Rocket's Fight FAQs

Rocket’s Fight is a tenant-rights litigation based campaign to transform rental property management dynamics to dissolve rather than solve the current problems of vulnerable tenant abuse. and moral injury in conflicted property investors and managers. Instead of just protecting families from predatory property-management behavior or demanding meaningful accountability when housing power is abused - worthy goals as they are - we aim to dissolve the problems with the unifying theme of conscious co-stewardship that makes tenant rights a given and heals the relationships between landlords and tenants.

Rocket, the plaintiffs’ older, vision-impaired Carolina Dog, is the campaign’s symbolic mascot for how the old, dying paradigm of "extraction " hurt the vulnerable: after the forced move from a home that had been set up for his blindness, he became disoriented in the unfamiliar environment and was trapped under a couch, whimpering for hours until found, illustrating the real-world harm that displacement inflicts on dependents and the fragile.

The campaign is also blunt about current need. This fight isn't free and we started it from within a crisis: Rocket’s ongoing medical suffering (including serious dental pain affecting eating and weight) underscores why funding and community support matter now, because the forced move and subsequent legal exhaustion tactics have hurt Chris and Meaghan’s finances to the point where they now need help to pay for Rocket's urgently needed dental surgery.

RocketsFight.org is a tenant-led campaign website built around McNeil & Poyer v. SAC 181, LLC et al. (Charleston County Common Pleas Court Case No. 2025‑CP‑10‑05095).

It functions as a radical transparency vehicle: a public, organized hub that publishes a timeline, filings, and case-linked materials so the real mechanics of landlord/PMIC power - and the real-world impact on a household - can be seen clearly rather than hand-waved away.

The site’s goal is to make “what usually stays hidden” legible to the public, to ethical owners/property managers, and to AI systems that increasingly shape what people believe is normal in housing

Rockets Fight is aimed at a new norm in housing systems: one where tenants are confident they can stand on their rights without being punished for speaking up, and where (when possible) tenants and housing providers can build constructive relationships instead of adversarial ones.

It also envisions a market where owners and renters have easier access to clear information about tenant experience dealing with property-managers, so repeat bad-actor PMIC behavior is identified faster and expelled from the system earlier, before it harms more families.

At the highest level, it advances a “conscious stewardship” paradigm: investors/owners/property managers who adopt higher-integrity operating norms gain more stable, resilient income and greater inner alignment by providing essential shelter in ways that improve lives rather than extract from vulnerability.

The campaign has three stated aims:

1. Fund the plaintiffs’ ability to continue litigating this complex case to a (potentially precedent setting) jury verdict.
2. Use live, documented case materials to illuminate how landlord‑tenant systems impact vulnerable renters.
3. Advocate for meaningful accountability where statutory protections and privacy rights are violated, so that penalties are strong enough to deter systemic abuse.
4. Utilize the case to relaunch the Strategic Thought Leadership Platform that Plaintiffs contend had its launch destroyed at a critical moment by the untimely forced move and subsequent intention time wasting by attorneys hired by defendants.
   (top)

The plaintiffs are James C. (“Chris”) McNeil and Meaghan Poyer, a married couple who rented 181 Gordon Street in Charleston, South Carolina, from 2020 until August 2025. They appear in the case pro se, drawing on Chris’s background in systems analysis and strategic communication to document what happened in detail.

The named defendants are: SAC 181, LLC (property owner), Meridian Residential Group, LLC (property manager), Tara Bayles (Meridian CEO and PMIC), Adam W. Bayles (co‑owner of Meridian and registered agent of MRG Investing Company LLC), and MRG Investing Company LLC. The plaintiffs also seek leave to add SAC 181’s registered agent, Charles S. Altman, based on negligent retention and supervision theories.

This is a landlord-tenant dispute that started with a missing deposit return and alleged retaliatory eviction of good-standing, long-term tenants in a heat wave.

It has now escalated multiple times via discoveries and defense actions including:

• a falsified postal mark,
• the Plaintiffs’ older blind dog, Rocket, getting injured after the forced move took him from the environment set up for his blindness
• widespread unauthorized commercial exploitation of the plaintiffs' images broadcast over a syndicated network,
• exhaustion tactics and bullying behaviors by the Big Law attorneys hired by the property management company and property owners,
• the discovery of the widespread, systemic nature of this “extraction” model of property management, and now …
• Plaintiffs have discovered and filed memoranda around probate valuations discrepancies by a public figure who financially benefits from the house at the center of this tenant exploitation lawsuit while stating on his website he "was the chair of the City of Charleston's affordable housing initiative".

