Seems like the only problem here is a dispute about the accuracy of the appraisal. With an accurate appraisal the owners could have bought a comparable property

Seems like the only problem here is a dispute about the accuracy of the appraisal. With an accurate appraisal the owners could have bought a comparable property elsewhere. Come to think of it, given that the value of the appraisal is the main issue, it’s very strange that the owners never got their own appraisal, instead paying all these legal fees while relying on an automatically generated “Zestimate”. The fact that they were involved in a legal battle for years without ever having gotten an appraisal leads me to think that getting a fair price was never their goal, but instead they were hoping for an inflated price as holdouts. Then the NY Times writer came in, and noticing this glaring hole in their story, needed to fill it with a quick search on Zillow.