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Ownership Wrongs
Continued from page 1
Published on October 06, 2005
She fought back with her only loaded weapon: a yellow Magic Marker. Mickelson adorned the window of her condo with drawings of lemons. And that's when the relationship between Tremont Tower and the Lemon Ladies really went sour.
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Josh Harkinson
Heather Mickelson is barred from her condo by the building's security guard.
Subject(s):
Tremont TowerTremont's revenge began in a flash. A Tremont employee photographed Mickelson's company car parked at one of Fogal's protests. The image was lobbed into the inboxes of Hilti Tools. Why, the e-mail wanted to know, was the employee of a construction equipment company protesting against a company that uses construction equipment?
Hilti's staff of good old boys was scandalized. After a few icy days in the office, Mickelson gave two weeks' notice. She was told to leave the next day. "It was like I had done something wrong," she says. "It was horrible."
Less than a month later, the Tremont Tower Homeowners Association served Mickelson with a lawsuit for violating the association's rules regarding window dressings. The next day she called the association's attorney, Bill Chesney, and offered to remove the lemons if he dropped the suit. She says he refused.
Chesney declined to comment for this story.
Jobless, Mickelson devoted all of her time to fighting back. She commissioned a professional mold test, which verified that her condo contained four varieties of toxic mold. She represented herself at her lemon trial against Chesney and warded off all financial penalties. Meanwhile, People magazine featured Casimiro's Tremont in a story called "Contractors from Hell," and the Better Business Bureau revoked the company's membership, along with that of other related companies connected to Casimiro.
Casimiro says his image has been unfairly tarnished by Mickelson and Fogal, whom he likens to the 9/11 terrorists, and contends that the condo is solidly built and mold-free. He says he would be the first person to sue Turner Construction, the tower's builder, if Turner's test had turned up mold. But, he adds, "There was nothing."
Mickelson is skeptical. If Casimiro is so concerned about the mold, why is he trusting Turner's test and ignoring hers?
(Turner spokesperson Terry Kuflic told the Houston Press that the company would address Mickelson's complaints if she contacted Turner directly.)
Even so, Mickelson is running out of time. Between April and June, she put her condo on the market and couldn't find a single interested buyer. She stopped sending her lender, Aurora Loan Services, her $2,000-a-month house payment. And Casimiro amped up the fight.
Late this summer, his homeowners association notified Aurora that Mickelson was leaving the door to her balcony open during rainstorms, in an apparent effort to breed mold, he says. The association added that it would hold Aurora legally liable for the damage should it foreclose on the apartment.
Mickelson describes Casimiro's allegations as "absolutely ridiculous." She never left the door open during storms, she says, and if she wanted to breed mold, she could have just dumped buckets of water on the floor.
What's clear is that Chesney, the association attorney, sent a written request to the management company on September 1 to ban Mickelson. The condo still contained her kitchenware, appliances and furniture. "Our people should tell her this issue is between her and Aurora," Chesney wrote in an e-mail, "and we will not assist her in accessing her unit without an agreement signed by BOTH Mickelson and Aurora."
Yet when Mickelson contacted Aurora, loan officials told her they had never instructed Tremont to ban her from the condo, she says. The condo isn't due for foreclosure until December at the earliest. An Aurora official declined to comment on the eviction issue, citing a corporate policy against getting involved in disputes between clients.
Asked whether there was any legal way someone such as Mickelson could be banned from her condo, Judge Gary Michael Block, who presided over Mickelson's lemon trial, said: "The short answer is no. She is still the owner of the place, whether she is currently living there or not. If she has got her association dues paid, there's no way" she could be barred.
The official in charge of evictions in Montrose, Chief Deputy J.C. Mosier of Harris County Constable Precinct 1, says Mickelson needs to hire an attorney and obtain a court order before he can force Tremont to let her in.
"I want to give up sometimes on this," says Mickelson, who has moved in with her boyfriend, "and I think it's never going to be resolved, but I'm still so angry about it, that's what's kept my momentum."
So she continues sticking it to Tremont where it hurts. After landing a new job at the architecture firm of the Lemon Lady's husband, Mickelson now spends a portion of her salary running off fresh copies of flyers that say, "Tremont was one of the worst financial decisions I ever made."
Turned away from her condo three weeks ago, she stood on the sidewalk across the street holding one of the flyers as a man carrying a bag of take-out walked by. "Do you sell properties here?" he asked.
"I can give you a flyer," she said.
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