Court Settlements in Nashua are done in bad faith and are unreasonable. They are a ploy to ring up legal bills and produce no records. A settlement is not an admission of guilt, so settling results in no real improvement in the process. (In Nashua, winning in Court has resulted in no real improvement, either.)
My first mediation, designed to settle, started with an abatement appeal. The mediation, ordered by the State Tribunal, is based on State Tax Codes and Statutes. The City failed to comply, offered no review of the valuations, provided no documentation, and provided no expert to justify the value. My attorney stated it was the worst mediation he had ever been involved in. Of course, we left the door open to continue negotiating with the city; the City never responded.
In the second year of the appeal process, I represented myself by filing a second separate appeal. The city refused to come to the table for the ordered mediation. Attorney Bolton claimed the two appeals were inextricably linked and that I could not represent myself, stating an attorney must be present. The tribunal disagreed and ruled that each appeal is treated as a separate case. The City refused to mediate.
During my Right-to-Know lawsuit for assessing records months prior to the Trial, the City offered a settlement permitting me to inspect the property record cards I sought. The offer was poorly written and required clarification. What did the City want in return for inspecting the records? The City did not respond.
In a pro se case, the City disclosed to the Court that a settlement with requested records was offered. The City’s offer was delivered five minutes before the Trial began. I refused the settlement. This was an ambush with nothing in writing, and I was looking for answers as to why Nashua’s records are so scrambled. I won the case, and the City has now appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court. The City had no intention of providing the records.
In another Right-to-Know case, a court hearing was scheduled that my attorney was certain we would win. My attorney encouraged me to let him write a stipulation to settle this outside of Court. Of course, the Court was pleased with this solution. I spent $22,000 working with the Attorney on this case and never received the records. Attorney Bolton refused to provide clear answers to the request and employed his typical “ring up the legal bill and stall” strategy.
In a recent hearing on a Right-to-Know lawsuit involving the Nashua Performing Arts Center, an attorney representing the Corporations formed by the City to accept money from a Federal New Markets Tax Credit program to pay for the construction disclosed in Court that he had tried to settle the case, acknowledged that the bylaws for the company were not written in compliance with the Right-to-Know law and offered to rewrite the bylaws. He claimed that my failure to settle was unreasonable.
In Nashua, settlements appear to be public matters, not confidential matters. Court rules dictate as Attorneys are out to look like negotiators working for the greater good. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nashua is a game of dirty tricks. Mayor Donchess has no interest in fairness, transparency, or equity. History speaks. All Nashua Right-to-Know cases belong before the Court.
A Lack of Transparency is a symptom of Dishonesty.
