heiress. No one knew it better than me. I was stuck with the invoices.
Discretion
Word of mouth from Dr. Tom and the eight patrons that followed had confirmed for years that I could be trusted to look out for and protect their interests. I had been a regular guest in all patron homes and knew their families well. These were personal artist/patron relationships that required a high degree of mutual trust and discretion.
On May 3rd the VanGrabs changed all of that. Civil suits are expensive street fights on very public streets where privacy and discretion are always the first casualties. Every record imaginable, including my entire financial history and every transaction of my nine patrons, would now need to be opened like the pages of this book to refute this frivolous lawsuit.
The public knew little about how special and unique my patron relationships were: like the generous terms of my reimbursement contracts and the large amounts of con- struction debt owed, or how little each patron paid in design and build fees compared to their boxy neighbors. But they will now.
The public did not know just how detailed Kunstwerke's accounting records were or how easy it would be to
167 Cause of Action expose Rick's “missing money” ruse. But they will now.
Only Rick, Trace (who read my emails), and I knew about Rick's “burn rate,” the escalating costs hidden from his wife, and the stack of non-reimbursed VanGrab invoices.
Only Luke and I knew about what Weasely described as his “economic situation” and his own stack of non- reimbursed invoices.
It appears that only Tripinfal knew the trouble that Tripinfal was in. And it will all now become public.
Rollie's slander was just another JVA Enterprises paycheck for him – too cheap for the quick bang it provid- ed. And it had been far too easy for the VanGrabs to withhold reimbursement to Kunstwerke just to give their goon's slander cover for a while.
But now, as naturally and effortlessly as water seeking a new low, the VanGrabs sued me, of all people, as though they were playing a legal game with someone from their side of the aisle.
Yet the lowest low is still almost a year away at Rollie's cameo (20 pages ahead).
Until then, Rick's wife's pocket change bought Rick yet another one of those sharp little twinges of pleasure that
168 Cause of Action men across the merit aisle experience when they think that they have brought a guy, any guy, across the aisle down a peg or two. Answer
For his part, Nerts could have filed a simple contract action to buy time and amend his complaint as discovery warranted. Everyone deserves at least that much discretion. But Rick's predicament couldn't wait.
The summons required an answer within thirty days and I understood enough to know that I could not answer on behalf of a corporation without a lawyer. Trace and I visited attorney after attorney who politely declined to represent me after discovering who I was up against and how cash broke I suddenly was. One or two said they would consider, but insisted on a five-figure retainer – which was another way of politely declining.
One partner of a large, reputable firm in Greenville called Nerts from a phone in the conference room of an officer tower downtown where we met. Nerts bragged on the phone about who his new client was. As we later shook hands to leave, he advised: “The other side will never admit they are wrong. Don't be discouraged and don't give up.” His rejection came a week later in a formal letter.
This was not a normal case and there had never really been any way to protect myself financially from the
169 Cause of Action
VanGrabs the moment I accepted them as a patron. There is no insurance policy that covers billionaire domestic dysfunction and malice.
Much of May 2006 is a blur tonight as I try to recall what you need to know about this story's darkest month. Most of the details written here were retrieved from the dustiest and most dreaded legal boxes stacked in the back of my storage room.
May's lawsuit only added to March's public humiliation. Even if I could find a lawyer who would counter-sue and win, then what? By the time that happened, who would notice? Who would care? The real damage was already done.
Propper was right, there was more grief ahead, and my family was worried. How does one cope with the sudden, undeserved loss of a self-made life? And what replaces the white-hot passion to create and achieve that burned so strong weeks before?
I will go ahead and tell you now that as crazy as this would have sounded back then in the dark month of May, the VanGrabs will soon spend a fortune trying to avoid actually litigating their own lawsuit.
Perhaps I was emboldened by the fact that I had nothing left to lose when I emailed Nerts directly, without a lawyer for Kunstwerke, on June 5th and told him I would hand
170 Cause of Action deliver my response to his lawsuit. I only knew him then as a name on Weasely's letterhead and had never met him or communicated with him before.
I was not sure how to respond. A few years of legal experience would later teach me that I could have scribbled “deny” six times on a napkin and that would have been enough. But in May 2006, it was too personal and all too outrageous that it had even happened.
Like a respected teacher falsely accused of molestation by a malicious student trying to get out of a class assignment, the real nightmare is having your name connected in any way with words that make your hands shake with anger as you read them.
I did not need to prove a negative. That would only give undeserved recognition to their complaint. The sub- poenaed records of all of the parties who had a vested legal interest in the matter would take care of things for me in time. The only question was how long of a legal game the VanGrabs could play until that happened.
I wrote my answer like an objective, rational accountant who had an obligation to account for all 908 invoices and close out all 86 subcontractor and supplier accounts.
I also laid out the professional, rational steps that an honest person would have taken long before blowing up privacy and discretion in an unnecessary civil street fight.
171 Cause of Action
Somewhere in the middle of my document I realized that I was really just writing to Barb. She and I are, after all, the main characters in this story, and she, my antagonist, controlled events for the moment. Rick, Rollie, Nerts, or any other stooge across the aisle on her payroll danced for her. Only she could end the madness.
On June 9th I wanted to believe that Barb was being taken advantage of and didn't fully know what was going on. Was anything still under Rick's hat? Who could she really trust? This lawsuit could backfire on her in a thousand spectacular ways. I was determined to give her the benefit of the doubt.
This, of course, was before my research and before Chris Hansen, in a way, warned me.
But on June 9th, 2006, I was still hoping that Barb would slam on the brakes and find an objective professional that she could trust and say: “look into this.”
I was still that naive.
172 Chapter 19
Default
$10,000
For eleven days nothing happened. There was no package from Nerts containing the documents I requested in my answer, no invitation to meet or open a dialogue. There was no note from Barb stating that she had hired an objective professional to help her sort things out.
Instead, on June 22nd, without notice or warning, Nerts prepared an “Order of Default” and had judge Miller of the 13th Circuit Court of South Carolina sign it. The VanGrabs alleged that my response was six days late and did not con- form to court rules. They wanted their case declared over and won by default without actually litigating the records.
174 Default
I first discovered the order and what Nerts had done a few weeks later. My opinion of Barb VanGrab had offic- ially bottomed out.
Manipulating a procedural judgment against someone without actually litigating evidence is not considered cowardice across the aisle. It's clever gamesmanship. And I knew my antagonist well enough by then to expect that she would only abuse the advantages that a default awarded her.
I quickly sold whatever was sellable and hired an attor- ney to file a motion to have the default order set aside. $10,000 retained a young lawyer named Ryan whose last name I recognized because he happened to be a nephew of a former governor. He teamed up with another young lawyer named Fred from another firm and together they hit the ground running.
South Carolina case law instructs judges to make every effort to allow a case to be tried on its merits. For this reason, they are given wide discretion in matters of default.
I was told that based on my sincere efforts to answer the complaint amid extenuating circumstances, and the fact I had legitimate counterclaims that were far more substantial than the VanGrab's fabricated claims, the default order would be set aside and the case allowed to proceed on its merits. I was told 90% of defendants in my situation are let
175 Default out of default orders like the one judge Miller signed.
I would later witness better odds first hand in the years to come as I sat waiting in dozens of courtrooms. Default hearings appear regularly on civil dockets and I never saw a default enforced if a defendant simply showed up.
Civilian Clothes
Ryan and Fred filed my counterclaims and prepared a nine page memorandum supporting my motion to set aside the default. Simply litigating my breach of contract counterclaim against the VanGrabs would negate all six of their false claims.
It was my first time in a courtroom and I was surprised at how crowded it was for a busy day of hearings. Ryan and Fred stood at the front table on the left side of the room across the aisle from Nerts. Judge Patterson presided.
Both Weasely and Tripinfal were there in the very back row of the courtroom's public seating. Before the judge began, he noticed and acknowledged that both Weasely and Tripinfal had “taken the time” to attend in their “civilian clothes.” We were toast.
