The city of Burlington has agreed to settle a pair of legal disputes with a former boarding house operator who took the city to court after winding up on the losing end of several code enforcement cases.
Burlington’s city council formally approved this settlement with Andrews Properties of the Carolinas last Tuesday – well over four years after the company lodged the first legal complaint against the city over its alleged noncompliance with a public records request.
As part of this settlement, the council has offered to pay the plaintiff a token sum for each of the two lawsuits that had been making their way through the court. In the case of the public records dispute, the offer amounts to $10,565. The city has also proffered another $12,500 to resolve a second case that Andrews Properties had filed in federal court on the grounds that the “burdensome restrictions” on boarding houses were tantamount to discrimination.
According to Burlington’s city attorney David Huffman, this combined settlement of $23,065 was a worthwhile outlay to the Travelers Insurance Co., which covers the city’s legal liability.
“[There’s] nuisance value,” Huffman explained, using the terminology for payments made to resolve frivolous suits. “They were going to spend a lot more on defending the city than the settlement cost.”
A four-year court battle
The two lawsuits that prompted these settlements were both outgrowths of code enforcement cases that the city had launched against Andrews Properties for operating boarding houses without the city’s permission.
The company had set up two of these allegedly illegal rental concerns at 614 Maple Avenue and 504 West Webb Avenue after Burlington’s city council enacted a rule change that curtailed the areas where boarding houses could operate.
Complaints from neighbors ultimately brought these establishments to the notice of the city’s code enforcement officers and building inspectors, and as the alleged violations piled up, the city ordered the two boarding houses to close.
Andrews Properties went on to apply for a variance in the hope of reopening the Webb Avenue boarding house. The company’s request was nevertheless turned down by the city’s board of adjustment in the spring of 2022. In the meantime, an attempt to claim grandfather status for the Maple Avenue property went off the rails when the city attorney discovered an apparently fraudulent document that the company had presented to the board of adjustment.
In the midst of these twists and turns, Andrews Properties submitted a public records request to obtain internal communications among city officials about the company’s boarding houses. The allegedly lethargic response from Burlington’s staff was the basis for the first of the two lawsuits that the council agreed to settle on Tuesday.
In March of 2022, Andrews Properties filed a legal complaint in Alamance County Superior Court that accused the city of failing to comply with North Carolina’s Public Records Law. In addition to the city itself, the lawsuit also named Huffman and Morgan Lasater, the city’s community engagement director, among the defendants, along with Burlington’s then-city manager and interim city clerk.
Andrews Properties cranked the heat up a notch when it launched its next legal assault against Burlington in 2025.
That spring, the company filed a federal lawsuit against the city and its board of adjustment over their discriminatory treatment of boarding houses and the people they serve.
The suit argued that boarding houses have traditionally been a source of “low-cost” accommodation for people of limited means, and as a proprietor of these establishments, Andrews Properties has “provide[d] a solution to the homeless-ness epidemic.” The suit added that Burlington’s strict limits on boarding houses has effectively denied “equal protection under the law” to the owners of these residents and the people they house.
“[The] defendants enacted and enforced burdensome restrictions upon boarding houses,” the company’s federal complaint went on to contend, “but not upon similarly situated land uses such as multifamily dwellings, group homes, hotels, and motels. [The] defendants lack any rational basis for their disparate treatment of boarding houses and the irrational and arbitrary regulations and enforcement deprived [the] plaintiffs of the value of their property.”
The company’s legal complaint also accused the city of sundry constitutional violations, including breaches of the “due process” and “equal protection” clauses in the Fourteenth Amendment. It went on to ask the federal courts to make formal declarations to this effect, to enjoin the city from enforcing its allegedly discriminatory rules, and instruct it to let Andrews Properties operate its boarding houses.
Within a few months of this legal complaint, North Carolina’s insurance commissioner lodged 48 felony charges against three people affiliated with Andrews Properties.
Insurance commissioner Mike Causey filed these charges against William Grant Andrews, Sr.; his son and namesake William Grant Andrews, Jr.; and another son, Steven Andrews, for allegedly filing false and “exaggerated” insurance claims for some of the properties they own.
Court records indicate that on June 26 of this year, Grant Andrews, Sr. and his two sons voluntarily dismissed the public records case they had filed against the city in 2022. According to Huffman, the dismissal of this case emerged from a round of mediation that also produced the city’s financial settlements in both of the company’s lawsuits against Burlington.
The city attorney noted that, prior to mediation, that the plaintiffs were seeking $54,000 from the city to cover the legal expenses associated with their public records complaint.
“And in the federal case,” he added, “they were trying to get around $750,000.”
Other legal entanglements
The court battle with Andrews Properties was part of a whole catalog of legal cases that Huffman discussed with Burlington’s city council when its members convened their latest meeting last Tuesday.
All told, Huffman briefed the council on eight separate legal actions during an hour-long closed session that evening, which also included an unrelated conversation about a corporate expansion or relocation.
- Aside from the two Andrews Properties suits, the closed session dialogue touched a motor vehicle negligence case from 2024 that Christopher Barrett has filed against Travis Moore in Alamance County district court.
- Also on the closed session agenda was a claim of wrongful arrest that Raven Milan lodged against the city in 2025 after she was charged with shoplifting based on a Crimestoppers tip.
- Another case from 2025 was filed by Tony L. Harris-Bey against a Burlington police officer and four local court system officials whom he blames for a four-month stint that he served in Guilford County’s jail “on behalf of Alamance County.” Harris-Bey, who is acting as his own attorney, was apparently still behind bars when he submitted his legal complaint. The suit, itself, is larded with Latin aphorisms, contains multiple references to U.S. codes, and was accompanied by a habeas corpus petition that an Alamance County judge turned down this January.
- Huffman also briefed the city council on a case that Helen Henkler filed earlier this year after she reportedly took a spill on a handicapped ramp near the city-owned Kernodle Senior Center. According to her legal complaint, the plaintiff “was walking from the building…when, suddenly and without warning, she stepped onto the handicapped ramp which was unusually slick and slippery” – a condition she attributes to a fresh coat of paint that was allegedly applied without any signage to warn of the danger.
- Meanwhile, the council heard about a prospective class action that Steven Wall and Todd Dean filed earlier this year against various defendants whom they hold responsible for the contamination of “groundwater, well water, and soil.” The defendants named in the suit include Unichem Specialty Chemicals, Elevate Textiles, Republic Services, EMA Resources, Synagro Central, and a limited liability corporation called Shawmut Park Avenue. Also identified as defendants are the cities of Burlington and Graham as well as Alamance County.
- A sixth suit that came up during last week’s closed session is a federal civil rights complaint that Lisa and Linly Antoine filed in 2025 against Gracie Gunther and Burlington’s police department. The two plaintiffs, who filed pro se – or without an attorney – have submitted their claims in North Carolina’s Western District, rather than the Middle District where Burlington is located.
