“I already drafted the complaint,” Harlan said. “I wrote it two months ago. I just needed her to give me the last page.” Harlan Griggs filed the civil complaint on Monday morning. 47 pages, seven causes of action.
Named defendants Patricia Davenport individually and in her capacity as HOA president. Todd Davenport, her husband, who sat on the Palmetto Crest Architectural Review Committee, and had co-signed three of the fraudulent HOA checks, and the Palmetto Crest Estates Homeowners Association as an entity. The causes of action read like a greatest hits album of everything Patricia had done wrong. Harassment through repeated frivolous complaints, defamation through false public statements about James’s property, tortious interference with property rights, unauthorized survey and trespass, real estate fraud through dual misrepresentation in MLS listings, embezzlement of HOA funds, and abuse of process through the filing of a false police report. Total damages sought $1.4 million.
That number included treble damages for the trespass and property damage under South Carolina law compensatory damages for the harassment campaign and disgorgement of every commission Patricia had earned using James’s property as a selling point. The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office filed criminal charges the same week. One count of filing a false police report, the 911 call, one count of misuse of emergency services, and after Harlan’s complaint drew the attention of the county solicitor’s office three additional counts of embezzlement from a non-profit organization, the HOA fund theft. Patricia was served at her home on a Wednesday afternoon. The process server later told Harlan that she opened the door in a white linen pantsuit, saw the papers and said, “This is a misunderstanding.”
It was the same word she’d used when the paving contractor confronted her. It was the same word she’d used when code enforcement cleared James’s property. It was the same word she’d been using for four years to cover every lie, every theft, and every abuse of the position her neighbors trusted her with. It wasn’t a misunderstanding. It was a reckoning.
The HOA board held an emergency meeting five days after the complaint was filed. Nora Pemberton, the quiet secretary who had been cataloging Patricia’s behavior for years, presented the financial records she’d been safeguarding. She laid out every fraudulent check, every phantom budget line item, every dollar that went from the community’s treasury into Patricia’s personal accounts. The room was silent except for the sound of 109 homeowners realizing they’d been robbed by the woman they’d elected to protect them. The vote to remove Patricia from the board was unanimous, 109 to zero.
She wasn’t present for the vote. Her attorney had advised her not to attend. The South Carolina Real Estate Commission suspended Patricia’s license pending investigation. The complaint Harlan had filed detailed 14 transactions in which she’d misrepresented James’s property as a community amenity, a violation so clear that the commission’s enforcement division didn’t need to deliberate. Her license was suspended within 30 days.