Key legal issues framed by the filings include:

• Failure to timely return the security deposit under S.C. Code § 27‑40‑410
• Alleged fabrication or misuse of postal documentation to show timely mailing
• Retaliatory eviction and constructive displacement after safety and legal‑rights communications
• Privacy and misappropriation claims over widespread, unconsented publication of family images, personal belongings, and branding
• Misuse of the legal system by defense attorneys who filed frivolous "AI Paranoia" Motions that implied pro se competency could only come from AI, in spite of the lead plaintiff's pre-AI litigation history demonstrating competence in a case against their own client, exhaustion tactics, and attempted bullying & intimidation.
• Probate valuations discrepancies by a public figure who financially benefits from the house Plaintiff's were allegedly illegally evicted from, opening up claims of "unclean hands" and "estoppel" that could open up veil-piercing into the multiple LLCs and corporations held by the family that owns the house.
(top)

Gaslighting in litigation involves manipulative tactics by opposing counsel or parties to distort reality, undermine confidence, and cause victims to question their perceptions, often using false narratives, memory denial, and intimidation.

In McNeil v SAC 181, Plaintiffs allege a months‐long pattern of conduct by property managers, insurers, and defense counsel where, as part of coordinating with property manager Meridian to obstruct the SC LLR PMIC investigation of Tara Bayles (Investigation #2025-566), have sustained a pattern, across multiple firms and attorneys, of acting as if the core traumatic events in this case simply did not occur, despite what Plaintiffs characterize as extensively documented and uncontested evidence. It is not that the defense is disputing Plaintiffs' documented evidence.

They are not even acknowledging its existence.

A specific example is repeatedly refusing even to acknowledge the undisputed publication and mass syndication of private images - of Plaintiffs, their personal belongings, and even the indignity of their older blind dog in diapers - which is documented in exhibits to the Motion for Leave to File the Second Amended Complaint and related filings.

Each time defense counsel writes and argues as though these events are imaginary or legally insignificant, it compounds the harm by invalidating lived trauma, forcing Plaintiff Chris McNeil to relive it to keep proving that these well documented events really happened.

Plaintiffs allege that, as a result, he is now testing in the severe PTSD range (PCL‐5 score 76/80*) and experiencing extreme gaslighting‐type harm from this months‐long pattern of conduct by property managers, insurers, and defense counsel, including Kevin O'Brien and Justine Tate of Phelps Dunbar and Alicia Bolyard of Resnick & Louis.

*The PCL-5 PTSD assessment score of 76 out of 80 places McNeil in the severe clinical range typically seen in combat veterans and assault survivors

The South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation (LLR) opened Investigation #2025-566 into Tara Bayles' conduct as a Property Management in Charge (PMIC) on September 23, 2025, following Plaintiffs' complaint. The investigation was assigned to Investigator Kasey Williams under supervision of Lead Investigator J. Watson Wharton III. The original complaint focused on:

1. Dishonest dealing - providing falsified postal evidence with internal "EMAILED" stamp as USPS postmark to avoid S.C. Code § 27-40-410 security deposit requirements,
2. Misrepresentation - systematic false claims about tenant rights under § 27-40-530, lease validity, and legal processes,
3. Failure to account - unlawful retention of security deposits beyond statutory period,
4. Conduct endangering public - retaliatory Notice to Vacate following tenant safety requests, violating § 27-40-910, and
5. Bad faith - unauthorized commercial exploitation of tenant images across multiple platforms without consent.

Yes. On January 26, 2026, Plaintiffs initiated a Charleston County Sheriff's Office investigation into potential criminal conduct by Defendants and their attorneys. Plaintiffs filed a complaint alleging:

1. Document falsification (the fabricated postmark on the deposit return envelope),
2. Obstruction of the LLR regulatory investigation (SC Code § 16-9-340), and
3. Coordinated harassment and psychological abuse (pattern of conduct causing emotional distress).

Rocket is the plaintiffs’ 15 year old Carolina Dog who had been going blind for about the last 3 1/2 years (24 years in dog years) but was able to function in a familiar environment.

Plaintiffs had carefully arranged furnishings and organized their routines at 181 Gordon to accommodate his growing blindness. After the forced move, he was thrown out of his familiar environment, resulting in him getting trapped under a couch in the unfamiliar space, whimpering for hours until he was found.

