When you can’t love your neighbor, there’s always the courts.
Two north Alamance County families took their dispute over gates across a private road, basically a driveway, to the Appeals Court of North Carolina this year – for the second time.
After four years of back and forth in the courts, the appeals court decided the gates have to come down, but that doesn’t mean better ones couldn’t go up.
The backstory – at least the part that’s admissible – is in a 113-page packet of court records.
The gate went up in 2017 across a long private driveway off Roney Lineberry Road to keep Bruce and Susan Taylor’s horses in their field. But that driveway is the only access neighbors including Thomas Hiatt and Jewel Hollars had to get to the road, and they had an easement guaranteeing them access.
The Taylors gave Hiatt and Hollars the gate code but not a remote control to open and close it like the one they used, and gave to another neighbor. So, they had to get out of their car, drive through and get out again to close it. According to court records, the keypad is in a difficult spot to reach, can be difficult to operate and unreliable.
The courts first heard about these gates when Bruce Taylor sued Hiatt and Hollars for $25,000 after she put the gate code on Facebook. They counter-sued, and a judge ordered the Taylors to take the gates down.
Instead, the Taylors appealed the order. Hiatt and Hollars petitioned to have them held in contempt of court for keeping the gates in place. Judge Jim Roberson ordered the Taylors to surrender at the Alamance County Detention Center in the summer of 2018 or take them down.
About a month later, Bruce Taylor charged Hollars with trespassing – driving her car outside the 30-foot easement when she turned around in the driveway – and a second time in the fall. That time, deputies arrested her. She sued for malicious prosecution
The first time the appeals court got the case in 2019, it sent it back to Alamance County to clear up vagaries in what the various easement agreements made over the years allowed and whether the gates represented an “unreasonable interference” in Hiatt and Hollars use of their property. The Alamance County Superior Court ruled the gates weren’t necessary for the Taylors to enjoy their property, unreasonably interfered with Hiatt and Hollars enjoying theirs and needed to come down.
A lot came out in that trial like this was not the first time the driveway took the neighbors to court. The Taylors previously sued Hiatt in small claims court to help pay for work on the driveway – work Hiatt and his father didn’t think necessary. That’s when the relationship soured. And Hollars admitted she not only put the gate code on Facebook, she threatened to put the gate code on a billboard and did things to keep the gates from closing, though not when the horses could get out.
What didn’t come out of that trial was the final word, because the Taylors appealed again.
This time the appeals court agreed Hiatt and Hollars shouldn’t have to put up with the inconvenience of the gates as they are, but the Taylors could put up ones that are easier to operate. The appeals court's opinion does not lay out exactly what that would mean, so it's not necessarily the final word either.
Isaac Groves is the Alamance County government watchdog reporter for the Times-News and the USA Today Network. Call or text 919-998-8039 with tips and comments or follow him on Twitter @TNIGroves.
This article originally appeared on Times-News: Alamance County families take private road dispute to appeals court, again
