Polk seniors carry regrets, $366,000 burden after lawsuit against mobile-home park fails
Susanne Driskell was not prepared for what awaited her on a recent morning as she checked her bank account balance.
On the screen of her laptop computer, Driskell found a shocking sight: The account she shares with her husband, Jim Driskell, had been frozen with a negative balance of $732,507.36.
It was not a computer error, and the couple’s account had not been hacked. The massive deficit reflected the continuing fallout from their involvement in a lawsuit against the management of Schalamar Creek and others involved with the mobile-home community in which the Driskells have lived since 2016.
The couple said they reluctantly joined the lawsuit, encouraged by an Orlando lawyer who specializes in suing mobile-home parks, one who was temporarily suspended by The Florida Bar earlier this year. They and other plaintiffs said that the lawyer, Daniel W. Perry, assured them they faced no financial risk in signing their names to the suit.
The legal challenge never got a hearing in court, as judges blocked it on procedural grounds, and this year the Driskells and several other plaintiffs were hit with an order to cover the legal bills of the defendants, a sum of about $366,000. (Banks are allowed to withhold double the amount of a collections garnishment.)
At a time when the couples, most of them 75 or older, expected to be enjoying post-retirement adventures, they say they are instead living with acute anxiety and uncertainty, knowing that collections agencies are now coming after their finances.
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Jim Driskell, 76, said the “sword of Damocles” is hanging over his and his wife’s heads.
“We’re living looking over our shoulder,” he said. “Can we go on a cruise? No. We don't know today what other shoe is going to drop from these collection attorneys.”
Susanne, 72, added: “The retirement we had — I mean, it's suspect at this point. We don't know what's going to happen. So we're very hesitant about spending any money, doing anything, going anywhere.”
Another plaintiff, Linda Gledhill, 75, said the failed lawsuit is a constant source of anxiety.
“It’s what you wake up with in the morning, and it really affects how you live your life,” she said.
Origins of a lawsuit
Schalamar Creek is a senior community covering about 500 acres on the north side of U.S. 92 between Lakeland and Auburndale. Dating to the 1980s, it contains about 800 manufactured homes, a community center and a golf course.
Like many such communities in Florida, Schalamar Creek has gone from local ownership to control by an out-of-state corporation. Northwestern Mutual, a financial-services company based in Milwaukee, bought the property in 2011 for nearly $58 million, according to Polk County records.
The owners later installed Murex Properties, a company based in Fort Myers, to manage Schalamar Creek, a function Murex serves at many other senior communities. The lawsuit stems from management practices Murex undertook that many residents considered unfair.
Communities with more than 25 lots must provide prospectuses under Florida Statute 723, which contains a list of detailed regulations covering the management of mobile-home parks and the rights of residents. The guides offer a summary of rules and regulations for tenants.
Schalamar Creek has issued six prospectuses since it opened, and the most recent allows the management to impose steeper increases in rental rates than the previous ones, Driskell said. He and other plaintiffs alleged that Murex employees, starting around 2015, began encouraging residents to sign a new prospectus that changed the terms of their leases. (Residents own their homes but lease their lots.)
Plaintiffs who spoke to The Ledger said some residents didn’t understand the details of what they were signing and that the Murex staff assured them it contained no significant changes.
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Murex employees also pressured residents who had given notice of leaving into signing a new prospectus that would lock in higher rent rates for the buyers of their homes, the plaintiffs alleged. The employees told some residents that the company would not list the properties for sale without the signing of a new prospectus, and in some cases they paid residents to sign the document, Jim Driskell claimed.
Residents complained to the Schalamar Creek Homeowners Association’s board of directors. At some point, a member of the HOA board learned about Perry, who regularly spoke to such groups to encourage the filing of lawsuits against the owners or management of mobile-home parks, Gledhill said.
The HOA board began discussing the possibility of a lawsuit, and Gledhill said that most Schalamar Creek residents favored the idea.
“I was on the board at the time, and I got emails from residents who were saying, ‘We need to sue,’” Gledhill said. “People wanted to do it. So I was representing what they wanted to do.”
Lawyer makes his pitch
The Driskells moved to Schalamar in early 2016, and other residents learned that Jim had retired after 50 years of working in the apartment industry, buying, selling and managing properties throughout the South. He said other HOA members had already met Perry and were considering a lawsuit before he joined the board.
Driskell said he attended law school, though he didn’t graduate, and had been involved in federal litigation during his career. Because of that background, board members asked him to join a meeting at which Perry spoke, urging the HOA to hire him and file a lawsuit.
Driskell said he had reservations about the proposed suit, which Perry said he would file under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, often used in criminal cases involving organized crime.
“I listened to Mr. Perry’s stump speech and said to them, in all confidence, that I felt Mr. Perry was an outlier,” Driskell said.
He said he was also skeptical of Perry’s offer to handle the lawsuit for a flat retainer fee of $10,000.
Perry, 65, is a former Orange County judge who was publicly reprimanded in the early 1990s after the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission ruled that he improperly used his contempt powers on at least six occasions.
