HomeMy Public PortalAboutPRR 21-2842
Renee Basel
From:Jay Horowitz <jay@realworldpolice.com>
Sent:Sunday, May 30, 2021 2:15 PM
To:Rita Taylor
Subject:Public Records Act Request
\[NOTICE: This message originated outside of the Town of Gulfstream -- DO NOT CLICK on links or open attachments
unless you are sure the content is safe.\]
Good afternoon,
As you are surely aware, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion in DeMartini v. Town of Gulf Stream recounts the
scheme perpetrated by CAFI and Martin O’Boyle wherein frivolous, deliberately-vague public records requests would be
filed with the town, with litigation and excessive settlement demands following the Town’s all-but-guaranteed-
noncompliance. The Court of Appeals’ opinion contains the following statements:
In July 2014, Chandler met with Sweetapple, the Town's special counsel, and provided Sweetapple with
documents and a sworn statement detailing CAFI's fraudulent conduct. Chandler also gave Sweetapple a sworn
video statement concerning his involvement with CAFI, O'Boyle, and the O'Boyle Law Firm. Chandler advised
Sweetapple about CAFI's two-step "windfall scheme" of (1) issuing deliberately vague and ambiguous public
records requests to the Town and other entities and (2) then demanding excessive amounts of attorney's fees and
other costs to settle the dispute when the Town or other entities failed to respond to the public records requests
in a timely manner.
On October 27, 2014, Sweetapple, as the Town's special counsel, obtained Chandler's affidavit, which outlined
the existence of O'Boyle's "windfall scheme" and DeMartini's participation.
I request a copy of the referenced sworn statement, sworn video statement, and affidavit.
If possible, please transfer responsive records to me over the internet.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.
Jay
~~~
Jay Horowitz
w. 917-475-6677
Real World Police
What You Haven’t Seen
@realworldpolice
Email preferred
To
help
prot
ect
your
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cy, …
1
TOWN OF GULF STREAM
PALM BEACH COUNTY, FLORIDA
Delivered via e-mail
June 2, 2021
Jay Horowitz [mail to: jay@realworldpolice.com]
Re: GS #2842 (Public Records Act Request)
As you are surely aware, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion in DeMartini v. Town of
Gulf Stream recounts the scheme perpetrated by CAFI and Martin O’Boyle wherein frivolous,
deliberately-vague public records requests would be filed with the town, with litigation and
excessive settlement demands following the Town’s all-but-guaranteed-noncompliance.
The Court of Appeals’ opinion contains the following statements:
In July 2014, Chandler met with Sweetapple, the Town's special counsel, and provided
Sweetapple with documents and a sworn statement detailing CAFI's fraudulent conduct.
Chandler also gave Sweetapple a sworn video statement concerning his involvement with
CAFI, O'Boyle, and the O'Boyle Law Firm. Chandler advised Sweetapple about CAFI's two-
step "windfall scheme" of (1) issuing deliberately vague and ambiguous public records requests
to the Town and other entities and (2) then demanding excessive amounts of attorney's fees and
other costs to settle the dispute when the Town or other entities failed to respond to the public
records requests in a timely manner.
On October 27, 2014, Sweetapple, as the Town's special counsel, obtained Chandler's affidavit,
which outlined the existence of O'Boyle's "windfall scheme" and DeMartini's participation.
I request a copy of the referenced sworn statement, sworn video statement, and affidavit. If
possible, please transfer responsive records to me over the internet.
Dear Jay Horowitz [mail to: jay@realworldpolice.com]:
The Town of Gulf Stream has received your public records request dated May 30, 2021. You
should be able to view your original request and sworn statement at the following link:
https://portal.laserfiche.com/Portal/DocView.aspx?id=175285&repo=r-430100cc
The video statement is posted on The Town of Gulf Stream’s You Tube Channel under Joel
Chandler Deposition 7/23/14. There were five segments. The following link will take you to
Segment 1:
https://youtu.be/Ip_iXWcnJfI
The affidavit can be found at the following link:
https://portal.laserfiche.com/Portal/DocView.aspx?id=99646&repo=r-430100cc
We consider this request closed.