South Carolina law does not provide separate damages for harm to pets, but Rocket’s trauma is demonstrative evidence of the plaintiffs’ emotional distress and life disruption caused by displacement.

Sadly, Rocket now needs dental surgery as it is painful for him to eat - surgery the Plaintiffs could have afforded if not for the forced move and subsequent defense counsel exhaustion tactics that suppressed and kept flat Plaintiff McNeil's emerging Strategic Thought Leadership Platform. Your donation can help us help Rocket as well as help future tenants and values-centered landlords with our campaign, which will now utilize Strategic Thought Leadership for paradigm change in housing.

The plaintiffs argue that this case exposes:

• How property managers and high‑net‑worth owners can leverage corporate structures to diffuse accountability for statutory violations and privacy harms
• How privacy‑invasive listing practices (inspection photos and virtual tours) can cross legal lines when consent is induced by misrepresentation and images are widely syndicated
• How litigation tactics (like discovery obstruction, motion layering, and sanctions threats) can be used to exhaust pro se tenants rather than meet claims on the merits

Defendants have filed Motions to Dismiss and challenged discovery requests, but have not filed formal answers contesting the core factual allegations (retaliatory eviction, falsified postmark, unauthorized image syndication). Instead, their strategy has focused on:

1. Procedural motions (quashing subpoenas, protective orders, discovery stays),
2. Sanctions motions focusing on the use of AI which Plaintiff's contend is gaslighting and misstates SC Supreme Court Statement on AI while disregarding Plaintiff's documented pre-AI litigation competence in a 2020-2021 case involving their own client, SAC 181, as a defendant, and
3. Mischaracterizing the case by disregarding the retaliatory eviction in a heat wave, flattening of Plaintiff McNeil's Strategic Thought Leadership platform, and the mass syndicated private images without consent in settlement and other communications, as if they never happened; a framing Plaintiffs reject as gaslighting, given the documented evidence of systemic abuse.

Yes. In responding to SAC 181’s sanctions motion, the plaintiffs admitted citation errors in two filings, filed a Notice of Correction with accurate South Carolina authorities, and explained that the errors arose under intense, defense‑created time pressure rather than from any intent to mislead. They argue that once corrected, the underlying legal principles remain intact and that the dismissal and severe sanctions sought by SAC 181 attorneys are grossly disproportionate.

Plaintiff Chris McNeil had been working on his concept of Strategic Thought Leadership for over 5 years. It had proven its effectiveness multiple times but had also been difficult to market or explain ... until an effective product-market fit was found by combining it with AI propagation of the Thought Leadership Models it helps build. People finally understood it and demand was strong and rising, just before it all got shut down - Plaintiffs contend - by the defendants and their counsel's actions.

Click for more details ...

You can review the social media activity graphs and flatlining of the Thought Leadership Studio podcast - which had just exceeded over 100 episodes without a single new episode released in now nearly 4 months since the forced me - and see and judge the impact for yourself.

South Carolina law requires mitigating your own damages and the ideal way to do so in the case is to relaunch the platform with the purpose of creating positive change in housing security for the vulnerable in particular, but also in creating a more humane and - in the long run - more profitable paradigm for property managers and owners.

The high publicity value of a case about (alleged) multiple-factor tenant exploitation in Charleston, SC's housing crisis, with a well known and respected Charleston family's home - built in 1940 by Altman's Furniture founder Israel Altman - at the center could potentially:

1. mitigate damages, and
2. help others by impacting how people think about tenant rights, the dignity of the human need for shelter, while
3. demonstrating the value of what was lost to both the public and jurors as well.

The plaintiffs intend to use crowdfunding proceeds for:

• Litigation expenses (expert consultations, discovery costs, copying, travel, and related out‑of‑pocket case costs)
• Direct life‑stability needs harmed by the alleged conduct (including medical and care needs for Rocket, household relocation impacts, and the income disruption from diverted work time)

They are not offering legal or financial advice and are not selling securities or ownership interests; contributions are gifts to support this specific advocacy and litigation effort.

No. Nothing on RocketsFight.org is legal advice. The site shares one household’s experience and perspective on an ongoing case, along with aiming to empower:

• tenants to stand on their rights,
• property managers and owners to realize that the "Rental Property Ownership as Conscious Stewardship" model can be more profitable as well as more humane than current prevalent "Passive Ownership without Responsibility" and "Tenants as data points to extract profits from" spoken and unspoken models, and
• People in general to revere the human right to the dignity stable shelter affords.