The judge started: “Now lets get to why everybody's here.” At the end, before he ruled, he referenced Fred whom he apparently also knew personally and said, “he will probably not talk to me in church on Sunday, but the
176 Default motion is denied.”
Trace and I sat in disbelief, It did not appear that the judge had read the nine page brief that had consumed a big chunk of my retainer. It was my first real taste of what I was up against.
The case was essentially declared over. By law, the whole kitchen sink of six causes of action were “admitted to” by both me and the corporation by default and there could be no counterclaims. It was as bad as it sounds.
But there was still a faint glimmer of hope. Rollie still had his blank check. By law, the claim was $0 until the VanGrabs submitted their supposed dollar damages under oath at a soon-to-be-scheduled default damages hearing. If the VanGrabs were truthful that day, and maybe even got that audit done in the months beforehand, the damages would be $0 and my future much brighter.
I was no longer that naïve.
Clash of Extremes
My opinion of Nerts had also officially bottomed out. I now saw him less as an officer of the court and more as a cartoon villain and scumbag making a living as a B actor in a courtroom.
Fellow officers of the court Tripinfal and Weasely, for
177 Default their roles thus far, bottomed out a little lower than Nerts. Both had an ethical obligation to promptly resolve their personal debt to Kunstwerke rather than to encourage and facilitate the VanGrab explosion and exploit the fallout for personal, unmerited gain.
If Weasely believed the causes of action his firm filed on behalf of the VanGrab's to have any merit, he would have been a fool not to have an auditor take a quick look at his own $3,000,000 investment. Instead, Weasely had sent out his own letters back in February and had told some inquisitive contractors that his money had been “mis- appropriated.” It rhymed with Rollie's broadcast, but with legal tact. It was still a lie. But it bought enough time to get his permanent mortgage closed.
Indeed, this story you are reading would not exist if Weasely's firm had walked away from doing the VanGrab's dirty work and if Eugene Weasely had written me a check in February 2006 when he was required to rather than as defendant Weasely, mid-trial, in a courtroom six years later.
As bad as all of this smells so far, I can assure you that the other side of the aisle didn't and still doesn't smell a thing.
I was thrust by force into their arena. Until now, I could always count on the product of my creative mind and hands in a laissez-faire marketplace to prove merit and force
178 Default honesty. But this “legal” battle was not about a contractual relationship that had gone bad within that marketplace. I would have won that battle in just a month or two.
This was a clash of extremes in a timeless war as old as life itself. And in that war, there has always been two types of people across the aisle: Those that are naturally inclined to cheat merit as a first option - as a livelihood - and those that only cheat merit when they are in trouble or in a conflict.
It seemed only natural that I had never stepped foot in a courtroom before - never needed to and was never forced to. So how did it happen that so much of my future was suddenly out of my control and decided in a crowded and hurried courtroom - with Weasley in the back row wearing loafers - by a judge who knew little about me or the situation?
A is A, regardless of what anyone thinks or hopes it to be. So what do you do when A by force of an order and not merit is ruled B? All words like these that you are reading right now have meaning. After the hearing, Nerts began to announce publicly that I was an “adjudicated embezzler.” It became his favorite phrase. How do you overcome the torment of that faked reality?
The events of this day genuinely shocked me. In the elevator after the hearing, Ryan was visibly troubled as
179 Default well and asked “are you married yet?” We said no. His response was quick and emphatic: “Good, wait.” It was time to protect Trace from whatever the VanGrabs decided to do to financially harm me with the default they had won.
It was all a game and Nerts was winning big.
Gloves Off
It was also nine months since February and Kunstwerke still had not collected a dime from anyone. The Weaselys, Tripinfals, VanGrabs, and Rockos were all enjoying their new lake houses and only the d'Rocko house was still under construction.
That red brick colonial law office on tree-lined Pettigru Street in Greenville would have seemed to you and me to be a strange rabbit hole of faked reality back in February as Nerts sat in one office collecting fees to frame a future “adjudicated embezzler,” while in another office sat his partner Weasley, who continued his contractual relation- ship with this same “embezzler.”
The VanGrab explosion and lawsuit changed everything. Ed Rocko, who praised my character and my work to other patrons by email and phone months before and was the proud owner of one of my finest works, was caught in the middle and had a mortgage that had to close within the month.
180 Default
He stopped responding to my payment requests after his mortgage closed and instructed me by email to contact his “attorney” whom he identified then as Susan Weasely.
By law and by contract, this nightmare scenario should have never been possible. I should have never been placed in this position.
Steve and Julie d'Rocko's project was only months old when Rollie came to town. Julie had assured me at one of those Atlanta kitchen table meetings in the spring that they were “not like those other people (VanGrabs).”
I warned Luke in April that, despite Steve and Julie d'Rocko's regards for me and assurances that they were “working out the numbers,” I feared that things would not end well. The balance owed was too large and Steve had suddenly begun to refute invoices that he clearly owed. I had become easy prey for anyone who wanted to take advantage of my situation.
I scheduled a May meeting in the wooden shell that would one day be the kitchen of their lake house. My hands were tied, all contractors and suppliers had a vested interest in what happened that day and all of the d'Rocko invoices had to be accounted for. Time was up.
Trace took notes as Steve responded to my final pay- ment demand with a contractual termination notice that appeared to be written by an attorney. Steve refused to
181 Default reimburse anything. Nerts had gotten to him.
The last thing Nerts wanted at this moment was for any patron to settle their balance and thereby acknowledge that they owed money. His client Rollie had lied to the world and stated that I had taken money from all of my patrons.
Wednesday Evening, December 6th
Nerts knew better than anyone on that Wednesday afternoon in Patterson's courtroom six months later that, if the default were set aside, it would change the legal landscape dramatically for everyone.
I sat alone at my studio desk Wednesday evening, after Ryan's warning in the elevator, holding a ledger summary of all five unpaid patron accounts and the account of my investor Thomas.
The $539,027 total now screamed at me from the ledger louder than it had for nine months. $10,847,982 of con- struction had been completed the day Rollie came to town in February and $10,308,955 of it had been reimbursed when all payments stopped. But for fraud, and the continued efforts of Nerts, this $539,027 number would have been quickly settled by contract and law nine months earlier.
182 Default
These were third-party invoices that had passed through Kunstwerke at cost as a courtesy and were the sole obligation of the patrons. All three parties involved in each transaction had specific legal rights.
A colder reality seeped in as the evening wore on: the other side of the aisle was perfectly content to allow things to stand as they did on this Wednesday evening if I did nothing. I had a hard time accepting that anyone across the aisle could live with that.
I was supposed to walk away and declare bankruptcy. That is how these scams usually end.
183
Chapter 20
I sued
Thursday Morning, December 7th
That part of the brain that stays awake all night dreaming and sorting through the day before had sorted through Wednesday and jolted me awake with an urgent warning: “You'd better figure out a way to wrestle control of this thing and fast.”
I laid awake thinking that Tripinfal had, in a way, warned me about his arena of trial lawyers. I ranked fourth behind the “man up stairs,” the “man in the black robe,” and collectible legal fee revenue. I was just one of dozens of unfamiliar, interloping faces in the courtroom on Wed- nesday represented by a lawyer or two.
184 I sued
Fred would still exchange pleasantries with Patterson in church on Sunday. And, although Patterson was nearing retirement, Fred would no doubt need to appear in his courtroom many more times on behalf of other clients – defendant or plaintiff, it didn't matter.
Nor did it matter that my retainer was gone. I had tumbled so far down the rabbit hole on Wednesday that a thousand lawyers couldn't pull me out of it now.
My father, of course, suggested it first. “You don't need them, be your own lawyer.” It was more of a paternal vote of confidence and encouragement than a suggested option.
I had no other option.
How hard could it be? Neither Weasely nor Tripinfal impressed me as being particularly intelligent by any stretch. The aisle is wide because men like these can't do what I, and everyone else on my side of the aisle, make look so easy - not the other way around.
I could not legally represent a corporation like Kunst- werke, but I could represent myself as a pro se litigant and sue for slander. I was, after all, the one targeted by a malicious defamer in this scam.