Sincerely,
Reneé Rowan Basel
As requested by Rita Taylor
Town Clerk, Custodian of the Records
IN RE: SWORN STATEMENT OF JOEL CHANDLER
BY: THE TOWN OF GULF STREAM
SWORN STATEMENT OF
JOEL CHANDLER
DATE TAKEN: Wednesday, July 23, 2014
TIME:
PLACE:
10:48 a.m. 3:56 p.m.
Sclafani Williams Court
Reporters
402 South Kentucky Avenue
suite 390
Lakeland, Florida
STENOGRAPHICAIJLY REPORTED BY:
Julie A. Kelley, FPR
Florida Professional Reporter
Sclafani Willimas Court Reporters, Inc.
1-800-272-0404
1
1 Taken by:
2 Robert A. Sweetapple, Esquire
Sweetapple, Broeker & Varkas, PL
3 199 East Boca Raton Road
Boca Raton, Florida 33432
4 (561) 392-1230
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15
16 ALSO PRESENT:
17 Robert Cruz, Videographer
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1 I N D E X
2 WITNESS PAGE
3 JOEL CHANDLER
4 Called by The Town of Gulf Stream:
5 Direct Examination by Mr. Sweetapple 4
6 STIPULATIONS 191
7 CERTIFICATE OF OATH 192
8 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE 193
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E X H I B I T S
(No exhibits were marked.)
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1 PROCEEDINGS
2 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Today's date is July 23rd,
3 2014. The time is 10:44 a.m.
4 Would the court reporter kindly swear in the
5 witness.
6 (Whereupon the witness was sworn.)
7 JOEL CHANDLER, having been first duly sworn,
B testified as follows:
9 THE WITNESS: I do.
10 EXAMINATION
11 BY MR. SWEETAPPLE:
12 Q. Good morning, Mr. Chandler. My name is Bob
13 Sweetapple and I'm an attorney. I am one of the
14 attorneys who represents the Town of Gulf Stream.
15 You're familiar with the town of Gulf Stream I take it?
16 A. I am.
17 Q. Okay. And we have not met prior to today; is
18 that correct?
19 A. That's correct.
20 Q. Okay. You contacted me with regard to
21 allegations of conduct of Mr. O'Boyle and the O'Boyle
22 Law Firm and offered to provide a voluntary statement.
23 Are you here voluntarily today?
24 A.
25 Q.
I am.
Okay. By the same token, I know that you --
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1 you have indicated to me that you spoke with your
2 attorneys, private attorneys, before coming here. Have
3 you spoken with your own legal counsel before coming?
4 A. I have.
5 Q. All right. And have you elected to come here
6 without legal counsel?
7 A. I have.
8 Q. Okay. And as I understand it, for some period
9 of time, you worked for a foundation, or an alleged
10 foundation, by the same of the Citizens Awareness
11 Foundation?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Okay. I do not want to have you do anything
14 that would invade any privilege that foundation has by
15 way of a lawyer/client privilege with any law firm, any
16 Florida law firm or any law firm. If in the course of
17 my questioning or your providing information to me you
18 come to a point where that may be happening, please
19 stop, all right, and stop me if that ever occurs because
20 I don't know what your statement is going to consist of
21 in its entirety by any means.
22 A. Okay.
23 Q. By the same token, I know that you have spoken
24 with attorneys because you told me that. You have a
25 right to a privilege with regard to anything you've
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1 discussed with attorneys. You have the right to waive
2 that. You've indicated to me that the O'Boyle Law Firm
3 has or does represent you with regard to a couple of
4 public records requests. You're the client I take it in
5 those. If you choose to waive the privilege, that's
6 your prerogative. I'll leave that to your decision and
7 discussions with your attorneys.
8 A. I understand.
9 Q. Okay. I thought the best way to handle this
10 would be for you to just tell me what it is that you
11 wanted to make the Town of Gulf Stream aware of, keeping
12 in mind that the town does have, I believe, two cases
13 with the Citizens Awareness Foundation. I'm not counsel
14 in those cases at this time, but I did --I think you
15 are aware of that fact.
