that I had discussed the effect on the resort. He also explained that the plan had been reviewed, supervised, monitored, and modified as needed to protect people and the environment. When Westfield asked whether Martin had been hired to provide cover for a business dispute, he replied that engineering findings could be tested against the physical structure and the inspection record.
"The concrete doesn't change its condition because two people dislike each other," Martin said. The judge looked up at that. Martin continued that we had documented real maintenance needs and complied with the operative requirements identified by the responsible authorities. The financial consequences to Mountain Vista were neither a substitute for technical judgment nor something an engineer could ignore when planning the work. His testimony did not make the drawdown look effortless. It made it look like an actual project.
The third day belonged largely to the cabin purchasers and the physical evidence. Patricia Moreno took the stand in a plain gray jacket, carrying no more than a small notebook. She described investing $195,000, trusting the sales materials, and believing the cabin would help support her retirement. When asked about the day the lake disappeared from her promised lakefront view, she paused so long that I thought she might not be able to continue. Then she said the hardest part had been learning nobody could give her a straight answer about what she actually owned.
Westfield used her testimony to show the human cost of the drawdown. David's questions focused on what the HOA had disclosed to her before she paid. Patricia said she had received documents describing her cabin and a right to participate in the rental operation, but no deed to the land. She had not hired a separate title attorney because the sales agent said the arrangements were standard. David asked whether she had ever spoken to me before purchasing. She said no, then looked briefly in my direction.
Two other cabin owners described cancelled income, loan payments, and the shock of seeing photographs of the empty basin on their phones. I listened as carefully as I could. These people had not decided to pour concrete onto my property. They had bought what appeared to be professionally developed vacation homes, believing the people selling them had handled the legal questions. That did not change my title, but it complicated any satisfaction I might take in the HOA's collapse. I could not look at Patricia and pretend all the suffering belonged neatly on Garrett's side of the courtroom.
Elena followed with the boundary evidence. She showed how her crew had recovered the recorded monuments, checked the old descriptions, and located the cabins within the Whitmore tract. Her diagrams were precise enough that even the people in the back row could see the difference between the county planning layer and the legal boundary. The nearest cabin stood inside the line, and the farthest did, too. When Westfield asked whether ordinary people might have been confused by the maps, Elena said that was why a title survey was normally obtained before construction.