A defamation lawsuit would force a full subpoenaed investigation into the veracity of what Rollie had said to
185 I sued those he tried to influence. If I sued Rollie and the VanGrabs for defamation, I could grab the ball and go on offense and expose what happened.
I could knock the VanGrabs off of their game and negate the only real leverage they have, money. Without money, the VanGrabs are dirt poor – poorer than most who have nothing.
Don't try this at home
I would never recommend to anyone that they represent themselves in a court of law. Ask any judge and he or she will tell you the same and suggest that you find a good litigation firm.
No one wants to stand alone at the table up front with the weight of everything at stake resting squarely on their shoulders. There are countless reasons why most pro se litigants crash and burn, but none of the typical warnings and pitfalls seemed to apply to my crazy situation.
My biggest threat was still the VanGrabs themselves. Their transition from a “business” game to a legal game was seamless – there really was no difference. Their legal game reeked of the same self-loathing spite that had already caused so many ripples of harm.
A civil court system could not possibly protect me or
186 I sued prevent every time the VanGrabs played dirty within that system. And that would be my biggest pro se dis- advantage.
If Barb had no moral problem with what here stooges had done thus far, it only followed that she was capable of allowing far worse once I turned the tables and blew the litigation door wide open.
I fired up my laptop and followed the recommended format for civil complaints in South Carolina and typed “J. Scott Kunst v. David Loree [Rollie] and Richard and Barbara Gaby [VanGrab]...”
Self-defense
I was a little more familiar with the Greenville court- house after my first visit there with Ryan and Fred, but I still had to ask a guard for directions to the Clerk of Court's counter. It was surprisingly easy to file a complaint, pay a fee, and sue Rollie and the VanGrabs for defamation. Trace and I then drove on to Atlanta and paid the Fulton County Sheriff's office a small fee for a deputy to serve a summons on the VanGrabs at their home address.
Every new step through this process had to be quickly mastered with the same kind of urgency as someone taking a self-defense course while being stalked.
187 I sued
A cold cruelty settled in as we drove back up I-85 to Greenville. It did not feel like the act of self-defense it was intended to be, it felt more like I had lit a fuse to a new explosion. I was now on offense. And once on offense, I had to stay permanently and indefinitely on offense.
A stack of books and few dozen websites would gradually teach me what I needed to know about South Carolina civil procedure, legal discovery, and how to conduct a jury trial. Courtroom experience and a tougher skin would soon follow. I needed to become someone that the other side of the aisle would prefer not to encounter again, personally, in a courtroom, once this battle was over.
And because I sued pro se, the rest of this story will not be about a rich heiress defending a money grab by salivating plaintiff's attorneys. This battle of extremes will be too personal and cut too deep to be about money. If it had been handled exclusively by lawyers, you would not be reading about it.
Defamers
You may succeed in scamming a man's business, but try to loot a man's self-made-by-merit reputation and you'll get a boot on your neck - a permanent boot. Guys like me work too hard and assume too much risk without having to worry about unwittingly crashing into a VanGrab or two along the way.
188 I sued
It's hard not to take slander personally and respond in kind out of spite or revenge. Especially given the irony that I was the one stolen from and the fact that I was the last person that anyone who knew me would even suspect of embezzlement. But no one across the aisle is worth the time and aggravation. I did not think about them any longer than was necessary to defeat them.
And you don't defeat defamers in court by proving that lies are lies, you defeat them by exposing defamers as defamers. Defamers reveal nothing about those they slander, but they do reveal everything about themselves.
Looters only loot that which they have earned too little of their own to value. Defamers are uniquely dangerous because they will never stop trying to loot that which they can never have, another man's self-respect. They are con- sumed with the same insatiable envy and spite as any other looter, only more so. Their biggest lie is the lie they tell themselves about themselves and why it is that they desperately want their slander to be true when they no it isn't.
Anyone who cheats merit is looting someone. The looters in Atlas Shrugged weren't poor and neither was anyone across the aisle from me.
This was such a reckless and flagrant scam, I was con- vinced that it would be easy to expose Barb and her hires as
189 I sued defamers, and more depraved than your average Ferguson storefront looter, if only I could get the case to a jury.
I took a cue from Chris Hansen and set a stage and allowed the other side to be themselves and invite others to tune in and watch in prime time. That strategy never fails.
Fighting Slander
I read: “Size up your situation well before deciding what to do. Just having your lawyer send the slanderer a nastygram could make them go ballistic. They might even sue you first. On what grounds? Who cares? Once you're in court, the lawyers fees start eating you alive.” That may explain why the VanGrabs sued first back on May 3rd with a garbage can of torts they never intended to litigate.
I was reading a booklet entitled “Fighting Slander” that I downloaded from DancingWithLawyers.com. It's a 72 page crash course on libel and slander from the objective perspective of a non-lawyer and legal expert named Nicholas Carroll. This was exactly the blunt incite I need- ed and it focused my research going forward.
“If you do take a slanderer to court, be pretty sure you are going to win. Lose, and they could turn around and sue you for abuse of process, for violation of their right to privacy, or any kook notion at all.”
190 I sued
He calls slander a “rich man's tort” because it is expensive to litigate. In many states the law is needlessly complicated. It is also a very old tort with lots of old case law handed down from a time in which reputation, char- acter, and honor were the most valuable possessions a man could have – a time when self-ownership and individual merit mattered more.
Nowhere does Carroll even broach the possibility of suing as a pro se litigant.
It was too late, anyway. I had just sued an heiress and her goon – an effort made ten times harder by the fact I had just supposedly “admitted to” by default her lawsuit's six causes of action. And I was about to get little or no help from scores of potential witnesses that had already run from the first explosion. Can you blame them? Who wants to get tangled up in this?
And like the domestic lie that snowballed into an explosion, it will eventually take an explosion of nineteen more lawsuits against lawyers and others, and a stack of subpoenas, to force the evidence I would need to have a fighting chance.
Bloodbath
Defamation is the only civil wrong that allows defend- ants to continue to commit the same wrong, through their
191 I sued lawyer, for as long as litigation drags on. And I had no constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial to stop it. At no time would I ever feel like I was the plaintiff.
I sued, and so it was I who placed Rollie's slander on a bigger stage than the one it was first spoken on and further connected my name to words that it should have never been connected to in the first place. And what if I lost on a tech- nicality? Would that make the slander appear true in the eyes of a public that wouldn't know any better?
Truth would be an easy “absolute defense” for Rollie and the VanGrabs, if they had it. Just prove the statements are substantially true and the case doesn't get very far. Nerts did not plead truth as a defense in his answer to my complaint. What choice did he have at the time? What could he possibly provide to prove truth?
The only other practical defense that may have been plead in a case like this is a much harder one called qualified privilege. The defamer must prove that he was actively pursuing the truth and had inadvertently spoken or written a defamatory falsehood in good faith to someone who had a similar interest in figuring out what the truth was. For obvious reasons Nerts didn't plead “privilege” in his answer, either.
The only real defense left for Nerts at the moment was to slander me more and try to place my character and
192 I sued reputation on trial – a smear campaign of sorts - and make it a prolonged bloodbath until I quit or settled.
...
But before the bloodbath could begin, there was a three- month lull. All eyes from both sides of the aisle were first focused on March 13, 2007. The year-old VanGrab garbage can lawsuit was still not officially over. We will all return once again to a Greenville County Courthouse courtroom for a “default damages hearing.”
This is the day that the VanGrabs had fought for and judge Patterson had granted. The VanGrabs had won the right to avoid litigating the actual records. The onus will be squarely on the VanGrabs to submit under oath an amount that they claimed had been taken from them, if any.
The VanGrabs will be themselves – uncontested - on a recorded stage in a hearing that depended solely on their honesty and ethics.
It had been a long year since Rollie came to town and no one had yet to see any evidence to support Rollie's slander or Nerts's libelous letter. $1,000,000 was the latest rumor circling The Reserve, and the VanGrabs had done nothing to quell it.