16 A. Yeah, I don't know how many there are, which is
17 part of the reason we're here today.
18 Q. Okay. But you were aware that the foundation
19 has filed suits against
20 A. I just don't know how many.
21 Q. Okay. I don't know either. I'm just going by
22 what I've heard.
23 A. Right.
24 Q. All right. Maybe the best way to handle this
25 if this is comfortable for you is just to have you
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1 describe for me the matters that are of concern to you
2 that you want to make me aware of. And if you don't
3 mind, if I have a question, I'll interrupt. And if
4 it's --if it's messing up your train of thought, just
5 let me know and I'll wait. But if not, I'll try to
6 follow up and if something is not clear, I'll get you to
7 answer it. And then when you're done with your
s statement, I'll probably have some questions for you.
9 A. Sure, feel free to interrupt anywhere along the
10 way.
11 Q. Okay, please.
12 A. Yeah, I, as you know, I think, I went to
13 work --I was hired as the Executive Director of the
14 Citizens Awareness Foundation, Inc. and I've --the
15 genesis of that relationship comes from an e-mail that I
16 received from Marty O'Boyle and got an e-mail from him
1 7 on January 4th o.f 2O14 and he invited me to meet with
18 him regarding the what became the Citizens Awareness
19 Foundation, Inc. He invited me to his home in Gulf
20 Stream, which is where I had been previously. I
21 actually met Marty sometime in 2013 I believe, early
22 part of the year. My meeting --original meeting with
23 him was with Barbara Peterson who's president of the
24 First Amendment Foundation. She was having breakfast
25 with him, thought that I might have some interest in
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1 talking to him because as she understood it, he was
2 interested in open government issues as I am. Not --
3 nothing really significant happened at that original
4 meeting in West Palm Beach. We actually met at a --I
5 think it was a Holiday Inn In West palm Beach near the
6 airport. We met for an hour or so and that was sort of
7 that.
s And then sometime after that, I was contacted
9 by Marty's attorneys asking for my input on a number of
10 public records issues they were having in West Palm
11 Beach or Palm Beach County. So I traveled at their
12 expense down to West Palm Beach. And again, this was
13 sometime in 2013. I think it was probably around the
14 Fall. And I reviewed a very large number of public
15 records requests they had made. It was a very casual
16 relationship at that point. And we sort of stayed in
17 contact. We seemed to hit it off. He's a very, very,
18 very pleasant man, very charming.
19 And then in January, on January 4th of 2014, he
20 asked me to come down to West Palm Beach or to Gulf
21 Stream to meet with him, which I ultimately did. We
22 exchanged a series of e-mails leading up to that. He
23 invited me to stay at his home. I met him at his home,
24 I believe it was on it would have been around January
25 22nd I think maybe, in that vicinity. We met at his
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1 home and he asked that the two of us meet privately and
2 that's when he first told me about his vision for
3 creating a foundation. And the idea, as I understood
4 it, was he wanted to provide to me meaningful economic
5 resources so that I could be more effective in my civil
6 rights advocacy. And I have for a number of years,
7 probably eight or nine years, worked full time as a
s civil rights activist. And my primary focus is open
9 government issues. I work with a number of civil rights
10 organizations. I'm very active in a number of minority
11 communities trying to help people better understand
12 their civil rights with respect to access to public
13 records and open meetings.
14 So what Marty proposed essentially was that he
15 would create or I don't want to say that he would
16 create, that he would provide the economic resources for
17 the creation of a foundation that would be originally a
18 not-for-profit and that the intention was to immediately
19 begin the process of filing as a 501-C3 with the IRS to
20 become a non-profit.
21 When we talked, his original proposal was that
22 I would be hired, we didn't really have a title at the
23 time, just that I would be hired to head up this
24 organization and that he would pay me a salary, or the
25 foundation would pay me a salary, which he would --my
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1 understanding was he was going to provide all the
2 economic resources. He would be the sole owner, at
3 least in the beginning, and then he would pay me that
4 I would be paid a salary, that I would be provided with
5 a car, that I would be provided with a budget to --to
6 engage in activism and advocacy for open government.
