For 11 months, Constance Hargrave ran that HOA like a dictator. Fines, lawsuits, and towing my truck off what she called “her road.” 47 citations in total — for dust, for diesel smell, even for my cattle standing too close to her fence. She had lawyers, a brand new gate, and 73 families who believed she was protecting their dream neighborhood.
There was just one problem. None of it belonged to her.
Every single home, every street, and that gate she proudly installed without permission sat entirely inside my 2,300 acres. Land my grandfather patented decades before their subdivision broke ground. For 30 years, they had been driving across my property like they owned it. Nobody checked the deed.
So I did.
Within 24 hours, I sold their only entrance and their only exit to a new owner.
My name is Breit Dunore. I’m a third-generation rancher out of Calhoun County, West Texas. My grandfather, Otis Dunore, filed a land patent on 2,300 acres of red clay and mesquite prairie in 1941. He built a one-room house, sank a well, and started running cattle. My father expanded the operation. I took it over at 26 when my father’s knees gave out and never looked back.
This isn’t a hobby farm. This is a working cattle ranch — Angus cross, about 400 head, two seasonal creeks, one good well, and enough fence line to make your eyes water.
In 1987, my father sold the northeast corner — 340 acres — to a developer named Garfield Puit LLC. They platted it out into Saddleback Estates: 73 homes with brick facades and backyard pools. The access road, a single paved lane 0.7 miles long, crossed straight through Dunore land. The developer deeded it as an access easement granted to Garfield Puit LLC for residential ingress and egress.
Standard enough — except Garfield Puit LLC dissolved in 2003. The company just stopped existing. The easement they held was never formally assigned to anyone. Not the HOA. Not the homeowners. Nobody.
For 20 years, that legal loose end sat there like a fraying wire.
Then Constance Hargrave moved in.
By 2020, she was running the HOA like her personal kingdom. The first certified letter arrived on a Thursday. My cattle grazing on my land were creating an “odor nuisance and visual disturbance.” She wanted them moved back 300 feet from the subdivision perimeter.
I set the letter on the tailgate and went back to work.
Three weeks later, she called animal control. The officer left without issuing a violation. That should have humbled her. Instead, it made her dangerous.
The certified letters accelerated. Dust from my tractor. Outdoor lighting on my barn. The smell of diesel from my fuel storage tank. Fines kept coming — $150, $200, $150.
I wrote back politely. I was not a member of the HOA. I had never signed their covenants. The CC&Rs had no authority over my property.
Her attorney sent a three-page response on fancy letterhead arguing the nuisance provisions applied to me anyway. It was a weak legal argument, but it came with a firm name at the top. That has a way of making your stomach clench.
Then she had my truck towed.
I paid $340 cash at the impound lot to get my own truck back. That was the moment something in me changed.
My daughter Ren, finishing her agricultural law degree at Texas A&M, came home that weekend with three binders and a highlighter collection. She spent 48 hours at the kitchen table pulling on one thread after another.
She found it.
Garfield Puit LLC had dissolved in 2003 without a formal wind-up. The easement was never assigned. The chain of title was broken.
We had them.
Harvest Teal, my 64-year-old attorney, filed a motion to dismiss, then amended the counter-complaint with new claims: trespass, conversion, and slander of title. The gate she built sat 22 feet inside my property line.
While Constance escalated — circulating petitions, giving interviews calling me a bully — I stayed quiet and gathered evidence.
Ren contacted Prescott Garfield, the surviving principal of the dissolved company. He laughed and signed an affidavit confirming the easement was never transferred.
The ground shifted under Constance.
She pushed forward anyway, installing the gate and filing more claims. The community started to fracture. Longtime residents remembered my family’s history on this land. Doraththa Beal, a retired principal, began quietly collecting signatures for a special meeting.
At that meeting, the truth came out. Legal expenditures had ballooned to $43,000 with no proper ratification. The reserve fund was critically low. A no-confidence vote removed Constance as president.
The gate came down 40 minutes later.
Three months after that, Constance listed her house. The nuisance suit was dismissed with prejudice. A quiet title action resolved the easement properly, recorded permanently with the county clerk.
I placed 200 acres adjoining the subdivision under a permanent conservation easement — protecting the view forever and generating a substantial tax deduction. The community now hosts an annual harvest festival on the boundary line. Kids learn where food comes from. Neighbors actually talk to each other.
Constance moved away. The neighborhood breathed again.
I still run cattle on the same land my grandfather patented in 1941. The road is legally theirs now, properly documented. The ranch is still mine.
Sometimes the best justice isn’t loud. It’s patient, thorough, and rooted in the land itself.
Never assume you own something just because you’ve been using it. And never push a rancher whose family has held the deed for three generations.
The land remembers. And sometimes, it pushes back.