We will finally get to hear Rollie's side of things.
193 Chapter 21
Cameo
March 13, 2007
A court reporter typed:
Jim: “As part of your investigation, did you attempt to find out whether there were receipts or invoices that Mr. [VanGrab] did not pay?”
Rollie: “Did I look for receipts that Mr. [VanGrab] had not paid?
Jim: “Yes, that’s my question.”
Rollie: “No, sir.”
194 Cameo
Jim: “So you don’t know whether, when you weighed what Mr. Kunst might have paid that Mr. [VanGrab] didn’t pay him for against what Mr. [VanGrab] paid for, you don’t know whether in truth Mr. [VanGrab] owes Mr. Kunst and Kunstwerke or Kunstwerke owes Mr. [VanGrab], do you?”
Rollie: “Sir, I am” --
Jim: “You don’t know that do you?”
Rollie: “I do know that, sir. I am in” -- “I mean, there is no question that the finances and the math that I have done, supported by Mr. [Nert’s] people, fully support that the funds owed are to Mr. [VanGrab], not to Mr. Kunst related to this project.”
Jim: “Supported by Mr. [Nert’s] people, what do you mean by that?”
Rollie: “Mr. Bill Larkin, who will testify I think in a little bit. The accountant that looked at everything.”
Jim: “But what you were looking for is duplicate payments and over-payments, right?”
Rollie: “I was looking to get the house completed and found those through contacting vendors and subcontractors,
195 Cameo yes, sir.”
Jim: “But you weren’t looking to make any sort of comprehensive reconciliation about who owed whom, isn’t that true?”
Rollie: “No, sir, that’s not the truth.”
Jim: “Where is your reconciliation then?”
Rollie: “as I” --
Jim: “You got one?”
Rollie: “Actually the stack of documents and the databases and everything I have created, I certainly was looking to find out where the money went related to what was paid by Mr. [VanGrab] to build his home and what money was actually spent to subcontractors and vendors to build this home.”
Jim: “But isn’t it true that just a minute ago you testified that you didn’t look for things that Mr. Kunst might have paid that Mr. [VanGrab] didn’t pay him for? Isn’t that what you testified to a few minutes ago?”
Rollie: “I don’t know if you are trying to confuse me, sir.
196 Cameo
I don’t believe” --
Jim: “No sir, I’m trying to get to the truth.” That last phrase summed up the day. The truth was easy for Nerts and his team across the aisle to avoid in an uncontested default damages hearing as long as Rollie didn't screw up. A new Kunstwerke attorney, Jim, was doing a good job trying to make that happen.
I sat up front at the table, listening and learning, waiting my turn. I was now acting as my own attorney as a defend- ant in the old garbage can case. After a long year of waiting, Rollie was the first person from the other side of the aisle to be compelled to answer questions about the explosion under oath.
With Ryan and Fred gone, Kunstwerke still needed to be represented at the hearing by an attorney. My family doc- tor had recommended a few weeks earlier a lawyer he knew. The man he described was the polar opposite of Nerts.
Jim had only a few days to prepare for the hearing while his staff attorneys busily began the huge undertaking of appealing the order of default. But even with an appeal underway, this hearing would still take place. If Jim's appeal were successful in the future, the results of this hearing would be wiped away and all of the facts would be
197 Cameo litigated in an actual trial of evidence.
As part of our larger agreement, Jim agreed to file breach of contract claims on behalf of Kunstwerke and collect the money still owed from Weasely, Tripinfal, Rocko, and d'Rocko. This accounted for four of the nineteen lawsuits that eventually had to happen.
Later in his testimony Rollie denied to Jim that he knew anything about the unpaid statements in the box he took back to Atlanta a year ago. And so when it was my turn, I asked him about it.
“Mr. [Rollie], you just said under oath that you did not make a comment in a February 16th meeting, in which I attended with my father and Trace? Do you recognize Trace in the room?”
Rollie: “I didn’t until I saw her sitting there. I don’t recognize her, no.”
“In that meeting you stated, or you don’t recall stating, under oath, that you did not look at at least two of the progress billings that [VanGrab] has defaulted on, that I told you were prepaid by me, that I needed to retire so I could retire the other debt? You told me that ‘I could get these paid,’ exact quote, did you say that or not?”
Rollie: “I do not believe so. I did not say” –
198 Cameo
“You don’t believe, yes or no?”
Rollie: “I don’t believe I said that, sir.”
“You did not say that?”
Rollie: “I do not believe I said that.”
“You are not sure?”
Rollie: “Unsure.”
This line of questioning wasn’t just about taking him from denial to being “unsure.” Of course he said it, there were three witnesses. For my purposes, I wanted to estab- lish this date (pre-explosion) as yet another instance along the way that he and his boss reasonably knew the facts.
My questions were long and leading, even for a cross examination, because I was trying to get information on the record. I was not permitted to testify and Nerts was definitely not going to call me to the stand. I could not submit the actual billing records into evidence, but I could try to make it obvious that they were avoiding something.
And how did Rollie explain away the cash crises at the site caused by Rick's refusal to reimburse?
“You are not aware again of any e-mails that I sent to Mr. [VanGrab] explaining my cash crisis?”
199 Cameo
Rollie: “Mr. [VanGrab] had told me that you had sent him e-mails asking for funds, and he had very little patience with that, once he found out that his house was not being done in a timely fashion, because the contractors were not being paid in a timely fashion. He had the e-mails, but I don’t know they were going to go too far.”
Me: “You are speaking of two things, scheduling and the finances. We will get to the scheduling at some point, but the finances, did he tell you that I was having a cash crisis and that I e-mailed him and told him that items like windows, cabinets, which are just deposits, can be held back for the current cash needs of the site?”
Rollie: “No sir.”
Rollie and I both knew the real reason why those emailed billings were not “going to go too far.”
Wilmer
The courtroom was empty for this long half-day hearing, but for the usual cast of characters.
Nerts and his team were at the table on the right side of the aisle facing the judge. Weasely and Rick VanGrab sat together two rows behind in the public gallery. Tripinfal sat alone, towards the back. Rollie spent most of the day on the witness stand.
200 Cameo
Jim and I sat together at the table on the left side of the aisle across from Nerts. The court reporter's area was immediately in front of us. Trace sat behind me in the first row of public seating. The seats behind her on our side were empty.
Trace and I decided early on not to allow family members to attend hearings or trials. It was bad enough that Trace had to be in the same room with these people. I was not going to subject my family to hours of listening to Nerts and his garbage. I was the one who had allowed the VanGrabs into my world. I felt responsible.
I was surprised to see Rick there. I was not surprised that he did not man up and take the witness stand. I would not see him again for eight years. Barb, the other name on the lawsuit against me, was nowhere to be found. The default they won gave them the option to cower behind their goon. This was strictly Dandy Nerts's and Rollie's show and Nerts had bet everything on Rollie's cameo role.
The more I listened to Rollie's testimony, the more he reminded me of Wilmer the goon in The Maltese Falcon - he didn’t know that he was being set up to be the fall guy until it was too late.
A single white sheet of paper
201 Cameo
My summer-long slander investigation had confirmed that Rollie was, of course, the original source of the $400,000 embezzlement rumor. Rollie had provided no one any details to support his slander back then, so I had nothing tangible to publicly refute for a year - until Nerts crossed the aisle and handed me and Jim a single white sheet of paper that Rollie was about to submit into evidence.
I put on my old Deloitte & Touche hat, took one sniff, and realized it was a worthless piece of paper. It contained 15 line item numbers adding up to $353,993.91. A third of this number was from one line item, the cabinet deposit. But it didn't show where that amount had been refunded to Rick to pay directly. Each item listed was apparently selected to handcuff a judge restricted by default rules. It was not an honest summary of all 908 transactions and it reconciled nothing.
The VanGrabs left out the mountain of contractor and supplier invoices Kunstwerke paid and Rick never reim- bursed that would have reconciled Rollie's sheet to $0. It left out the other side of the accounting ledger needed to balance their account properly per the contract. Dirty.