7 We negotiated over a period of several days
s some of the economic arrangements and ultimately what we
9 agreed to is that I would be paid $120,000 a year, that
10 I would have a very unclear budget. I repeatedly asked
11 what my travel budget would be, what my --you know,
12 what could I plan to spend on advocacy and the response
13 I kept getting was --was whatever it takes. He said
14 that he was prepared to spend $300,000 or more, whatever
15 it takes, to make it possible for me to do what I do.
16 My understanding, or what I believe our
17 agreement was, was essentially that I would be --well
18 for years I had been working for .free making very, very,
19 very little money, but I would now have a salary so I
20 wouldn't have to worry about how to .feed my family or
21 keep the lights on, that I would be provided with
22 meaningful transportation, and that I would basically be
23 given the resources to do what I had been doing and just
24 be able to do more of it.
25 And what that looks like is meeting with
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1 student groups on college campuses to inform them,
2 encourage them, to exercise their constitutionally
3 protected civil right to access to public records and
4 open meetings, that I would meet with minority groups,
5 that I would become the public face of this organization
6 and encourage people to exercise their rights. In
7 addition to that, I would continue to do what I've been
s doing for many years, which is to audit State and local
9 agencies for their compliance with the Public Records
10 Act.
11 Since I've been doing this since 2008, I have
12 personally been the plaintiff in probably something on
13 the order of about 200 public records lawsuits, and
14 that's not an exact number, that's just an
15 approximation. I have won 99 point something percent of
16 those cases and about half of those I've done pro se.
17 So because of that, I've appeared as an expert witness
18 in a number of public records cases. And whether it's
19 deserved or not I don't know, but I guess I'm widely
20 regarded as something of an expert on the issue.
21 Because of that apparent expertise, I think Marty felt
22 that by allowing me to have the resources to go out and
23 do more of the advocacy that I've already been doing,
24 that as a result of that, unfortunately, sometimes
25 litigation is necessary.
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1 The idea, obviously, was that his son Jonathan
2 was --had already started, not long before this meeting
3 in January, what I understood to be an interstate law
4 firm, the O'Boyle Law Firm. And it was pretty obvious
5 that --that the idea was that if Marty gave me, through
6 this organization, significant economic resources to do
7 what I was already doing anyway, that as a result of
B that there would probably be public records litigation
9 that would have to be referred to some law firm. And
10 I --it seemed pretty obvious to me that the intent was
11 that as a result of the economic support that I would
12 receive from Marty through this foundation, that his son
13 would --would have public records lawsuits, which that
14 in and of itself did not make me uncomfortable. I did
15 think at the time it was necessary to put in place some
16 safeguards to be sure that this was above board and that
17 there were no ethical or potential legal issues. And
18 there were a number of things that I insisted upon.
19 There were a number of conditions that I put on the
20 arrangement that I had with Marty.
21 And just to kind of give you a sense of the
22 chronology, we met --I think it was on January 22nd.
23 It was a Wednesday. And by the following Monday, which
24 I believe was January 27th, CAFI, the Citizens Awareness
25 Foundation, Inc., was actually incorporated. So we
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1 arranged --we agreed to my relationship with a yet
2 undefined entity which was created on the 27th and I
3 literally went to work the same day that the foundation
4 was created.
5 And I was frankly very excited because it had
6 been a long time since I had had a regular paycheck. My
7 wife was very enthusiastic about that, the prospect of
B having a regular income. My real enthusiasm was not for
9 the paycheck, it was for the resources to do what I
10 perceived to be real meaningful, valuable advocacy for
11 the public.
12 Some of the safeguards that I insisted upon was
13 that, number one, the foundation would be utterly and
14 entirely independent of any influence from Marty and any
15 influence from the O'Boyle Law Firm. And to further
16 that concern or to safeguard that concern, part of the
17 arrangement was that there would be an independent
18 board. In addition to there being an independent board,
19 that I would have absolute sole discretion with respect
20 to the commencement of open government litigation. I
21 would be the only person that made a decision about
22 whether the foundation was going to engage in
23 litigation. I would be the sole person with authority
24 to retain law firms that --part of that would be that I
25 would obviously be serving the pleasure of the board,
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1 but the board was to give me discretion about making
2 arrangements to engage with law firms and that I would
3 be the only person acting on behalf of the foundation to
4 make decisions about the settlement or litigation
5 strategies.
