Tilted Justice: First Came the Flood, Then Came the Lawyers.

1

The Flood

The disaster began on a rainy morning, March 11, 2016, at my home north of Covington, Louisiana. My four wooded acres back up to a sheer twenty-five foot bluff on the picturesque Bogue Falaya River. Our children had grown up here, with the river being an intrinsic part of our lives with family and friends: building sand castles, picnics on the beach, barbeques, tubing parties, and all the joys that come with having a river in your back yard.

By 2016, the children were grown and gone, and my husband of half a century had passed away just a few years before. I was living alone in our large two-story home and had rented my fully furnished guest house, the Cottage, which is perched on the bluff near the river, to a sixty-two-year-old lawyer who had moved here from Texas the year before. Heavy rains had been coming down for three days. This was not uncommon, and I was not aware that there was any cause for concern since the river had never gone over its banks onto our land in the almost fifty years we had lived here. Weeks later I learned that, due to the days of heavy rain to the north, the river had suddenly risen almost thirty feet!

I had seen on the news that morning that there were flash floods in the area, but that was not unusual for the more low-lying areas in this land of rivers. Since my house was on high ground, not in a flood zone, and had never been in danger of flooding, it was quite a shock when my tenant called around eleven o’clock that morning saying that water was rushing into the Cottage near the river bank and asking me to call 911 for a rescue boat. I did. My antebellum house is a few hundred feet from the river and raised almost three feet on brick pilings, so I was still confident that my home was safe. But within minutes, the flash flood was roaring into my house too!

I sprang into action, at first trying to roll up small Oriental rugs and placing them at the doorways where the water was rushing in. That was futile. By the time I had the first one placed, the water was a foot deep inside the house. And within minutes it was two feet deep. Then my tenant arrived at the back door holding a backpack and telling me he was exhausted. I showed him upstairs to my young granddaughters’ guest bedroom. He got into one of the pretty little white wrought-iron beds and pulled the pink quilt over his head, and I didn’t see or hear from him the rest of the day. I got back to work, carrying whatever I could upstairs — portraits, lamps, family heirlooms — the most important and most vulnerable things that I could lift and move to safety before the men arrived to take us out by boat. Many things that were too large and heavy to carry up the stairs I lifted onto other furniture, putting end tables and chairs up onto the grand piano or the dining room table. My beloved big black Lab, Bonbon, would swim along next to me, then go up the stairs with me, load after load, then back down into the hip-deep water to get the next thing. She never left my side.

Having been advised (when I still had use of a phone) to turn off the electricity, I swam into my walk-in pantry where the main electric panel was located. The big standup freezer there had floated up and toppled over, and was leaning against the wall that housed the electric panel. I had to lift the freezer and push it back against the wall to open the panel, using my left arm too, which I was not supposed to use because of recent surgery for a pacemaker implant. By then the muddy water was about three feet deep, and I had no working phone. The landline was out, my cell phone had lost its charge, and I had no electricity. For the next six hours I kept working, while the tenant slept, and waiting for the rescue boat that would surely arrive any minute.

By around two o’clock I started considering the possibility of swimming up to the hill with Bonbon. The water was still rising and the current was swift, but Bonbon and I are both strong swimmers and I felt we could make it. There would be trees along the way if I had to grab something, and I would be holding on to Bonbon’s leash, too. Labs can swim through anything, and I had once been a swimming instructor and certified lifeguard. I would be able to stand after about the first hundred yards and from there we could make it up the hill and out to the road where I could flag someone down and use their phone to get help. But looking out at the river roaring by, I knew it would be rather risky – and I couldn’t leave the house with Tenant there, and he wasn’t going anywhere. I doubted he could make the swim. So I just kept working and waiting for help to arrive.

Around five o’clock that afternoon, I heard men calling back and forth to each other outside. I had opened my upstairs bedroom window for fresh air, and I called out, Hello! They quickly responded, Are you Mrs. Middleton? Yes, I called back. How can we get in? Right through the front door, I yelled. And they did. The bow of the boat floated over the front porch and right into my large entrance hall.

The two officers came upstairs, and we had a quick conference standing among the piles of my belongings that I had carried up. While we were talking, the phone on one man’s belt rang and he answered the call. After a little conversation with the caller, I heard him say, Yes, Ma’am, she’s right here. He handed me the phone, saying, She wants to talk with you. It was my good friend and state senator Beth Mizell, who had been trying to call me all day, knowing that people in my area were being boated out. Unable to reach me, she had finally called the sheriff’s office and asked that they go check on me. She could have just assumed that I had already been evacuated and not persisted. But she did, for which I thank her and I thank God!