Jim and I immediately huddled together at the table. I was able to quickly identify each deception with hand- written notes as I thumbed through the actual records - it
202 Cameo took about five minutes. I handed it to Jim so that he could use it as he questioned Rollie first. Remember, Jim could not use the actual records to refute Rollie, so he had to hint around the edges amid shouts of “objection!” from Nerts.
So this was it. This was all of the supposed evidence they had to support their lawsuit and the explosion they caused two months before that. After a year of allowing slanderous rumors to circulate unabated, this was their public answer.
This was the only excuse I would ever receive for why they did what they did. This simple sheet of paper could have been handed to me with discretion in February 2006 and the same records would have destroyed it back then in the same five minutes. But this sheet didn't exist then, it was created for the hearing. If Barb's intentions were ever honest in this scam, she would have privately handed this sheet to an objective professional in February 2006 and said “look into this,” long before Rollie opened his mouth.
My heart sank as the stench from the other side of the aisle became unbearable. Were the VanGrabs really this low?
They knew that I was more intimate with the records than they were. They had to know that I could see right through this thin, white sheet of paper and would expose it and them, later, after the hearing, to those who needed to
203 Cameo know.
They were admitting to me, at least, that it had been a scam all along. I had to stop projecting. I had to stop being shocked. I had to stop expecting them to care. I had to stop thinking about them at all. It was all just a legal game before a judge restricted by default rules.
But who could have possibly advised them that it was OK to dig in and lie again on this of all stages - a year later with everyone tuned in – and declare defiantly that $353,993.91 had been embezzled from them?
And so it was on this day, March 13, 2007, that we finally reached the lowest VanGrab low of this entire sordid tale - a turning point of sorts. I was too angry to see at the time that this single sheet of paper was actually a gift handed to me on a silver platter. Rollie and the VanGrabs now owned this sheet of paper, and always will.
This Dandy Nerts and Rollie show was what anyone should have expected it to be. It was an exact reenactment of March 2006 that would have made Chris Hansen proud: Rollie lied and defamed again, with Nerts's help, while Rick cowered nearby and Barb cowered far away. And, of course, Weasely and Tripindal showed up right on cue, perched like vultures somewhere in the back.
204 Chapter 22
Sting
NNN Paving
That steep VanGrab driveway – that I first cut with my Exacto Knife and tested with a toy car in 2004 - still had a loose gravel base in October 2005 and had become im- possible for large trucks. Work on the final grade and the high banks - that made it seem like you were driving through a tunnel at times - was complete and Bronson wanted to put down an initial coat of asphalt.
Bronson had hired a company named CMC to seed the banks and do other driveway drainage prep that my land- scape architect had designed. He called me on November 4th to let me know that he had written a $7,100 check for
205 Sting asphalt paving. All of my site managers had company checks and debit cards to pay for immediate cash needs at the site. I entered the transaction as “CMC Asphalt” on Rick's current reimbursement billing.
When Bronson mailed in his usual package of receipts a week later, I noticed a receipt from “NNN Paving.” It was not a paver that we had used before, but it was the one Bronson was able to get in a hurry and wrote a check to that afternoon. I corrected the name from “CMC Asphalt” to “NNN Paving” in the ledger. Rick was billed once and he later reimbursed once – It was one typical, unmemorable transaction out of 908.
So why did it reappear 17 months later as one of 15 line items on Rollie's paper as “CMC Asphalt $7,100?”
I quickly thumbed through the VanGrab ledger while huddled with Jim at the table. My review of all 15 items on Rollie's sheet happened quickly because my records were clear. I never expected to ever need to read again the billing notes that Bronson and I had added to each trans- action. These were descriptive progress updates written at the time for the patron's benefit.
I wrote with a black pen on my copy of Rollie's sheet of paper “CMC Asphalt is NNN Paving.” I picked this line item to tell you about because it is the one that made me the most angry.
206 Sting
Rick, Rollie, and Nerts had had these same clear records for a year. They had to first know the truth to know how to dance around it.
The dance was choreographed by Nerts like this: Rollie would testify that he uncovered a fraudulent billing from a made-up company named “CMC Asphalt” and that he conducted a thorough public records search to confirm that no such company existed. Nerts would take it from there and lead with questions to make it sound like the VanGrabs paid twice for the same paving when they had not. Dirty.
Nerts: “Now then, I want to talk about the CMC Asphalt. Do you have that $7,100 as overpayment?
Rollie: “Yes, sir.”
Nerts: “Are you familiar with this?”
Rollie: “I am.”
Nerts: “Let me ask you this. Did you - have you looked at any of the checks from the Region’s Bank account?”
Rollie: “Yes.”
Nerts: “And did you locate a check that Mr. Kunst or Kunstwerke paid to the company called CMC Asphalt?”
Rollie: “No sir.”
207 Sting
Nerts: “And did you cause to be investigated or did you investigate whether, in fact, there was a company called CMC Asphalt?
Rollie: “I did, sir.”
Nerts: “Is there a company called CMC Asphalt?”
Rollie: “No sir.”
Nerts: “And did the VanGrabs, in fact, pay $7,100 to Kunstwerke on the strength of a representation that he paid a bill from CMC Asphalt?”
Rollie: “It appeared on a monthly — or a weekly progress billing requesting $7,100. There was no invoice attach- ed with that progress billing to support that.” “I have looked on the internet and queried state licensing in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, and I can’t find CMC Asphalt.”
Nerts: “And have you looked, checked with the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation to determine whether or not as any kind of contractor there is an entity called CMC Asphalt?”
Rollie: “Did with your assistance, yes.”
Nerts: “And I want to show you an affidavit from LLR. And what does that affidavit state?” (There was a
208 Sting series of objections as to whether the affidavit was admissible which is irrelevant here, so we pick up after.)
Nerts: “Now then, so to the best of your knowledge and your investigation, is there an entity called CMC Asphalt?”
Rollie: “I’ve not been able to locate one.”
Nerts: “Okay. And do you know what happened to that money?”
Rollie: “No sir.”
Nerts: “Do you know who actually did asphalt work on the [VanGrab] project?”
Rollie: “It was several vendors. The early construction pavement was a company out of Easley, South Carolina, called NNN Paving.”
Nerts: “Do you know if, in fact, sometime shortly before the submission of this application for payment there was an invoice from NNN Paving?”
Rollie: “I talked to the owner of the business who told me he did the paving and that he had submitted a bill, and the check substantiates the payment of that from Kunstwerke to NNN Paving for doing the driveway.”
Nerts abruptly moved on to the next item because Rollie
209 Sting the goon was stupidly close to giving it all away there at the end. His answer was dangerously long, he was supposed to just say “yes” and let Nerts lead.
Nerts articulated each of his lines in a confident, condes- cending tone of utter disbelief that someone would swindle the dear, honest VanGrabs of Atlanta in such a way. Nerts was quick to glance disdainfully at me - the culprit sitting across the aisle - when he knew the judge was looking.
Rollie was under oath and there was no evidence al- lowed to refute Rollie's truth, whole truth, and nothing but his truth that $7,100 had been stolen from the VanGrabs through a fraudulent billing. The judge had little choice but to check off this line item on Rollie's white sheet of paper.
As the afternoon wore on, this charade was repeated for the other 14 line items. A simple audit would have been easier and cheaper than paying a lawyer to carefully fabri- cate a fraudulent sheet of paper and choreograph a dance for each line. But the VanGrabs had not won this default just to hand a judge a report that ended in $0.
$7,100
$11 taken from a hot dog cart money box is considered petty theft, whereas the unlawful taking of $7,100 is grand larceny. The reality of the VanGrabs' CMC Asphalt court- room scam was the taking of $7,100 that they were not
210 Sting entitled to.
Wrap your brain around this if you can: Nerts deceived a court in a default hearing to make it appear that a fraud- ulent billing occurred. $7,100 was taken from me to prove the supposed truth that I had taken $7,100 from someone else. Unscrupulous deep pockets dig deep rabbit holes.
