The new stone driveway that led to a Chevy Chase woman spending a night in jail is finished. And now the woman, 67-year-old Deborah Vollmer, owes her neighbors $750 for delaying the project and another $5,500 in legal fees. Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Joseph Dugan made the ruling Tuesday in yet another setback for the longtime Town of Chevy Chase resident who objected to her neighbors paving over a shared driveway. Dugan, the judge who ordered Vollmer to consent to her neighbors' plans for the new driveway, said he would've ordered her to jail had she not been taken there April 13 based on a violation of her probation stemming from a previous incident. Vollmer is appealing Dugan's original order to the state's Court of Special Appeals. She has repeatedly claimed that paving over the shared driveway, which used to have a grassy strip running down the middle, robs the neighborhood of its character. Her neighbor, the Schwartz family, said they offered to work with Vollmer on a compromise and even offered to pay for all of the work. But they also said the old driveway would often become too muddy and was in need of a refresh. On Tuesday, Vollmer again attempted to make her case, despite the presence of a lawyer. "She's never going to be convinced. She can't see the other side," Dugan said. "It's not as if she was laying on the driveway as a child reading 'Little Women.'" Steven Nemeroff, lawyer for the Schwartzes, said workers from contractor Rodriguez Stone Work wasted half-a-day on the project because Vollmer wouldn't let them put up a temporary fence to protect trees during the paving. That resulted in an extra $750 of costs that Vollmer will now have to pay. She'll also have to pay her neighbors' $5,546.25 in legal fees. That's in addition to the more than $30,000 in legal fees Vollmer now owes for related cases she's brought against the Schwartzes. Vollmer claims Dugan's original order was illegal and unconstitutional because it denied her any input into the driveway's redesign and reconstruction. Over the weekend, she put out another statement in which she recognized many who have read about her story haven't had kind things to say. "Vollmer is aware of the criticism of her on social media that this is a rich people's fight of no real consequence in a world where there are people going hungry with no place even to call home," Vollmer wrote. "But Vollmer contends that there is no contradiction between trying to make conditions better for people living with such hardship, and asserting one's own rights with respect to one's own situation."
Chevy Chase Woman Vows To Continue Fighting Driveway, Even Though It's Finished