6 The other condition that I placed on the -our
7 arrangement was that I would be --have sole discretion
s about where I went and that there would be no, as I put
9 it, enemies list, that there would be no particular
10 agency or entity or person that the foundation would
11 litigate against and that there would be no agency that
12 would be off limits. So I didn't want there to be any
13 kind of an arrangement where I was expected or directed
14 to go after one particular entity or that I would be
15 told that there was somebody I couldn't go after. And
16 when I say "go after", what I mean by that is to
17 these audits that I engage in, and which I still do, is
18 I literally will show up at a publically operated agency
19 or a contractor that acts on behalf of a State or local
20 agency and I'll make a public records request for
21 non-exempt public records and see what happens. And if
22 they comply with the Public Records Act, I'll
23 congratulate them and thank them for doing the right
24 thing. And if they violate the Public Records Act and
25 the facts of the cases --of the case are very clear and
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1 unequivocal, then I will oftentimes litigate to enforce
2 the public's right to know. Unfortunately in Florida,
3 the only meaningful enforcement of the public's right to
4 know is civil litigation. That's an observation that
5 both the courts and the governor have made.
6 So on the first day, on January 27th, I went
7 out and started doing my thing. I started in --in
s South Florida in Miami-Dade County and I think I went to
9 12 agencies the first day and of the 12 agencies I went
10 to, there were 10 that were just just egregiously
11 violated the Public Records Act. I mean black and
12 white, unequivocal violations of the Public Records Act.
13 And I ended up referring those first ten cases to the
14 on behalf of the foundation to the O'Boyle Law Firm.
15 They
16 Q. Can you tell me who at the O'Boyle Law Firm?
17 A. Yeah, I dealt with Jonathan O'Boyle and I dealt
18 with Ryan Whitmer. I also dealt with --there were two
19 other attorneys that were working there at the time,
20 Marrett Hanna and Giovanni Mesa.
21 Q. Okay. And --and did you --did the foundation
22 and the law firm enter into any type of written
23 agreement, retainer agreement of any sort?
24 A. No, none that I'm aware of. In fact, that was
25 an issue that I repeatedly raised. I cautioned them
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1 about the potential ramifications of not having a fee
2 agreement or at least an engagement letter for each
3 individual case. My concern was that under 119.12 that
4 entitlement to attorney's fees might be in peril if they
5 didn't have a written fee agreement. But they didn't
6 seem to take that very seriously. To my knowledge,
7 there's never been one.
8 Q. So that --your advice was to have a written
9 fee agreement?
10 A. Yeah. And just so we're clear, I never give
11 legal advice to the public. I am very frequently
12 engaged by, not always for pay, but very frequently
13 engaged or contacted by attorneys asking for my input on
14 public records issues. And that was a very frequent
15 occurrence with the O'Boyle Law Firm. In fact, the
16 very -one of the very first things I did --within the
17 first week I actually did a, for lack of a better term,
18 a public records seminar. There were a couple of civil
19 rights activists that I've known for a while who came
20 down. They were in from North Florida. They came down
21 and sat in as well as Giovanni Mesa, one of the --who
22 was a new attorney at the time and didn't really have
23 much experience with open government litigation --
24 Q. So as far as you know, the foundation has not
25 been a party to any fee agreements with the O'Boyle Law
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1 Firm at any time?
2 A. Not that I'm aware of.
3 Q. Okay. All right, please continue. I'm sorry.
4 I just
5 A. No, that's quite all right. So the --you
6 know, I --my time was spent, the first week, going out
7 and actually doing audits of public agencies. I
s contacted the --in fact I did a press release. I was
9 contacted by a number of media outlets. I'm frequently
10 contacted by reporters who very often are frustrated in
11 their attempts to get access to public records. I --
12 somewhere in this general timeframe of late January,
13 early February, I actually spoke with one of my
14 attorneys, Greg Thomas, in fact I met with him in Tampa,
15 he and couple of his associates, to kind of lay out
16 exactly what the arrangement was because what I was
17 concerned about was not only whether what we were doing
18 was legal, I believed that it was, I was also concerned
19 whether it was ethical and I believed what we were doing
20 was ethical because of the safeguards I put in place,
21 but I was also very concerned about the public
22 perception. What I did not want to do is to be involved
23 with something that appeared to be a mechanism for doing
24 nothing more than generating lawsuits.