There were fourteen other dances just as dirty that afternoon. A judgment was entered against me and the corporation for $353,993.91 plus attorneys fees. I don't blame the judge, he followed default procedural rules.
$353,993.91 was as close to Rollie's $400,000 slander as Nerts could get. The dance was never intended to survive the scrutiny of honest daylight outside of a restricted hearing.
In a few months I will receive the first of multiple offers from the VanGrabs to cancel this judgment if I would drop my defamation lawsuit. The last few offers that came through in later years had additional money attached. It was all a dirty game.
April 12, 2007
For my purposes, the dance that Nerts choreographed from Rollie's single sheet of paper was far better than any prime time Chris Hansen undercover sting because it
211 Sting happened in a court of law under oath. The VanGrabs were permitted to be themselves on a recorded stage in an uncontested hearing that depended solely on their honesty and ethics.
My instincts had told me to make sure all the players knew the truth going in – make any deception intentional. Several months before the hearing, I copied all of the relevant VanGrab records and reported the facts thus far. The content filled a large black binder. I made 60 more binders and sent them to everyone with a direct interest in the VanGrab project – including the VanGrabs themselves.
When asked during his cameo about the big black binder Rollie testified that he considered it “fiction.” I asked him if he had reviewed the last three weekly progress billing statements in the binder that his boss had never reimbursed (and were shockingly absent from his sheet of paper) and he testified that he never looked at those pages, he reportedly “never got that far.”
I felt my first real rush of vindication as I copied Rollie's sheet and prepared a truthful version that ended in $0. I attached copies of the actual records and updated everyone who had received a black binder six months before.
It is such an exhausting waste of time battling an inherently dishonest foe. But I needed to make certain that Barb knew or reasonably could have known the facts at
212 Sting every step along the way.
From April 12, 2007 to May 28, 2015, Barb could have easily corrected all or part of Rollie's sheet. Nerts even filed a “supplemental election” preserving the right to add to or alter Rollie's sheet should new information become available.
In the end she will be stuck, everything will hang on Rollie's sheet of paper, exactly as prepared nine years earlier.
213
Chapter 23
The Expert
Expert Witness Scam #1 The months and years beyond March 2006 proved over and over that the explosion was no honest mistake. The VanGrabs would not have followed up Rollie's slander by hiring Nerts, nor would they have filed their lawsuit, nor spent a fortune avoiding litigating the actual records, nor submitted Rollie's fraudulent sheet of paper, nor the NNN paving scam – it all came too naturally. Indulge me just two more quick examples that you need to know about.
Do you remember when Rollie said this in his cameo nineteen pages ago?
214 The Expert
Jim: “Supported by Mr. [Nert’s] people, what do you mean by that?”
Rollie: “Mr. Bill Larkin, who will testify I think in a little bit. The accountant that looked at everything.”
Jim and I did not know that the VanGrabs had hired an “expert witness.” Nerts was required to notify us – just like he was required to give us Rollie's single white sheet of paper in advance. Dirty. Nerts had nine months to prepare for Rollie's cameo.
Larkin did indeed testify after Rollie. He spoke in vague generalities and it soon became apparent that he was not an “accountant that looked at everything” as Rollie had assured us. He had looked at very little. Jim uncovered from Larkin's testimony the fact that he had just become involved on the Friday before this Tuesday hearing. Dirty.
Was Rollie in on it? Or is this the moment he realized he was becoming Wilmer?
Jim was quick to move that Larkin's testimony be stricken from consideration and the judge agreed. I pro- bably would not have known to do that. Like I said, the VanGrabs' chicanery was my biggest pro se disadvantage.
Expert Witness Scam #2
A court reporter typed on July 22, 2009:
215 The Expert
Unknown Attorney in an unrelated case: What I have handed you is a report, and I'm going to ask you – is this report your work?
Larkin: Yes, it is.
Attorney: It's not involved in this case. It's the invest- igation of the Kunstwerke Corporation dated January of last year. Was this a final report that you prepared?
Larkin: No, it's not a final report.
Attorney: So this is not a final report?
Larkin: No.
Attorney: How do we know that a report that you have prepared is a final report? Does it say it?
Larkin: It will say it.
Attorney: It will say “final report”?
Larkin: Yes.
Attorney: Have you ever prepared a final report in the Kunstwerke case?
Larkin: No. The case is still ongoing.
Attorney: Take a look at page four, if you would, please. At the bottom of page four it says, “The actions of
216 The Expert this corporation and an individual Scott Kunst, “may be in violation of the following South Carolina and United States statutes.” And it lists – you list a number of statutes grouped by South Carolina statutes and then by the U.S. Government statutes, including breach of trust and fraudulent intent, windling, subcontractor, payment, failure to pay laborers, contractors, subcontractors, day laborers, time and manner of making payment, South Carolina Department of Revenue Code, U.S. Govern- ment mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, RICO, bank fraud, and then federal tax laws.
Attorney: Do you believe that those statements are consistent with the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners' guidelines and requirements?
Larkin: Well, they're not, and I'll tell you why. There was a report prior to this that was delivered to the attorney in this case [Nerts] that did not have these in there. And he asked – I was asked by him to write it as if it were a prosecutorial memoranda; Therefore, entering the laws I thought that were involved. This was rewritten with the laws written in. There was a prior report without this in it, and this is the report that the attorney released.
Attorney: The lawyer, whoever it was, released this; but this is your work product?
Larkin: It's my work product, yes. But the lawyer
217 The Expert released it.
Attorney: Are you being offered in that case, as you are in this case, as a certified fraud examiner?
Larkin: Yes, I am.
Attorney: So your explanation for why these state- ments would not be a violation of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiner standards is because the lawyer asked you to write up something that was like a prose- cutorial memo; is that right?
Larkin: That's correct. In fact, I have the lawyer's handwritten notes.
[discussion]
Attorney: Will your final report in this particular case, the Kunstwerke case, be done consistent with the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners' standards?
Larkin: Yes, it will.
Attorney: So will those statements, then, have to come out?
Larkin: Those statements will have to come out.
Lawyers like Nerts know where to find an expert witness who would not object to an unethical report going
218 The Expert out with his name on it. And this expert played so dirty that his “work” in my defamation case against Rollie and the VanGrabs was used against him by the above attorney in a completely unrelated case.
Here is how it worked: The expert cherry picked items from Rollie's sheet, for example, and continued Rollie's lie that money was taken. He left it there as an open question without studying the actual accounting records. He then provided a laundry list of State and Federal codes that he thought might have been violated as a result. Dirty.
And worse, any draws that I took from my own capital from my own company were now supposedly theft if Rollie was right about patron money “missing.” He then provided yet another laundry list of supposedly violated codes for that. Dirty.
Nerts didn't want a “final” report and definitely didn't want a full audit and reconciliation of all 908 VanGrab transactions to be released from his side of the aisle. Larkin's “report” was just something Nerts could pass around - part of the early bloodbath.
But in the long term, reality cannot be avoided. The expert's report would eventually hit a wall and become worthless. Jim's contract suits were all eventually litigated by 2012 using the actual records and all settled in Kunstwerke's favor (like that check Weasely wrote mid-
219 The Expert trial). There was never a dime “missing.” Money was indeed “taken” - it was taken from me. Everything in this rabbit hole had finally been proven to be the opposite of what the scammers had purported. Money had indeed been looted from the construction accounts, but not by me.
I felt an enormous sense of accomplishment when the last of Jim's Kunstwerke contract cases settled in 2012 after six long years. It took that long to finally force the truth and fully exposed the scam.
I could now zero in on Rollie and the VanGrabs.
In the end, the VanGrab legal team will not call The Expert as a witness or even refer to his work again. In fact, they will object every time I even mention to a jury that they once employed an expert. At the end of this long sordid tale, there will be no accountant, auditor, or expert of any kind sitting in the benches across the aisle, just Rollie.
220 Chapter 24
Disaster
Res Judicata
At this point you may be wondering, why so many obvious scams? Why spend so much money forcing a default judgment on a guy like me? Why suffer the bad optics and appearance of cowardice, or risk being exposed as the VanGrabs were after Rollie's cameo?
