I said: I want to know the value of a court order requiring demolition at their expense.
He said: the cabin cost approximately $2.4 million to build. Demolition and removal, in this terrain, with the haul requirements, probably runs another $150,000 to $200,000 based on what I know of contractors in the region.
He said: plus the damages for unauthorized use, which we’re calculating based on the rental income during the period of occupation.
He said: the total exposure they’re looking at is north of $3 million.
I said: and the $180,000 is what they’re offering against $3 million in exposure.
He said: yes.
I said: they still don’t understand what they’re dealing with.
He said: what are you dealing with?
I said: Sutton, I have a Class A demolition license. I have a Class A licensed crew. I have the Komatsu with the shears and both D6s and the dozers and the dump trucks. All of it sitting in my equipment shop a thousand yards from the cabin.
He was quiet.
He said: Holt.
I said: if the court orders demolition, the court orders the trespasser to bear the cost of demolition. If I am the demolition contractor, I bill the HOA for my time and equipment and labor.
He said: at Class A licensed contractor rates.
I said: at Class A licensed contractor rates. Which are what they are in this market.
He said: that’s elegant.
I said: it’s appropriate.
He said: I need to look at the conflict of interest questions.
I said: look at them.
He looked at them.
He called me two days later.
He said: there’s no conflict. You’re the injured party suing for remediation of trespass. The court orders the trespasser to pay for the remediation. You are a licensed contractor capable of performing the remediation. Nothing in the law requires you to hire an outside contractor.
He said: in fact, there’s an argument that you have an obligation to mitigate costs, which means using the most cost-effective qualified contractor available.
He said: which happens to be you.
I said: yes.
He said: are you prepared to go to court?
I said: I’ve been prepared since November 1st.
The trial was in February.
The HOA hired an attorney from Billings who specialized in property disputes and who had what Sutton described as a reputation for working the courtroom rather than working the facts.
I am not a courtroom person. I had been in a courtroom twice before in my life, once for a boundary dispute that was resolved before it went to testimony and once as a witness in a neighbor’s contract case.
But I know documentation.
I sat at the plaintiff’s table with the binder and the photographs and the deeds and the survey and the permits I had pulled for every structure I had ever built on the property, which demonstrated that I understood the permit process and had followed it consistently for twenty-one years.
The HOA’s attorney argued that the survey error was good-faith mistake, that the HOA had relied on what they believed to be valid documentation, that the appropriate remedy was compensation rather than demolition.
Sutton argued the law.
Which said that unauthorized construction on private property without valid permits was not a mistake to be compensated but a trespass to be remediated, and that remediation meant removal.
Judge Callan heard four days of testimony.
She took two weeks.
She issued thirty-seven pages.
The first seven pages were findings of fact, and they were specific.
The Aldridge family had held the land since 1916.
The 1962 survey was valid and established the boundary clearly.
The cabin, the dock, and the septic were all constructed on Aldridge land without valid permits and without the property owner’s knowledge or consent.
The deputy surveyor whose signature appeared on the HOA’s plat had not conducted an actual survey.
The HOA had been aware, from early in the construction process, that the location of the cabin was potentially in dispute, and had proceeded anyway.
This last finding was the one that mattered most.
Because it established that the trespass was not merely negligent but intentional, and intentional trespass has different remediation requirements than accidental encroachment.
The order was for full removal of all structures, including the dock and the septic system, at the HOA’s expense.
It was also for damages, calculated from the date the cabin was completed to the date of the injunction.
The damages were based on the rental income the HOA had collected: $1,400 a night, booked solid, for the period in question.
Plus attorney’s fees.
Sutton called me after the ruling.
He said: Holt. Harriet Callan just wrote a case that’s going to be cited in Flathead County for thirty years.
I said: is it over?
He said: they have thirty days to appeal. They’ll appeal.
He said: and then they’ll settle.
I said: when they settle, what happens to the cabin?
He said: they have to remove it regardless. The injunction stands pending appeal. They can’t rent it, they can’t sell it, they can’t use it. It’s sitting on your pasture generating nothing for them and costing them HOA fees to maintain.
He said: they’ll settle fast.
He was right.
Twelve days after the ruling, the HOA’s attorney called Sutton.
The settlement they proposed was comprehensive.
Full admission of trespass.
Agreement to bear all costs of demolition and removal.
Payment of the full damage amount as calculated by Judge Callan.
And the contract for demolition and removal to go to the qualified licensed contractor of the property owner’s choosing.
Sutton called me.
He said: Holt. Read the last clause.
I read it.
I said: the contractor of the property owner’s choosing.
He said: yes.
I said: I’ll get you the bid.
I spent a day on the numbers.
Not because the numbers were complicated but because I am a man who does not rush important documents.
The bid was for the demolition and removal of a 2,400-square-foot timber frame cabin, a 60-foot dock, an unpermitted septic system, and all associated gravel drives and site disturbance.
I itemized the equipment time at the going Class A licensed contractor rate for the region.
I itemized the labor hours for my crew.
I itemized the disposal fees for the demolished materials.
I itemized the site restoration, because once the structures were gone my pasture needed to be returned to its prior condition, which meant removing the gravel drive and the disturbed soil and reseeding the native grasses.
I submitted the bid.
The HOA accepted it.
They did not have a choice, legally, but they also did not counter, which told me that somewhere in the process they had found out what they were dealing with and had decided that arguing was not going to help.
The demolition began on a Monday in late March.
The snow had softened in the Flathead Valley by then, the specific March softening that is not spring but is the beginning of spring’s argument, and the pasture was firm enough for heavy equipment without being frozen.
I walked to the cabin early that morning.
I had never gone inside.
I want to note this because it is a specific choice I had made, the choice to not enter a structure that was on my land but was not my structure, because entering it would have meant participating in it in a way I was not willing to participate in.
I stood outside it.
It was, objectively, a beautiful cabin.
The timber work was good, the joinery careful, the stone chimney solid. Someone had built it well, in the specific way of craftsmen who do not adjust their quality based on whether the project is legitimate.
I was sorry for the craftsmen.
I was not sorry for what was about to happen.
I walked back to the equipment shop.
I climbed into the Komatsu.
Linnea was standing at the edge of the pasture in her coat.
Pete was beside her.
I drove the Komatsu to the cabin.
I want to describe what demolition actually is, because most people have not seen it and because understanding it is part of understanding the story.
Demolition is not destruction.
It is the specific and systematic disassembly of a structure, beginning with the elements that must be removed intact and ending with the elements that can be broken down and removed in pieces. It requires the same precision as construction, the same understanding of how things are put together and how they need to come apart.
The shears on the Komatsu’s bucket were designed for this.
Heavy steel, capable of cutting through timber and metal and concrete without the indiscriminate destruction of a wrecking ball.
I started with the deck.
The deck came off in sections, the shears cutting cleanly through the bolts and the joinery and the planking, and my crew loaded the sections into the dump trucks for disposal.
The chimney came next.
Stone chimneys have to come down from the top, section by section, because dropping them wholesale risks scattering material and damaging the surrounding site.
The upper floor.
The main structure.
It took two and a half days.
On the third day, when the cabin was down to its foundation and the foundation was being excavated and removed, Dale Forsythe appeared at the edge of my pasture.
He stood there watching.
He was not driving the Range Rover today.
He was wearing a Carhartt jacket that looked new.
I drove the Komatsu to the pasture edge and idled it down.
I climbed out.
I walked to where he was standing.
He said: Mr. Aldridge.
He had gone back to Mr. Aldridge.
I said: Dale.
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