Those men were terrific. They were very calm and professional, kind and considerate, but they also conveyed the urgency of the situation. I had told them I had two concerns about leaving. The first was Bonbon. They said, Don’t worry, Ma’am — we’ll take care of your puppy. The other, I told them, was that man asleep in the little girls’ guest bedroom. We were standing talking in the large landing at the top of the stairway, by then mostly crammed with the things I had carried up from downstairs. Doors lead off from there to the bedrooms. One guest bedroom was piled high with things I had brought upstairs; the door to my little granddaughters’ room was partially closed. I told them there was a man asleep in there and they had to get him out first. Amazed that anyone could be sleeping through this, they pushed the door open in disbelief and saw the Tenant under the quilt in the little bed, looking like a beached whale. They went in, woke him up, and took him downstairs and into the boat. Then Bonbon and I went down behind them. By that time, I was too exhausted to do more. But it was heart-wrenching to go through the downstairs, in waist-deep water, seeing a lifetime of treasured possessions under water or floating around and knowing I had to just keep going — keep going and get Bonbon and myself to safety.

I climbed into the boat, they lifted Bonbon in, and she climbed right up onto my lap. Then the men got in, started up the motor, and we headed out, being swept by the current right over the hood of my car, which was parked in front of the house. We travelled over several hundred feet of flooded land, roughly following my long driveway through the trees then up the hill toward my entrance, where other men were waiting for us. They moved us into a Humvee that took us to their staging area a mile to the north on Million Dollar Road. By that time, everyone in our area who was to be evacuated by boat had already been transferred to other locations, so we were the only evacuees left for them to transport. Several men and various rescue vehicles were in an area off to the side of the road. The men seemed tired and were winding down after a long and stressful day, but they surely must have felt a sense of accomplishment after bringing to safety hundreds of people who had been in life-threatening situations. One of the men told me they had cut through a roof to get to a family that was trapped in their attic. He said he had been involved in flood rescue operations before but cutting through a roof that day was a first for him.

While we were there, a young man who lived nearby had walked down to see if there was anything he could do to help. He had been one of the children in my kids’ school carpool I had driven forty years before. When I saw him approach, for the first time that day I felt a connection to the outside, non-flooded world that I knew must be out there but that had not been a part of my reality since the wall of water had descended upon me that morning. As the men were directing us to the next vehicle, he wrote his phone number on a slip of paper and told me to call him if I needed help.

We were then transferred to a high-water truck, driven by one of the Special Ops men who had come in the rescue boat, to take us down Hwy 25. The river was flowing over the highway and eroding the shoulders, and there were several stalled cars along the way. It was an eerie feeling to be in the only moving vehicle on the highway. The driver navigated his way through it as we drove five miles south down to the Winn-Dixie store where the tenant had arranged to be picked up by his friend Mike Farrell’s sister, Laura. Then the officer drove me down to my cousin Calla’s house in Mandeville where she and another cousin, Therese, were waiting for me. One of the officers had let me use his phone to call them and relate the situation. Without hesitation, they said to come on, that Bonbon and I had a home with them.

As we were driving down there, I thanked the officer for coming to get us and said I knew they were so busy and had many more people who were in greater danger to get to before us. He said no — they would have been here much sooner but the Tenant had called back to 911 around 11:15 (once he was safely tucked into the little girl’s bed) and said he had made it to high ground and was safe, high and dry so to cancel the rescue boat. He made no mention of the fact that his high ground was the second floor of my home, that the downstairs had three feet of water, and that there was another person there — an elderly woman with a heart condition — who was far from safe and dry. Knowing that the tenant had cancelled the rescue boat and seeing me and the condition I was in, drenched, muddy, exhausted, freezing, and a physical wreck, in the flooded house with no food or water — and the tenant upstairs asleep in the little bed with the pink quilt pulled up over his head — the officers were obviously appalled. He had instructed them not to tell me that he had made that call, but they found his behavior so contemptible that they felt I should know.

We arrived at my cousin Calla’s house after dark, around 7:30, where I was met with the warmest welcome and most generous hospitality imaginable. She has a wonderfully relaxing back porch and a large fenced yard for Bonbon. We felt like we had made it through the netherworld and arrived in heaven. As Bonbon explored her new home, I was handed a much welcomed glass of wine, and we sat — actually sat on a dry chair on dry land on a dry porch. I first contacted my family to let them know that I was safe and with Calla. She and Therese were full of questions, so I tried to relate the events of the day but was stopped by Calla saying, Donie, you must be in shock — you’re shaking. I said that I was not in shock — I was freezing! I was still in the wet clothes I had been in all day. That was quickly remedied by a soak in a hot bath, followed by a hot dinner. Bonbon and I then went to Calla’s guest bedroom where I sank into a warm, dry bed and Bonbon stretched out on the floor next to me. There is no way I can ever adequately express my gratitude to my cousins for their kindness.

I knew what I would be facing the next day: two devastated houses to restore; the loss of so many of a lifetime’s assortment of personal treasures; all furnishings, appliances, and contents to be replaced or repaired; and all this with no flood insurance. Why have flood insurance when you live high on a bluff in a no-flood zone? My work was cut out for me, so the next day I’d get started. I couldn’t sleep at all that night, thinking about what I would be facing the next day and for months to come.

Little did I know then that the flood, a natural catastrophe, was only the beginning of the nightmare that was to follow. The manmade disaster that was coming, the intentional and malicious obstruction and destruction the lawyer-tenant would cause and the civil suit he would file against me, would dominate my life for the foreseeable future. Even words like bizarre and surreal seem inadequate clichés in describing all that occurred to such an extent that I was frequently told, This is unbelievable, Donie — you should write a book! And I did.