The answer is Res Judicata - Latin for “a matter has already been judged.” It is a mechanism that the courts use to prevent a claim or counter-claim from being adjudicated more than once between the same parties and clogging the courts. It is often referred to as “claim preclusion.”
It can even be applied to a default case that has not been
221 Disaster actually litigated. To be eligible for res judicata, a matter need only to have been judged between the same parties.
Shortly after Rollie's cameo, Nerts filed a motion to have the VanGrabs dismissed from my defamation lawsuit claiming that it was a res judicata “compulsory counter- claim” related to the same event. Without getting into the technical tall grass, I'll just tell you that I fought the motion and lost. Rick and Barb were removed as defendants from my defamation lawsuit.
But not Rollie. He was not eligible for res judicata be- cause he was just a witness and not a named party in the VanGrabs' garbage can lawsuit it was applied to. From this point forward, Rollie became the sole defendant and the case will become known simply as Kunst v. Loree (Rollie). Rollie had officially become Wilmer.
If I were a lawyer, or thought like one, this would have been a game ender. The money trail had ended, as Nerts had planned, at the bodyguard, the goon, the property manager – whatever you want to call him. Any lawyer would have graciously accepted at this point the VanGrab's new generous offer to drop their default judgment award if Kunst v. Loree was dropped. At the time, Nerts called it “the offer of the century.”
But this bloodbath had never been worth enduring for any amount of money, and “settling” would not have
222 Disaster righted the wrong. For my purposes, I was just relieved that the case would still continue on and that there was a chance I could still get it to a jury. That is all that mattered to me.
Collateral Estoppel
Collateral estoppel is a similar but weaker doctrine than res judicata. It is available to someone who is not a party to a judged case but wants to use that decision to decide their own case without litigating the same issue again. It is often referred to as “issue preclusion.” It is a complicated legal doctrine with many limitations.
Most states side with South Carolina and specifically preclude collateral estoppel if a default case is involved because nothing is actually litigated in a default. Rollie's default damages cameo was not an actual trial or a contested hearing that could collaterally stop his own defamation trial altogether. The veracity of Rollie's actual statements to others had never been actually litigated.
And if that weren't enough, only two of the nine slanders that I was prepared to litigate at trial were related to Rollie's sheet of paper in any way. Collateral estoppel was not even on my radar screen as a potential risk as I busily prepared for Rollie's trial in the spring of 2009.
After surviving three long brutal years of legal discovery
223 Disaster and two attempts by Nerts to have Rollie's case dismissed, it was finally moving up the docket in the summer of 2009 and was likely to be tried soon.
Roughly half of the nineteen related cases were still pending at various stages of resolution and Nerts had delayed as many as he could. He had also delayed making Rick and Barb available for a deposition. Something had to give.
I filed a motion to compel Nerts to move things along and was granted a “scheduling hearing” before an admin- istrative judge. The courtroom was full with a dozen or more attorneys – now all familiar faces - who were each involved in some way with at least one of the related cases. It was like a family reunion of sorts. Tripinfal was there with what looked like his entire law firm. Every case was placed on a schedule to hurry things along, except for Rollie's.
Nerts asked the administrative judge to issue a stay in Rollie's trial until Jim's appeal of the garbage can default case was over and considered officially judged. Jim's appeal had recently been denied and he had taken it to the State Supreme Court. Nert's argued that there may be some collateral estoppel considerations.
To my shock the judge granted it. There was not much I could do. I returned home resigned to another year of delay
224 Disaster and a busier focus on the other cases now sped up by the new scheduling order.
And then the wheels came off.
October 19, 2010
The Supreme Court declined to consider Jim's appeal in 2010 and the garbage can default case was deemed officially judged. It was half-expected, but at least the clock started ticking again for Rollie. Or so I hoped.
I thought it was a hail Mary pass just before trial when Nerts was able to get a surprisingly quick hearing in October 2010 before judge Miller of the thirteenth circuit. You may remember him as the judge who signed the original default order back in 2006.
Nerts stood up to address Miller as the court reporter typed: “For the purposes of this hearing, we admit to the defamation.”
What? If the court reporter had not typed it, I would not have believed it. What was Nerts up to?
Nerts explained that he was not there to argue whether Rollie defamed anyone. But rather to proclaim that the issue had already been judged and that Rollie should be granted collateral estoppel and his case dismissed.
225 Disaster
At this point, it should have been a very brief hearing. All I had to do was stand up at the table on my side of the aisle and state: “Your honor, South Carolina does not allow collateral estoppel to be granted in default cases.”
I referenced for the record the controlling legal authority in South Carolina, State v. Bacote. That should have been it. The judge should have moved on to whomever was next on the non-jury motion hearing docket that day waiting behind us in the Pickens courtroom.
Trace and I sat without moving in stunned disbelief. Judge Miller dismissed my defamation case against Rollie based solely on the doctrine of collateral estoppel. It was over. Rollie was off the hook. All of our efforts, and all of the other cases pending, suddenly didn't matter.
My skin had grown very thick in four years and I thought I had seen everything. But this was too much.
It gets worse. Judges are busy and they often don't write their own decisions. They will often ask a winning attor- ney to write an order and, after all sides get a chance to review, the judge signs it. Judge Miller asked Nerts, of all people, to write the order dismissing Rollie's case.
I was copied as usual in the email from Nerts to the judge's clerk. I'm not sure what I expected when I clicked on the attachment and read Nerts's order. But even as a pro
226 Disaster se litigant I could smell an outrage.
It was a long, argumentative pile of garbage that tried to use only out-of-state precedent to grant collateral estoppel to Rollie in South Carolina - and even that precedent was wrong. It also claimed that the judge at Rollie's cameo made criminal “findings” in a civil default case. It was riddled with factual errors in an attempt to influence all of the other pending cases. It was the kind of bad order that one might expect a law professor to write for fun and have his class critique.
I quickly forwarded a copy to Jim's assistant who was handling the Kunstwerke contract cases. The order as writ- ten could have a negative effect on his collection efforts against Weasely and Tripinfal. Who saw that coming?
Jim's assistant was as outraged as I was and wrote a long detailed letter to the judge excoriating the order, point by point. The most obvious problem was that it directly contradicted South Carolina law that specifically prohibits a judge from granting collateral estoppel from a default judgment. I, too, wrote a letter. I pointed out the apparent conflict of allowing Nerts to write it. And then we waited.
The judge signed the order on October 19, 2010, exactly as Nerts wrote it. He initialed every page.
I filed a lengthy motion to reconsider, full of case law. It
227 Disaster was easy. Anyone can Google “collateral estoppel in default cases in South Carolina” from a smart phone.
Months went by. I occasionally emailed the judge's clerk inquiring about the status of my motion to reconsider. The judge sat on it for a year before scribbling “denied” on a form sheet and filing it.
Nerts was quite proud of his new order signed by a judge. He passed it around more than he did his expert witness “report.” Dirty.
A lawyer friend told me that judges can make “mistakes” and that a good lawyer could appeal the order and get it overturned. But how many years would that take? And that “good lawyer” was apparently going to have to be me. And what were the realistic odds of a pro se appellant succeeding?
I had no choice but to fire up my laptop and begin typing a “Notice of Appeal.” In the meantime, Barb's pocket change had gotten Rollie off the hook. Even better, Rick's and Barb's depositions were canceled.
Several years later, one of Rollie's attorneys questioned me on a witness stand:
Smith: “Do you think judges in South Carolina are corrupt?”
228 Disaster
I had argued before dozens of remarkably kind and fair judges from all over the state for years as a pro se litigant. It was from that very unique perspective that I vehemently replied “of course not.”
He then turned to page one of this book you are reading right now and read aloud where I refer to this collateral estoppel scam, and the stay that Rollie was granted a year before it, as a couple of horrible “mistakes” in quotes.
His question was intended to discredit me in the eyes of a trial judge sitting a few feet to my left and a jury sitting twenty feet to my right.
