Trial by Fire.
Boy did that suck.
Imagine watching someone you love standing alone in front of an angry mob and not being able to leap to his defense. That happened to me on Thursday night, as Jeremiah stood in front of, well, an angry mob at the community association meeting. He is (was) the pro-bono attorney for our community association, trying to help them get a tax id number so that they could get a permit to repair the boat ramp. But in order to get a tax id number, they needed to have a deed to the land. They didn’t ever have any deeds. They only ever had a 1923 map saying that the waterfront in the community belonged to the community, and therefore the community association. Hmmm. Quite a predicament. Other lawyers over the past 86 years have tried to sort this out and given up. In order to get deeds to their land they’d have to challenge the waterfront homeowners that have encroached upon this land. Some of the waterfront is just as it should be, but some of it has people’s piers or grass or fences or whatever on it. And if the community association claimed this land as theirs, the people would lose “their property” that they’ve been caring for, thinking it was legally theirs.
You can see how this might not be popular.
Then Jeremiah took the case. Volunteering his time away from us to meet with them and walk the property with surveyors and research information. But he wanted to help out our community and he thought the least he could do as their local attorney is to give it a try. Plus, maybe it would win him some friends for election time.
The community association decided to file for a deed to all of the waterfront property belonging to them according to the 1923 map. Jeremiah talked with them about how some of the homeowners might challenge them and that the homeowners might win if they’ve been really taking care of it this long. They were cool with that- they’d ask for it all and then take whatever the court decided they could have. Better this than to settle for what they have now, knowing that people are encroaching on community land and thus the community doesn’t have as much public waterfront access as it could have.
This dilemma was talked about at community meetings but that’s just a small sampling of residents, which is the same with anything else. Then they walked a lot of the shoreline with Jeremiah and a surveyor and talked with several of the worst homeowner encroachers, who of course didn’t like what they were hearing. Several homeowners were so volatile and offensive that the surveyor was scared and walked away. Jeremiah was not happy but didn’t want to quit on the community.
Jeremiah posted the lawsuit to the community and put his law office info down for people to contact if they had any questions. They did. And so did the lawyers that they hired. So again, he’s volunteering all of this work time and also time at home in the evenings to respond to people and try to keep everyone calm. He said most people got less angry once he told them that he was working for free. Maybe they assumed he was a rich big shot lawyer trying to get richer off of their land somehow. Ha! As if!
And he’s counseling the community association and also the homeowners that if they file a response to this lawsuit, the homeowners are probably going to win their waterfront land so there really shouldn’t be a fight. If you want to have the waterfront near your house, file. You don’t need a lawyer for this. And if you don’t care and would be happy to have the community association be responsible for maintaining it, then don’t file. Easy, right? No harm, no foul.
So on Thursday night they had the last community association meeting before the lawsuit deadline. The meeting was at the beach, so I brought the kids along in bathing suits and let them play in the water while I was at the meeting. I could listen to Jeremiah the lawyer in action and imagine him as a public official, addressing the crowd. Maybe even pitch in a word or two about how us community non-waterfront people appreciate having access to the waterfront and are supportive of a new boat ramp, even though we don’t have a boat.
Except that there were about 50 people at this meeting. And they came angry. And there were other little kids playing in the water too so my kids weren’t about to get out and sit nicely and listen to daddy. So I had to stay standing in the water with them the whole time and only got to hear about half of what was said and definitely didn’t get to participate.
Instead, I watched Jeremiah stand there alone and try to explain all of this. The angry mob kept interrupting him and aiming their anger at him, not the community association, which was his client. He says he gets this all the time as a lawyer. People say lots of mean things to him and he knows better than to take it personally. They’re just angry and they think they can take it out on him. I know he doesn’t care about it as much as I do (I’d be fighting back, of course), so he says it’s not too bad. But he’d still prefer if they didn’t do that. It’s rude.
What gets to me is that he was doing a great job as a lawyer. He’s not allowed to make any decisions or new suggestions without first consulting with his client. But there was no judge or jury or courtroom or decorum to allow him to do this. The mob was angry and yelling and bulldozed right over the whole thing, saying “you don’t know the answer? It’s your job to know these things!” (when it so isn’t.) and saying “you don’t live in this community! You’re lying!” (though thankfully our neighbor happened to bring along the official community association boundary map that shows that we do and he wasn’t lying. I think he should have stood up for himself and made this point, but Jeremiah says it doesn’t matter anyway. I just don’t want people leaving with the wrong idea but Jeremiah says that should be stricken from the record for irrelevancy. Again, I’d be a terrible lawyer bc I’d fight everything. Jeremiah’s a great lawyer because he’s focused and knows and acts on the law.)
The other thing that gets to me is that some people left this meeting possibly thinking bad thoughts about Jeremiah. They sure seemed angry at him. Look people, he was trying to help the community because you guys asked for his help. We don’t personally care. We’re not benefiting from this. And he’s been sacrificing work time (where he would normally get paid) and family time (where we would really love to see him and have his help and company). So how dare you be mean to him! And how dare you judge him as a person or a candidate or a lawyer based on the beach-side debacle of a lawyer without a courtroom against an angry mob! As Jeremiah shrugs and says, “no good deed goes unpunished.”
The aftermath is that the current community association board resigned. The community members at this last meeting voted to elect a new board at the next meeting (this was before the current board resigned. Ouch.). And they also voted to dismiss this lawsuit and work on trying to get the boat ramp done without a tax id number (ha) or to try to get deeds to the unclaimed parts of waterfront in the community association’s name (ha). Obviously these tactics were tried before and failed for various reasons. But whatever. Jeremiah happily filed a motion to dismiss first thing Friday morning and happily returned a long list of phone calls telling everyone that he’s out and it’s over. He’s going to the meeting next month but he doesn’t think they’ll want his help. I’m glad. I think he’s secretly glad too. But he’d still do it if they wanted him to, as long as they asked nicely. They may be rude, but if they want him, it means they’ve cooled off and they’re the new face of our community. It’s better to be friends.
Worst moment of the day: Replaying what I saw and heard from last night’s meeting over and over, coming up with great responses. (Oh yeah? Well, shut up!)
Best moment of the day: eating a special dinner with Jeremiah and my brother Mike, who came over to distract Jeremiah with a night of zombie videogames. After dinner we gave the kids ice cream cones and they were so messy and grateful and happy.
Thoughts of the day: I can’t believe I have my first day of Itsy Bitsy Yoga Facilitator training tomorrow. I wanted to take this seriously and do it well and get as much out of it as I can. Instead, I’m watching zombie videogames and rehashing last night AGAIN. I have a sketchy plan for how to get to the training (in southwest DC) and my bag is half packed. I’ll get there and appear to be prepared, but I’m not mentally there yet. I hope we have time to meditate before class starts! I could really do with some energy cleansing!
(posting delayed one day bc of crappy internet connection)
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