In November of last year, a lawsuit styled “Gunstock Area Commission v. Belknap County Convention,” was brought in the Belknap County Superior Court bearing Docket Number 211-2021-CV-00231.
Although brought in the name of the Gunstock Area Commission (the “GAC”) as the plaintiff, with the Belknap County Convention (the “Convention”) named as the defendant, the actual relief sought in the case was to obtain injunctions against any efforts by the Convention to remove GAC Commissioners Kiedaisch, McLear and Gallagher, notwithstanding the power of removal expressly granted to the Convention in the 1959 enabling legislation for the Gunstock Recreation Area.
After several losses by the plaintiff in the Superior Court, and pursuant to a vote by the newly-reconstituted GAC, the lawsuit was “nonsuited” (i.e. voluntarily withdrawn) by counsel for the named plaintiff and dismissed with prejudice by the Court on March 28, 2022.
But the legal expenses incurred and paid by the GAC for the suit are believed to have exceeded $100,000.
A close examination of the details of the suit indicates that the real parties in interest were the three GAC commissioners whose positions on the GAC were trying to be protected against any possible removal actions, although no formal removal actions had been commenced.
Whether formal removal proceedings had been commenced or not, the proper parties to have brought suit, if they wished, would have been the three commissioners who were named in the suit as believing that their positions were in jeopardy. Either individually or collectively, they could have hired their own lawyers and paid their own legal fees since they were being incurred solely to try to protect their own individual positions on the GAC. Any notional interest of the GAC itself in the suit was nominal at best.
The payment of the legal expenses of the suit by the GAC was an improper expenditure of GAC funds, which are, in actuality, funds of the Belknap County taxpayers.
In the interest of good government and protection of the taxpayers, who actually own the Gunstock Recreation Area, the current GAC commissioners, whose names and contact information appears below, should cause the GAC to make formal demand upon Kiedaisch, McLear and Gallagher, and, if necessary, commence legal actions against then, to recover for the GAC and the taxpayers of Belknap County all sums expended on what turned out to be a frivolous lawsuit.
It should be noted that even after GAC Commissioner Gallagher resigned from the GAC, none of the subsequent papers filed in the lawsuit by counsel for the plaintiff notified the Court that Gallagher had resigned as a commissioner and was no longer a party in interest in the matter.
What can the average citizen do?
Contact the GAC commissioners and respectfully, but emphatically, ask them to take immediate action on this matter- after all, it’s your money:
Commissioner Peter Ness
(603) 234-1142
petergness@yahoo.com
Commissioner David Strang
(603) 520-0435
davidstrangmd@yahoo.com
Commissioner Jade Wood
(603) 219-1616
gopjade@outlook.com
Commissioner Doug Lambert’
(603) 387-7442
dlambert@dgfindustrial.com
Commissioner Gary Kiedaisch
garykinusa@gmail.com
AND while you are at it, ask them to release to the public NOW the unredacted copies of all of the legal bills they paid on the frivolous suit.
