Even on the brightest of days, sunlight rarely falls on the streets of Shadyside. Giant oaks rise everywhere, offering a dome of respite, and, settled behind electronic gates, the neighborhood is almost preternaturally quiet and peaceful. The only cars belong to residents, and parents allow their children out during the day and in the evening without concern. At Halloween, trick-or-treating occurs exclusively inside the gates — where parents say it's safe. Where everyone knows everyone else.
Bought in 1916 by oil tycoon J.S. Cullinan, Shadyside was intended to be exactly as it is today. Where "congenial parties" could raise families inside one of its 16 houses, designed by famous architects like John Staub or Harrie T. Lindeberg. The homes still reflect the tenor of the time, with grand entranceways and wings intended for fleets of servants. It's a neighborhood steeped in history; Howard Hughes married Ella Rice here in 1925 — right in Tony Petrello's front yard no less. But as the city grew around the neighborhood, privacy and safety assumed greater importance.
Photo by Patrick Bertolino
...and the sheer amount of space they have — 17,000 square feet — is enormous.
Photo by Patrick Bertolino
Tony and Cindy Petrello have attempted to give their disabled daughter, Carena, the best care possible — and that has included this atrium where their daughter once exercised.
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In 1983, the Shadyside property owners' association bought the only two streets inside the community, Remington and Longfellow lanes, from the city, officially making the neighborhood private property. Gates were erected, meaning a stroll through Shadyside is actually trespassing, explained a private security officer who recently escorted me out of the neighborhood. That sense of exclusivity, or as Heritage Texas Properties puts it, "mystique," has attracted some of the city's most important people for nearly a century, and still does. Prolific writer and theologian John Bradshaw lives here, as does Donald Short, the former CEO of Minute Maid.
But even they, along with numerous other residents, expressed reluctance to discuss what happened in the Shadyside litigation involving Tony Petrello, Rahul Nath and the Pruckas, which has in some ways injected rumor and intrigue into this otherwise calm community. People have their theories about what really caused the lawsuits, but no one actually knows. "Once the litigation begins, no one talks," one Shadyside resident said.
On one side of that dispute there's Petrello, 57, who pockets $16 million in annual income and has launched at least five separate civil suits from New York to Houston. They've ranged from grand to not-so-grand. He once sued Enrique Senker and Senkgard, Inc. over a dispute involving his alarm system. One of the highest-paid CEOs in the nation, Petrello makes 22 times more than the median executive salary at Nabors and $24 million annually in realized compensation, according to data provided by GMI Ratings, which tracks executive pay. "Nabors has been one of the poster boys of excessive compensation," said Paul Hodgson of GMI Ratings. "This is not how you compensate a team. That's how you compensate a star, and servants."
And on the other side are the Pruckas, who made millions from engineering — and Rahul Nath. Once peer-edited as one of "America's Top Doctors," Nath, 55, has been one of the nation's leading researchers on conditions restricting range of motion in the brachial plexus, a dense network of nerve fibers running from the spine to the armpit. He's gotten loads of accolades. In 2007, both CNN and People did pieces on him after he offered to operate, for free, on an Iraqi infant.
But he's also gotten loads of criticism, and if any of the Texas Medical Board's pending allegations against him are true, Rahul Nath may have an entirely different, previously unknown personality. The board's 2010 complaint says Nath "performed prohibited procedures after notice to cease," exhibited "disregard of patient care and selection in the interest of financial gain," and evinced "a pattern of charging patients excessive sums of money to perform experimental surgeries."
Nath's lawyer, Daniel Shea, countered, "It's all bullshit," later saying, "He's the victim of a vendetta."
Nath's legal troubles, however, go deeper than problems with the Texas Medical Board. In 2006, in Harris County, Nath sued a former associate, Texas Children's Hospital, and the Baylor College of Medicine alleging he'd been defamed — a claim he lost, and in spectacular fashion. State District Judge Steven Kirkland said Nath's "groundless" accusations were "brought in bad faith" by a "bully," and ordered the doctor to pay $1.3 million in attorney fees.
It gets worse. Nath's former office manager, Brenda DeVaul, entered some damning deposition against him in that case. She described a doctor who "frequently" skipped out on patients to play golf, called resident doctors "lazy motherfuckers" and had expressed racism. DeVaul said Nath, whose private practice apparently made $6 million in 2006, was reluctant to see blacks and Mexicans because "they're on Medicaid" and don't pay as well.
In one of the stranger moments of that deposition, DeVaul said Nath had told her to arrange a meeting with — because why not? — Tiger Woods so he and Nath could play golf together:
Q: Was he kidding or serious?
A: He was serious. Because he wanted to play with Tiger Woods. Because he said, "He is good."
...
Q: Did you express the impossibility of —
A: yes.
Q: — setting up a Nath-Woods golf match?
A: Yes I did.
But that apparent disconnect with reality doesn't seem aberrant when one analyzes the Shadyside litigation, how it came about and what happened afterward. Nath and Petrello, in perhaps the greatest testimony to their litigious natures, had exactly one meeting before the lawsuits began. They haven't spoken since, instead corresponding exclusively through a tizzy of amended claims and lawyerese. Indeed, even for this article, their refusal to discuss anything hasn't been surprising. What has been: Almost no one's wanted to talk, and especially not if his or her name would be printed. Why risk a million-dollar defamation suit? several people asked.
