During cross-examination, David asked him whether he had ever personally requested a title search for the eastern tract. Garrett said he believed the team had handled it. David showed him the project memorandum recommending further verification. Garrett said he did not remember that specific page. David then placed the property survey in front of him and asked whether he disputed that the cabins stood on Whitmore land. Garrett shifted in his chair and said the legal interpretation remained contested.
"Did you ask Mr. Whitmore for permission?" David asked. "No," Garrett said. "Did you pay him for the use of that land?" Again the answer was no.
"Did you tell the cabin purchasers that your association had not obtained a recorded deed to the soil beneath their investments?"
Garrett looked toward Westfield, then said the purchasers had received comprehensive disclosure packages. David held up one of those packages and asked him to locate the missing deed in its exhibits.
The room stayed silent as Garrett turned pages. I could hear the hum of the ventilation system and the faint rustle of Patricia's coat several rows behind me. Eventually Garrett said the ownership issue was more complicated than David was suggesting. David agreed that some property issues could be complicated, then asked whether a title search had ever been completed. Garrett did not provide one. For a man who had built his confidence on numbers, that absence was becoming difficult to hide.
On the second day, Westfield called Dr. Raymond Koch, an engineer and consultant who specialized in Colorado water-rights matters. Dr. Koch explained that a reservoir could involve separate public and private interests and that neither dam ownership nor shoreline title necessarily answered every question about recreational water use. He was right about that, as far as the general principle went. He then argued that the historic recreational use of Lake Whitmore and the economic dependence of the resort should have led me to pursue a less disruptive solution before undertaking a full drawdown.
David questioned him about the specific rights at issue. Dr. Koch acknowledged that he had not found a deed granting Mountain Vista possession of the eastern shoreline. He also agreed that the lake was an artificial reservoir created by the Whitmore dam rather than a natural lake that had existed independently of it. Asked whether he could identify a law automatically making every reservoir over five hundred acres public property, he said the actual legal analysis was more nuanced. The simple rule Garrett had repeated in his office did not exist in the form he had described.
David next asked whether Dr. Koch had inspected Whitmore Dam before the drawdown began. He had not. Had he reviewed Martin's full maintenance scope and the findings made after the water receded? He had reviewed summaries, not the underlying field records.
Did he dispute that a managed drawdown could be appropriate for comprehensive inspection of an aging dam when the responsible authorities authorized the operation? He did not dispute that proposition. The issue, he said, was whether this drawdown had been necessary at that particular time.
Martin testified later that day and answered that question without pretending the timing was coincidence. He described the age of the dam, the inspections that had been performed, the reasons a fuller assessment was justified, and the scope of work completed after August 1. He acknowledged that the property dispute accelerated the scheduling and