Bill White, the mayor at the time, had only this to say in an e-mail to the Houston Press: "Municipal law does prohibit some types of discrimination against disabled people, and I support enforcement of those laws."
What else is known: Berg and Petrello are important political forces in Houston. Both were friends of Bill White before his political career and benefactors during it, according to campaign contribution records. Petrello even threw White a large fund-raiser at his Shadyside mansion in the mid-2000s. But Berg, especially, is a renowned donor. He poured nearly $100,000 into local and national Democratic causes in late 2007 and 2008, (most of which went to Obama's presidential race) and his links to White extend beyond money. In 2006, White asked Berg to work some pollution cases pro bono. Berg, who's done pro bono for the city for decades, told The Texas Tribune in 2010, "I know Bill White very well."
Photo by Patrick Bertolino
Tony Petrello's house (left) and Rahul Nath's home (right) have little space between them. If Petrello ultimately succeeds in buying Nath's house, he'll have the largest estate in Shadyside.
Photo by Patrick Bertolino
Tony and Cindy's art collection is renowned in Houston...
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With the added discrimination wrinkle, the case eventually got scheduled for trial, and an unusual cast of characters assembled involving colorful lawyers, a disabled girl, an embattled doctor, a real estate agent, an oil tycoon — and, finally, one extremely puzzled photographer named Patrick Bertolino. Doing a photography session for the defense, Bertolino was dispatched to Petrello's Shadyside house to get pictures of the interior to evidence whether or not Petrello did, in fact, need Nath's house for his daughter's rehabilitation. What happened next was both hilarious and elucidating.
Much yelling. "No! You can't take that picture!" Bertolino recalls David Berg screaming at him as he tried to photograph a sun-washed atrium strewn with items for Carena's therapy. Bertolino then attempted to document a hallway, and some of Petrello's artwork landed in his lens finder. "No!" Berg yelled. "Delete that picture. Delete that!"
Bertolino didn't know what to do. Behind him, everyone was yelling at everyone else. Berg screamed at the defending attorneys, Murray Fogler and Mano DeAyala, who bellowed back. "It was very surreal," Fogler said. Petrello, in a blue bottom-up and black dress pants, glowered, saying he didn't want his art photographed, and fretted over security. Bertolino became so flummoxed he didn't know whether to delete the images, and ultimately left exhausted and perplexed.
"If there's one story I share about all the sessions I've done, which is like 500, this is the story," he later said. "I feel for his daughter, but I don't know. It's a mansion. It's a mansion, man. It's a fucking mansion."
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The days leading up to the trial got yet stranger. Samuel Kent was the first judge who took up the Shadyside lawsuit, but was soon disgraced in a sexual-harassment scandal and sent to prison as the first federal judge convicted of federal sex crimes. The case then spilled over to U.S. District Judge David Hittner, and finally, on February 23, 2010 — more than two years after the Naths had moved in — the week-long trial began.
Before the stand were three tables, each with eight chairs. Crammed into them were lawyers upon lawyers, defendants and a suited Tony Petrello with Cindy at his side.
At hand, David Berg intoned in his opening statements, were events more sweeping than a housing dispute. This, rather, was a case of discrimination, and things took on a very dramatic and expansive air. To prove the allegations, Berg called Petrello to the stand.
Petrello said Carena's needs were many, as were the demands of his $12 million estate, which included a pool, tennis courts, a garden maze, a greenhouse and something called a "carriage house." Petrello needed six staffers to maintain it all. How could Carena, with all of her needs, live in a house of such complexity after he and his wife die? She couldn't. And that's why he needed the Naths' house, which, he said, would act as a "playroom" for Carena for several years but would later be her home. "It's just another structure," Petrello said. "And I am going to use it for my daughter and her therapists and whatever else." He said they all knew it, too. The Naths, the Pruckas, McGee — all of them. They'd conspired against him.
But had they? And even if they had known Petrello's plans and ignored them, would that have constituted discrimination? Can the law determine whom you sell your house to? Were the Petrellos victims of a hate crime? These questions were raised time and again during the trial but never really answered. Instead, the lawyers did what lawyers do best: They muddied everything up in confusion. Extraneous comments were entered. Bad jokes were made. As Rahul Nath's lawyer, John Raley, in the heat and hyperbole of closing arguments, said of Berg: "He morphs time. He morphs space. He takes a word here and moves it over here and inserts it."
At the end, apparently no one was sure what had transpired. Just that they were befuddled. The jury was hung, and the case was ruled a mistrial. Later, after another judge took up the suit, it was immediately dismissed. Federal Judge Kenneth Hoyt said Petrello hadn't made a written offer and therefore wasn't covered under any housing fairness law — nation, state or local. Boom: Case closed.
