There were a couple of comments on Friday’s post about a Manoa family feud gone wild that deserve responses. So here goes.

One reader commented:

It’s lazy reporting and the type that if in the SA Ian would slam. Classic he said she said reporting….or actually she said she said….

Yes, the easiest way to try to report this story would have been to call the opposing attorneys. Each would have given a coherent description of exactly why their clients was on the right side of the issue. And then it would be easy to present the two views in opposition to each other. And, yes, that is the kind of reporting that I do occasionally take time to slam.

But that’s not what I did in this case. Instead, I went to the documents in the case. I read and tried to digest a stack of the legal documents filed in the course of this long-running lawsuit, beginning with the complaints and subsequent motions, in which the positions were argued, histories recited, facts listed, disputes identified. I read through the minutes of court proceedings. I examined real property records to confirm the histories of the properties. I examined the dockets and many of the documents in the long listing of District Court proceedings spawned by the 911 calls and resulting citations described in the lawsuit. And then I had to sort out in my own mind how to present an intelligible narrative from all these moving parts.

And much of the information gleaned never made it directly into what I wrote, but it all informed the choices I made framing and telling the story. When the story comes together and flows easily for the reader, it’s possible that the work required to make it happen isn’t evident. But that doesn’t make it any less necessary.

The routine “he said, she said” approach would have included almost none of these steps.

That’s why I think that first comment mischaracterized the column.

Then there was the comment from another longtime reader whose opinions I usually value. He wrote:

This post and your Civil Beat column are, in my opinion, nothing more than salacious rubbish. Why are you wasting bandwidth on what is essentially a family squabble when there are so many more important things going on in the State and the world? I am disappointed.

I would turn this into a question. Why do I think that the story of this family squabble was worth researching and retelling? What about the story elevates it above simple “salacious” gossip, or “rubbish” as my friend called it?

I’ll probably get in trouble for writing this off the top of my head, and I’ll likely regret not taking the time to pull my thoughts together. But I’ll take that risk.

So, let’s see.

Seen as just a little vignette of contemporary life, it’s certainly a very unusual tale, several standard deviations away from the norm. In my mind, that makes it interesting. How did this happen? What draws people farther and farther into such a dispute even when everyone can see that it’s going bad for all involved? I wasn’t able to answer that question, but I was looking for it among the details buried in the dry legalese of court records.

There are obviously lessons for anyone who owns property or wants to own property, as evidence by the several comments pointing out the need for better understanding of easements and their implications for homeowners.

It’s a story with a big lesson, that the insistence on pushing such disputes comes with the risk of big financial losses. I’m still wondering why this case wasn’t settled long ago with some kind of formal or informal driveway agreement.

And this was a family dispute that made unusual and costly use of public institutions, police, prosecutors, judges, court personnel, among others. With dozens of calls to 911, police reports, citations that had to be adjudicated, this family dispute saddled taxpayers with significant costs.

I don’t know how atypical this is, but this story certainly highlights that question. At least one comment suggested that it isn’t that unusual to have petty personal disputes dragged out through the courts.

So there’s a public policy issue here as well, although it remained implicit in my telling of the story.

And, when I think about it, what if this was, for sake of argument, just a family squabble? My response would have to be, “It’s not just any old family squabble! It’s a real doozy, a family squabble of epic proportions!

And Civil Beat readers have been interested, it seems. The story was #1 on CB’s “Most Popular” list from the time it was posted through yesterday, and still sits at #3 this morning.