This “ mistake” would not have quotation marks if it had been corrected by the person making it when he had an option to reconsider an obvious mistake. The quotation marks will stay because I still don't know what to call this disaster and the added, senseless harm it will cause until I could fix it.
229 Chapter 25
Bronson
Ridgepole
Bronson was a little out of breath as he hurried to meet me at the VanGrab project. “Sorry I’m late, I had to climb up and fasten the ridgepole over at the spec [Lady of the Lake] house for the framers while the crane was still there.” It was early 2005 and both projects were young.
It was not something that I wanted to hear. “Why did you have to do it?” He just shrugged, “everyone else was afraid to climb up there.”
A ridgepole is the top roof beam upon which the roof rafters rest. This ridgepole was a bit more complicated because I wanted each rafter to hit the ridgepole at a
230 Bronson slightly different spot in order to create the appearance of an aged, sagging middle.
Someone had to straddle the ridgepole and fasten it to the post below once the crane dropped it into place. It was a scary thing to do. There was a time Bronson and I were the only ones around to do this kind of thing, but now he had much bigger responsibilities. Someone from one of the framing crews should have handled it.
Bronson's plate was already full, but I needed someone to fill in as site manager until the framing was complete and until I could designate a permanent full-time manager. Bronson was always my go-to guy.
Of all the many go-to situations like this that swirl in my memory, the ridgepole memory returns most vividly.
Bronson had come so far from the first time I met him in 2002 when he appeared at Idyll Cottage, project #5 on Caesar’s Head, looking for a job. He had been let go as a laborer from a builder named Brent we both knew. Brent's brother Chad was a part-time electrical contractor and my first contractor going back to my first project in 1996. Chad would eventually start his own electrical contracting business and grow with me.
Bronson was hired before I had multiple projects and before I needed site managers. He worked harder than anyone else and earned my trust. He was ambitious and
231 Bronson wanted to do more than haul wooden shingles up a steep roof. Bronson earned the opportunity to become one of my first site managers on Lake Keowee.
My site managers weren’t redneck builders driving around The Reserve with plans on their dashboard. They were chosen specifically because they did not have that kind of experience or any preconceived notion of building. They were my representative at a site making sure things were done my way when I wasn’t there. They actively competed and lobbied to manage new projects.
Most, like Bronson, were in their mid-twenties. They had little more than structural engineering plans and one of my construction models to work with. It was the ultimate boot camp for a future builder.
I would often sketch something at a site or point to a part of the model and say “make it look like that,” and Bronson did. Only he could have finished the VanGrab and Tripinfal projects with my equipment and crews and get it close to what I envisioned. It was obvious to all involved why Rollie and Tripinfal targeted his cooperation first.
I can only laugh at the thought of someone across the aisle like Rick VanGrab sliding out to the edge of a ridgepole, much less knowing what to do once he got out there. I never had to worry about Bronson feigning erup- tions, or hiding behind voice mails, or his wife's pocket
232 Bronson change. Bronson was too busy producing something real and tangible that will live long beyond him. Bronson was as self-made-by-merit of a man as you will find.
Cancun
2005 had been an exhausting year for all of us and I could not have been more proud of my site managers, nor could I have been more grateful. I bought an occasional work trailer, tools, or even a pickup truck if they asked. For one, I even designed a house. But for Bronson I did the most, and for good reason.
In January 2006, I had earned a trip to Cancun from my biggest supplier, Jennings Builder Supply. I gave my trip to Bronson and his wife. At about the same time, Bronson said that he needed a heavier duty pickup for the VanGrab site, so I gave him $7,000 toward a down payment. A year before that, he needed a co-signor for a new Bugati motorcycle, and I was glad he came to me first.
Bronson, of course, was the one who suggested and coordinated the site managers' Christmas gift to me every year. For our last Christmas together before the explosion, my site managers chipped in and gave me a summer BMW motorcycle suit.
I remember Bronson's wedding as though it were yesterday. I shared his pride in his first child and the house he built himself in Brevard, NC.
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His father had been killed in an industrial accident at the old Brevard paper mill when Bronson was young. He told me often that no one had ever put as much faith in him as I had. He knew that as long as I was around, he would be part of what I was doing.
Bronson should not have repeated what Rollie and Tripinfal had told him, but he was not the originator of a single lie or rumor. The world we knew was going to be destroyed whether or not Bronson agreed to stay and help Rollie.
Bronson did not cause the explosion and he had a family to support. He witnessed the attack closer than anyone outside my family and was warned that he would share the same fate. In his mind, he was left to fend for himself.
January 26, 2009
In a phone call that seemed to come from out of nowhere, Bronson contacted me in January 2009 and said that he wanted to talk. Trace and I met him at a little cafe on the corner of Main Street and Highway 64 in Brevard.
I had not seen him since 2007 at his deposition in a little room in the Transylvania County Courthouse in Brevard. Tripinfal brought his whole firm to the deposition and positioned himself directly across from Bronson. Tripinfal leaned forward and glared at Bronson the whole time.
234 Bronson
Bronson apologized to me and Trace as we ate lunch at the cafe. He admitted that he didn’t fully understand what was going on back in 2006 and how awful he thought the VanGrabs were. He did not need to remind me what his opinion of Tripinfal was. I already had a sworn record of that from his deposition when, despite Tripinfal's glare, he confirmed: “I hate the man.”
Bronson described in heart-breaking detail how bad his own situation had become. He really just wanted to talk. He knew the battle I was in and that I had nothing I could offer him but encouragement.
We talked about Ridgeline and the Lady of the Lake disaster and the extent of his involvement in that.
The Kunstwerke lawsuit against Tripinfal had had a significant impact on him. For all of Tripinfals threats and bully tactics, he was a lawyer and he was sued, and he was never able to make the lawsuit go away - he lost.
Bronson told us that he wanted to make things right and that he wanted to help in any way possible. He was the only person to offer me that level of unconditional support other than my parents.
I told him that it would help us most to just tell us everything Rollie and Tripinfal told him in 2006. Trace took notes. Until this moment, there was so much that I still didn't know. The missing pieces from February and
235 Bronson
March 2006 fell into place. At the time, these were bombshell revelations that rocked Rollie's case.
I counted at least seven things he told us that would be helpful in a defamation trial and asked him if he would be willing to sign an affidavit. He said yes. I typed his words in a formal affidavit and met him in a few days to approve and have his signature notarized.
Pisgah Fish Camp
Bronson knew that the moment he signed it, he would become the target he avoided being in 2006. His affidavit would be filed in a courthouse and he would immediately become the main witness against Rollie. He knew that Nerts would attack him personally and try to destroy his credibility on the witness stand.
He signed the affidavit on February 2, 2009, during a break from his job at the Pisgah Fish Camp in Brevard where he worked as kitchen help frying fish. He came out into the back parking lot covered in batter and smelling like grease. I will never forget the smell of the grease.
I barely recognized the man who drove around The Reserve with one of my crazy architectural models next to him on the front seat, or the man who rode the pump jacks at Idyll Cottage, or the man who walked up the hill with me after the meeting in the barn and was willing to put up with Tripinfal, if I simply asked him to.
236 Bronson
There have been a handful of moments thus far in these twenty-five chapters when the recollection of certain events is so overwhelming and make me so angry that I have to get up and walk around for a while to refocus. This is the worst of these moments.
May 23, 2011
On February 2, 2009, Bronson demonstrated far greater self-respect, courage, and moral clarity than this story's antagonist has in the pages before this one, or will in the pages ahead.
When Bronson signed his affidavit, Rollie's case was heating up and it looked like the stay was about to be removed. The only thing left to do was to somehow enforce Rick's and Barb's subpoenas to testify under oath. Then, as you know, out of nowhere the collateral estoppel disaster happened.
I knew that things had not improved for Bronson anymore than they had for me during this new two-year delay as I appealed judge Miller's order. Bronson confided in me much and told me that there were times when he was really down.
Chad emailed me on the morning of May 24, 2011 giving me the news. Bronson was dead.
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