"I just think it is an outright lie, this gas cutoff," Swann concluded.
Swann would score a major victory this past fall during preliminary hearings. Boyle found Rivera's testimony "simply not believable. In short, Rivera either has an extremely poor memory or conducted a wholly inadequate inspection of plaintiff's building," Boyle said, according to court transcripts. After appointing an attorney for Swann and hearing additional evidence from the city, Boyle ruled on Sept. 29 that the city had not afforded Swann due process and was unable to prove that the building required demolition.
The magistrate also found Tracey, the former tenant, not credible. Boyle stated that the city's key witness appeared to have a vendetta against Swann, according to court records.
Furthermore, Boyle wrote in her recommendation that "the defendant City of Dallas shall not proceed in any way against the property...and shall refrain from harassing or retaliating against Christina Swann and from selectively enforcing ordinances against her."
Dallas city attorney Sam Lindsay says the ruling does not "sound the death knell for the City of Dallas," and that the city expects to prevail in the full-fledged trial tentatively scheduled for February.
The city, clearly at a disadvantage after the ruling, offered to settle with Swann. Swann declined. "Not for what they did," she says. "They want to terrorize me. They went into my job without a search warrant and stole everything I had. They blocked my whole street up, just like Nazis. They filled the street up with my stuff--they stole it all."
After a failed attempt at mediation, Boyle ruled that Swann could reopen the apartment building while waiting for the trial. After bringing it up to code, Swann would be able to advertise for new renters.
Today, Swann spends her days supervising workers on the apartment building, organizing her legal papers, and building cases against her enemies. She religiously attends the meetings of her anti-government group whose members see her as a hero.
Swann, never one to give quarter, says she'll make good use of the courts and find her redemption. Most of her defendants will be employed by some government agency, she says, and she has a message for them, imparted with considerable bile: "You people put me out of house and home," she says, "and now I am going to do the same thing to you."
She is never far from City Hall or the courthouse, where she files her papers and demands public records. While confronting the bureaucrats who she says have driven her to rebellion, she doesn't take no for an answer.
"When I go in there," she says, "I am so bitchy. I tell them exactly what the law is. In a country like this, it is so terrible to think that all this is necessary.
