About $10,000.00 worth of my professional time ago, I made what I believed to be two different reasonable offers to resolve this litigation.  I detailed those proposals on a page I posted on January 7, 2006 called The Fading Settlement Opportunity.  When I made my December 13, 2005 settlement offer, the only option the HOA gave me to settle this matter in its response was paying approximately $7,000.00 in attorney's fees to the HOA, removing these web pages, and sacrificing my principles.  I made a counterproposal and follow-up reiterating my position and the HOA's response was to summarily dismiss that counteroffer and file an emergency motion to attempt to make me remove my catfish mailbox which Judge Bishop declined to hear.  Since then, I have followed through on my promise to defend myself zealously and have discovered some serious issues with the HOA and the authority of the purported Board that need to be addressed.

 

        Hoping against hope that reason would prevail on the HOA side of the equation, I made another settlement proposal to the HOA on April 27, 2006.  The only reason behind my latest settlement offer to settle was the recognition that I would have to spend another $3,000.00 to $5,000.00 to deal with discovery issues and to raise the ultra vires issue in the proper manner and my belief that because Judge Bishop may look at this entire matter as silly, I will not be able to recover any of my fees when I file for the injunction even though the law authorizes him to award same if he deems doing so appropriate.  I have been before Judge Bishop before and find him to be an excellent jurist, but I must also keep in mind his apparent attitudes about this matter in shortening discovery and setting a bench trial before the discovery period had even ended.  While I will never grow weary of fighting for what I believe is right, I was willing to let bygones be bygones in an attempt to avoid additional wasted time and expense that I likely would not be able to recover anyway.

 

        On May 2, 2006 I received a response from the HOA that I did not particularly care for and I sent a reply of my own on May 5, 2006.  Since the HOA Board refuses to recognize the real legal problems regarding its ability to act on behalf of the HOA, Judge Bishop is going to have to enter a ruling on the matter.