After being elected to the HOA board a few months later, Driskell joined a committee that met with Perry. Like Gledhill, Driskell said that most residents expressed support for a lawsuit. He said residents had repeatedly complained to the Murex staff but felt they had no other means of having their concerns addressed.
Perry filed the suit in 2019 in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, based in Tampa, listing as defendants Northwestern Mutual, Murex Properties and local employees, the family that previously owned Schalamar Creek and the Florida Manufactured Housing Association, an industry group.
The lawyer cited the RICO Act, alleging that the parties had colluded to adopt practices aimed at getting residents to sign the latest prospectus, leading to higher rent collections. The lawsuit included a complaint under the Americans With Disabilities Act, based on the lack of an elevator in Schalamar Creek’s three-floor community center.
Perry filed a class-action lawsuit, which would include all Schalamar Creek residents as plaintiffs, but a federal judge rejected that strategy, ruling that not all residents had been affected by the issues raised in the suit.
Offering false assurances?
The judge allowed Perry to modify the suit, and the lawyer then solicited six HOA board members and two other residents to serve as individual plaintiffs, Driskell and others said. During discussions with Perry, Gledhill sent the lawyer a text message, asking, “If we were to lose, what is our personal financial liability for attorney fees, etc.?”
She shared the text exchange from July 2019, including Perry’s response: “None. If you lose, the judge won’t punish you. He will punish me by POSSIBLY making me pay Murex’s attorney’s fees.”
Gledhill, the Driskells and another plaintiff, Sherry Atwood, cited that as the moment when they claim Perry misled them into an action they now deeply regret.
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“None of us would have signed up if we had thought we had any financial liability,” said Gledhill, who has since moved out of state with her husband, Donald.
Atwood, 80, spoke ruefully of accepting the lawyer’s assurances.
“We were naive enough, and we come from a generation when people looked you in the eye and they told you the truth,” Atwood said.
Jim Driskell supported Gledhill’s description of events.
“We were all very concerned about liability,” he said. “(Perry) assured us, both verbally and in writing, that no federal judge would find elderly people liable.”
Perry also told the plaintiffs that if they faced any financial penalties, he would cover them, Driskell said. He recalled the lawyer saying he would do that though his wife would not be happy about it.
After being reached by phone, Perry did not respond to emailed questions from The Ledger.
Driskell said the lawyer also erred by including couples together as plaintiffs, rather than leaving one spouse off to limit the potential negative financial effects of a lost case.
“That's something a first-year law student should have known,” Jim Driskell said. “You never put both husband and wife on a lawsuit because it breaches the protections under Florida law for a husband and wife.”
Driskell also alleged that Perry included one resident as a plaintiff without their consent. The former resident, who did not want to be named, confirmed that.
Suit leads to sanctions
With the suit refiled, a judge again ruled against the plaintiffs on grounds of standing. Perry then gathered the Schalamar plaintiffs and urged them to file an appeal with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, they said.
“At that point, they had awarded a large sum and, shockingly, we were held liable, us as plaintiffs, who thought we weren't going to be financially responsible,” Gledhill said. “And so we felt like appeal was our only chance. What are we going to do, you know?”
Atwood said she thinks Perry misled the plaintiffs at that stage.
“He said, ‘If you don't sign this appeal, then you're out there on your own, and that law firm is going to come after you as an individual, and I can't do anything to help you,’” she said. “And so it was, basically, we felt like we were caught between a rock and a hard place. I didn't want to be out here on my own — I'm 80 years old — facing a big law firm who's going to come after me.”
Rather than go before the federal appeals court himself, Perry suggested hiring another lawyer to handle the appeal, the plaintiffs said. When the residents told Perry they could not afford that, he paid the $32,000 legal tab himself, Driskell said.
That, it turned out, was a violation of the state’s legal guidelines.
The appeal failed, and in September the court ordered the plaintiffs and the HOA corporation to pay attorney fees and costs totaling about $366,000. The order held the HOA and residents joint and severally liable, meaning that the defendants’ lawyers could require full collection from each of them.
The Florida Bar filed two complaints against Perry in 2022, based on his actions in the Schalamar Creek lawsuit and one against another mobile-home park. The state organization that regulates lawyers found that in paying for another lawyer to carry out the appeal, Perry had violated three aspects of its rules on conflicts of interest.
In its official complaint, The Florida Bar cited rules on representing multiple interests and providing financial assistance to a client. The organization also cited Perry for violation of a rule on providing competent representation to clients.
The complaint included another case, in which Perry represented the HOA from Harbor View Mobile Home Park in New Port Richey in a suit against the management that alleged violations under RICO and other federal laws. A referee of the disciplinary proceedings ruled that Perry violated three rules covering conflict of interest.
The second case involved Perry’s six lawsuits against the Florida Manufactured Housing Association on claims that it and park owners coordinated with a law firm to set minimum rental rates and use identical language in leases. The referee ruled that Perry violated Florida Bar rules on misconduct and meritorious claims and contentions.
One of those lawsuits involved Swiss Village, a senior community in Winter Haven.