But the story has to start at the beginning. So I’ll now go back to the year before, March 2015, when the lawyer-tenant entered my life.

2

March, 2015

I first met Lawyer-Tenant (I’ll call him L.T., or Mr. Lawyer A.Tenant) the year before, in March of 2015, when I advertised my fully furnished guest house, the Cottage, for rent as of April 1. Fully furnished meant everything, including all kitchen essentials, table, bed and bath linens, and furniture in all the rooms except one — one large extra room that a tenant could use and furnish as he saw fit. One former tenant enjoyed sewing and had the room set up with a large cutting table, sewing table, and shelves and cabinets for her fabric and equipment. Another used it as an at-home office with a large desk, office chair, book shelves, and filing cabinets. Though fully furnished, the Cottage is spacious with plenty of room to accommodate some of a tenant’s own furniture, which is important to keep in mind as the tale unfolds.

The Cottage often served as a guest house and we also rented it at times. After my husband’s death it was important to me to have it rented so there would be someone else living on the property. It was always picked up very quickly, often just by word of mouth that it was available. I had advertised it for rent and received several responses, had lined up appointments for that weekend for prospective tenants to see it, and felt quite sure that it would be rented before April 1. Anyone who saw my ad and was interested would send an email to me through the advertiser. I would respond, asking that they email to me their phone number, and I’d call them to arrange for us to meet and for them to see the Cottage. One of these was L.T. He was was advertising as a mature single professional. That sounded like a good prospect for a tenant. In his email, he said that he had some furniture in storage. That was not a problem to me. If he wanted to come look at the Cottage, we could discuss it. If his furniture fit, then fine. If it was more than the Cottage could accommodate, he could either keep it in storage or look for an unfurnished place to rent. He gave me his number, and I called. He told me he was a lawyer from New Orleans and was planning to open an office on the Northshore of Lake Pontchartrain, in the Covington area. I erroneously inferred from this that he was a New Orleans lawyer: that is, a lawyer who had an office in New Orleans and was practicing there. He said he was very interested in the Cottage, that the photographs posted in the ad looked like just what he wanted. I added him to my list of appointments with prospective tenants who would be coming that weekend.

A day or so later he called again, saying he was up this way and asking if he could come by to see the Cottage. I felt it would be inconsiderate to say no, so I agreed. We sat in my living room and talked for a while. He said he had been born in New Orleans and grew up there. He told me where he had gone to school and the names of some schoolmates in New Orleans. I didn’t know them personally since I am a generation older, but I knew the families of some of the names he cited and knew them to be respectable people. He was particularly interested in telling me that his best friend Mike Farrell, a classmate from New Orleans school days, was a nephew of an internationally famous Covington artist, Hunter Farrell. He asked if I knew him. I said I did and that he and his wife had been good friends of ours. By this time they were both deceased, as was my husband. L.T. seemed quite impressed and went on at length then to tell me just what a close friend the nephew was, as though that was very important to him and should matter to me. I thought this was a bit weird. It struck me as an indication of a serious lack of self-confidence that he felt he had to rely on a connection to a friend who has an uncle who is famous in order to establish his status with others.

As we talked, I learned that he had actually been living in Arkansas and Texas for the past thirty years or so, was divorced (twice), had two children who were living with their mother in Texas, had apparently never actually practiced law in Louisiana, and had no law office in New Orleans. He gave me a business card showing the name of his law firm and a cell phone number, but no address. So yes, he was a lawyer — and he was originally from New Orleans — but he was not a lawyer from New Orleans as I had understood it. He was newly arrived here from Texas and living in a motel while looking for a place to rent and planning to establish a law practice in the area in the future.

I should have been suspicious. Many New Orleans law firms have opened a Northshore office in the past few decades as this area grew from sleepy rural to a prosperous growing suburb of the city. But the usual procedure was to first find an office location and get it set up for business before moving over here. Why had he left Texas, and his children, and moved to Louisiana to start a law practice here at age sixty-two? It was baffling. Although he was not dressed like a professional, wearing shorts and a T-shirt, he was charming and intelligent and should have been an ideal tenant. He explained that he had been up this way biking when he called. But the overall impression of himself that he presented to me initially was quite misleading, and I will admit to having been effectively misled.

After a pleasant conversation, we walked back to look at the Cottage. He said it was perfect for him and he’d like to rent it. He asked if he could give me a small check as a good-faith down payment to hold it for him, and then he’d come back the next day with the balance of the deposit and the first month’s rent. I was agreeable to that. After all, he was a lawyer, so he was presumably a man of good character, honest, reliable, and trustworthy. And, in reality, I was relieved to think that I could avoid going through the weekend meeting with other prospective tenants. I called them and told them the Cottage was rented.

He didn’t come the next day but called to tell me he’d be here the day after. My plan was to have the Cottage rented for April 1 with the deposit and first month’s rent paid.