#Guilford county real estate searchy trial#

“Due to the growth in photo-oriented sites like Instagram, studios are popping up all over the country.”īishop says the museum, although it never officially opened, was booked as an event space through March of this year. “It is part portrait studio, part art gallery, and serves as a flexible space for special events and other gatherings,” the couple’s attorney, Garrett Davis of Durham, stated in their complaint. Late last year, Wooten and Bishop were excited to open a “selfie museum” on Durham’s Ninth Street, one of the city’s most eclectic retail corridors. On April 29, Bishop and Wooten filed a complaint in Durham County’s superior court claiming they were wrongfully evicted by the retired judge, among multiple other issues listed in their 31-page affidavit. It’s not clear when Hardin became president of the Couch Development Company, but last year The News & Observer reported he was retiring “to turn his attention to his family’s commercial real estate business and horse farm.” Hardin retired last year after serving for nearly three decades in Durham’s legal system and judiciary.

#Guilford county real estate searchy trial#

In the early 2000s, he attracted global attention as the lead prosecutor in the trial of Michael Peterson, the former Herald-Sun columnist, novelist, and Durham mayoral candidate who was convicted in 2003 for the brutal murder of his wife, Kathleen Peterson. Hardin is one of the Triangle’s most well-known legal figures. “Now, we are using the money to fight this case.”

“We were going to be married this year,” Bishop told the INDY this week. The couple, directed to the downtown Durham space by a local property consultant, say in court filings that Hardin is holding them liable for unpermitted upfitting work upon the reference of the consultant, which took so long to complete that they were never able to get their business off the ground.

Guilford County couple Joseph Wooten and Erica Bishop looked forward to getting married this year.īut the lovestruck couple’s dreams of marital union turned into a financial nightmare when Jim Hardin Jr., a former Durham County district attorney and retired superior court judge, filed a complaint in superior court claiming they owed him nearly a quarter of a million dollars after he evicted them from a commercial building he owns. Guilford County couple Joseph Wooten and Erica Bishop.