Robert Koch Rhoads

While managing Bentonville Plaza, I was directed by the building ownership to retain Mr. Rhoads as counsel for the property on several occassions, ranging from assisting the ownership to protest an over-tax assessment to pursuing rent collection on an international company. Mr. Rhoads exceeded our e...xpectations on each and every assignment. As a certified property manager and a broker, I interact with lawyers regulary; and in my opinion, Mr. Rhoads stands out in a class all to himself. In a word, outstanding!

We hired Mr. Rhoads in March 2015. It was like taking a taxi ride the longest route possible and then ending up where we started. We had a property dispute with a neighbor on an unmeasured and undefined territory in between our homes. Our neighbor served papers on me so we hired a lawyer and we had... been resisting this for months. According to the utility companies, our neighbor did not require our property to service his propane, well or anything else for that matter. I think the neighbor just didn't want to have his driveway or grass disturbed though he didn't mind wrecking our land during construction projects going on for the past few years. To help straighten this out, we bought a new camera and hired a surveyor, who we knew would have the ultimate word in this dispute. We took detailed photos when the surveyor was there. We sent them to Mr. Rhoads and he replied "very good photos". We told Mr. Rhoads in writing that our surveyor said that "there was no case". Any Judge would regard a surveyor's word as legitmate, especially since surveyor was the one that surveyed the whole subdivision about 15 years ago. But even with our photos, having the surveyor out, affirming to Mr. Rhoads that our neighbor had no case, Mr. Rhoads tells me on the phone that he met his good friend (my neighbor's lawyer) out at the property to view "the scene of the crime." If he already knew the Surveyor's opinion and praised our detailed photos with descriptions attached, why did he need to take a 50 mile drive one way to see the site that had already been confirmed as a meritless claim by Surveyor. In the end, to get this settled, we agreed to sell neighbor a piece of the lot that had not yet been precisely. Even after going to the property wasting valuable time for no good reason, he also didn't even bother to measure the area we were talking about. My husband and I did all the work. Mr. Rhoads kept sending us drawings that his lawyer friend was in charge of and still with no exact measurements and squiggly lines that I called a 'blob'. I asked him if he was seriously asking me to agree to it. Benton County would not approve, as a property line adjustment, a unmeasured 'blob' area. He also sent us a Settlement agreement devoid of many details and it was clearly written by our neighbor's lawyer (his friend) meaning we had to spend 3 hours to re-write the settlement agreement to a satisfactory level. He actually suggested we sign it and tried to rush me by saying he had an appointment in Lowell the next day and "sign it." The whole experience was unpleasant and we did all the work. In the end, the taxi driver took us to where we started. In the end we had to be the ones to get the measurements precise so that the county would accept the exact area we were talking about. Maybe in other areas of the law he is effective but in this case, it was a nightmare. I did not know when he took the case that the opposing lawyer was his good friend. This was a conflict of interest. I was taken seriously and he treated me like I was someone to be pushed around. He also did not tell me that he is not capable of taking measurements which was the backbone of this whole exercise. He also should have known that there was no case because the Surveyor noted this to be the case so he might have started writing a settlement agreement first instead of leading from behind with my husband and I doing all the work. $350 an hour is what he charges and you would think that you were getting the cleanest, fastest and most efficient taxi and driver for this New York-level of hourly rate.