The referee ruled that Perry had abused the legal process and had engaged in a pattern of misconduct. The statement noted that the Bar had publicly reprimanded Perry in 2013 for “making statements with reckless disregard as to truth or falsity concerning the qualifications and integrity of a member of the judiciary.”
In February, the Florida Supreme Court ordered Perry suspended from practicing law for 60 days, an interval that ended in late May.
Perry is the lawyer on at least one active lawsuit involving a mobile-home park in Polk County, Beacon Hill Colony in Lakeland.
Perry is also representing the association at Fort Meade Mobile Home Park, which is seeking mediation over a memorandum of understanding signed with the city, which owns and manages the property.
Financial burdens, anxiety
Gledhill described the moment of learning she could be responsible for $366,000 in attorney fees as “like a punch in the gut.”
Atwood, who retired to Florida from her native Tennessee, said that the plaintiffs have limited financial means. She said she and her husband live mostly on their monthly Social Security payments.
“Most of the people that live here (at Schalamar Creek) are not wealthy retirees,” she said. “These are ex-military, blue-collar — what used to be middle income, which is slowly not becoming middle income. So it's not like we're doctors and lawyers and retired CEOs.”
Of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, all have since moved from Schalamar Creek except for the Driskells and the Atwoods.
The court ruling allows the lawyers for the defendants, Lutz, Bobo and Telfair of Sarasota, to use various ways of seeking to collect the fees owed them. Those include garnishment from bank accounts.
The plaintiffs have begun seeing the effects in the past several weeks. Atwood said collections lawyers had sent garnishment letters naming her to two banks with which she has never done business.
The impact for the Driskells has been more immediate, yielding the negative bank account balance of about $720,000. Jim Driskell said he and his wife have so far spent more than $8,000 on lawyers to represent them over the financial penalty from the case, and Susanne has had to go on anxiety medication.
Driskell said he learned after the judgment that the court had told Perry the plaintiffs could take a procedural step that would have obligated the lawyer to pay half of the defense’s attorney fees.
“And he never disclosed it to us — never, ever disclosed it to us,” Driskell said. “We only found out about it after the fact. He denied any responsibility — ‘you're on your own’ — basically from that, leaving us holding the bag.”
Of the eight plaintiffs, two have died since the suit was filed, Jim Driskell said, and two are in poor health.
Atwood’s husband of 62 years, Albert, requires kidney dialysis three times a week, sessions that last four hours. While concerned about her financial plight, Atwood said she is preoccupied with helping to keep her husband alive.
'Cried for two weeks'
Atwood laughed darkly at times as she discussed the lawsuit, saying she still didn’t understand what RICO meant, referring to a relevant law in the case.
“I'm not a lawyer, and I've decided from now on I need a lawyer to follow me around,” she said. “I want one in my hip pocket.”
But Atwood made clear that she did not respond to the judgment with laughter.
“I cried for two weeks,” she said.
She and other plaintiffs questioned why the law firm for Northwestern Mutual and Murex is seeking to collect so much money from retirees with limited incomes.
Along with the financial fallout, the plaintiffs said they have faced backlash from other residents of Schalamar Creek, even though many supported the lawsuit.
“What it has caused is a huge division in this community, lost friends, because of perspectives of how people look at what went on,” Susanne Driskell said. “When you were trying to protect your friends, they were all behind you, saying, ‘Yeah, yeah, go for it.’ And now no one's talking to us.”
Jim Driskell said other residents “begged and pleaded” for him to lead a legal charge, knowing of his background in the rental industry.
“I certainly wish I had not raised my hand and tried to be the good guy,” he said.
The Driskells claim that Murex, the management company, has curtailed activities at Schalamar since the lawsuit in what they consider a vindictive response.
Murex did not respond to a request for comment left with its corporate office. A spokesman for Northwestern Mutual declined to comment.
The Schalamar Creek plaintiffs reserve their main condemnation for Perry, the lawyer who they say persuaded them to join the disastrous lawsuit. A lawyer with Lutz, Bobo and Telfair confirmed that the firm has been awarded more than $800,000 in attorney fees from cases brought by Perry.
In three other cases, fees have been ordered but the amount had not yet been determined, the lawyer said.
Susanne Driskell said she thinks Perry should be disbarred. Her husband said he thinks the lawyer is motivated by having been sanctioned as a judge in Orange County.
“There's a number of different names for it, but I think he wants to take on the giants and be a giant slayer,” Jim Driskell said. “I truly do believe that. I think he's delusional. … I think he's misguided, and I think he’s inept.”
Atwood criticized Perry while also taking responsibility for her role in the lawsuit.
“I mean, it's just something we did ourselves, and I guess we'll pay the price,” she said. “I just want other people to be forewarned. Do not listen to this man. He lies. He’s a fraud. I mean, we've got it (Perry’s promises) in black and white. He knew the court wasn't going to punish him. He’d been through this before.”
She added: “We were just naive and stupid. Chalk it up to old age, I guess.”
Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Failed lawsuit leaves Polk seniors with regrets, financial burden
