A judge on Tuesday denied a Roswell couple’s request for a 12-month stalking protective order against Fulton County Manager Dick Anderson, blaming both Anderson and his accuser for their “hostility and animosity” toward each other.
Judge Jessy Lall, presiding in the Family Division of Fulton County Superior Court, said she was sorry a neighborhood homeowners association dispute between Anderson and his neighbors, Amit and Tina Mehrotra, escalated to the point that the Mehrotras believed Anderson was video recording their young daughters. But Lall said Anderson did not use any alleged recordings against the family in a threatening way.
“This is not one of those stalking instances,” Lall said during Tuesday’s virtual hearing. “This is a history of individuals, grown adults, who have serious beef with each other — beef that has risen to the level that now they are filing cases against each other, filing complaints, and it is still ongoing.”
Anderson’s attorney, Chuck Boring, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after the ruling that he and his team were glad the judge viewed Mehotra’s petition “as an attempt to weaponize the family justice system to further petty HOA fights.”
Another Fulton judge on June 15 issued a temporary protective order against Anderson prohibiting the county’s top administrator from getting close to Amit Mehrotra, and from harassing or intimidating him or his family. With Tuesday’s ruling, the temporary protective order was dismissed, Boring said.
Multiple neighbors have alleged Anderson’s behavior toward members of the HOA’s board has been bizarre and alarming since the board unanimously asked Anderson’s wife, Maureen, to resign from it in April 2025. Amit Mehrotra is the HOA’s president and treasurer.
On Tuesday, Tina Mehrotra testified that Anderson has recorded her and her husband, along with their 6- and 8-year-old daughters in their front yard. She also claimed Anderson had driven by slowly, “appearing to mock and gesture at my husband with his middle finger and behaved in ways where we felt he was trying to intimidate us.”
She said she was frightened when Anderson once drove past her while she was outside her home taking out the trash, pulled into his driveway, backed out of it, backed into it and remained in his vehicle while she was outside.
She said as soon as she went inside her home she looked out a window and saw him immediately park in his garage.
“I do not know what he was doing or why he was watching me, but I certainly felt intimidated and unsafe,” she testified, adding that she worries Anderson’s “rage” toward her husband could endanger the couple and their children.
“His behavior, it appears to be angry and personal and fixated, and I’m honestly just not sure what he’s capable of,” Tina Mehrotra said.
Amit Mehrotra testified that on another occasion Anderson’s dog, while on a leash, was barking aggressively within 20 feet of Mehrotra’s children. Instead of trying to curb the dog’s aggression, according to Mehrotra, Anderson told the dog: “That’s a good boy.”
Judge Lall pointed out that Amit Mehrotra goaded Anderson during the encounter, which was captured on video, by saying something to the effect of: “Where’s your camera?”
April Rener, the neighborhood’s social committee director, testified she has seen Anderson photographing Amit Mehrotra.
Boring, who peppered the Mehrotras with questions on cross-examination, noted that Anderson is the county manager and said his career and reputation were under attack. He added Anderson’s actions did not make the Mehrotras fear for their safety and were not nearly serious enough to warrant putting a stalking protective order on his record.
Boring called Amit Mehrotra an instigator and said he has approached Anderson outside his own house yelling at him.
“Basically, this is an entire circus of an HOA and community that just cannot get along,” Boring said to the judge.
Lall said if Amit Mehrotra is intimidated by someone who raises a camera in front of him and his family “without anything else happening,” then Mehrotra is curbing his own ability to enjoy the outdoors.
“We are surrounded by cameras,” the judge said, “everywhere we go.”
Anderson still faces similar allegations from Amit Mehrotra in an ethics complaint. Two other neighbors, Matt and Laurel Nelson, also filed an ethics complaint against Anderson. The Nelsons allege he exerted improper influence over law enforcement officers who were handling a report by Anderson’s wife that the Nelsons’ two Doberman pinschers were running loose on the Andersons’ property.
The county’s Ethics Commission initially voted, in January, to send both complaints to a formal hearing after concluding “substantial evidence exists to support a reasonable belief” that the county’s Code of Ethics had been violated.
But the ethics board has since ruled that it will instead redo the preliminary hearings because Anderson did not receive sufficient notice of them. They are set for July 16.
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