25 Unfortunately, my experience has been that when
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1 you do meaningful public records, open government
2 advocacy, a lot of public agencies either just don't
3 understand what their obligations are and because of
4 that they violate the Public Records Act or the Sunshine
5 Laws, or I think it's fair to say many of them
6 deliberately do it. So as a result, it's really common
7 to get litigation. It's just a it's sort of part and
8 parcel to what I do. If I were to audit ten publically
9 operated agencies, municipalities, police departments,
10 Sheriff's, on average about 60 percent of those would
11 comply with the Public Records Act. The other 40
12 percent wouldn't. They just wouldn't produce the
13 records. If I were to audit ten State contractors whose
14 contracts explicitly make them subject to the Public
15 Records Act, nine out of ten would just violate the law.
16 So I think --my perception was that Marty, not
17 unfairly, perceived that by giving me the economic
18 resource to do what I was doing, as a result of that
19 there would be litigation that came out of it and
20 litigation has got to go someplace. One of the issues
21 that I've had over the years with private attorneys is
22 their capacity to handle the amount of litigation that
23 comes from what I do. You know, the cost of filing fees
24 and attorneys being willing to take cases on a
25 contingency basis has always been a very significant
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1 limiting factor to the amount of litigation that I've
2 been involved with.
3 In spite of being involved with literally
4 hundreds of public records lawsuits, I've only filed a
5 tiny fraction of those that could have been filed just
6 because I simply didn't have the resources to --to
7 litigate the other ones. When I asked Marty about that,
8 you know, what are we -what's your - I think the way
9 I put it to him was what's your tolerance for pain,
10 what -how much money are we talking about, I mean how
11 many
12 Q. For what, for filing fees?
13 A. For filing fees.
14 Q. Okay.
15 A. Yeah, how many --how --you know, and his
16 response was how many do you think you would get? And
17 my immediate response, just sort of a knee-jerk without
18 really thinking about it, would be 100 and he sort of
19 was like yeah, that doesn't seem --like so what, that
20 doesn't seem like very many. And he was a little - I
21 don't remember his exact words, but it was something to
22 the effect that that, you know, 100 in a year is not
23 very many and I said, no, no, no 100 a month. I mean if
24 I went out and did what I do full time, it would not
25 surprise me if what resulted were 100 cases a month.
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1 And his response, I was really sort of shocked,
2 pleasantly surprised, his response was yeah, sure,
3 that's not a problem. So then I was like, again, just
4 trying to get a trying to get a sense of the depth of
5 the water, what if there were --that would be 1,200 in
6 a year. What if there were --what if there were 2,000
7 in a year? Sure, no problem. What if there were 3,000
s in a year? Sure, no problem, whatever it takes. And I
9 was -it was both frustrating and very windsome,
10 frankly, every time I asked the question well --you
11 know, what's --how much can I spend on travel?
12 Whatever it takes. Well, how much can I spend on
13 advocacy? Whatever it takes. All right, well, what if
14 I want to sponsor -the First Amendment Foundation
15 does, every year, they do Sunshine seminars all around
16 the state of Florida and they're free to the public and
17 public officials go to them. Can I sponsor those?
18 Sure. Well, can I buy hundreds of Sunshine manuals
19 which cost $18.95 a piece and I just want to give them
20 away, not ask for a penny, I just want to give them to
21 anybody that wants one? Sure, buy all you want. I mean
22 it was this sort of blank check, do whatever you think
23 you need to do, you do what you do and and I think
24 the understanding was that as a result of that cases
25 would --would flow to the O'Boyle Law Firm.
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1 But one of the safeguards that I insisted on
2 was that I would be able to refer cases to other law
3 firms because I did not want this to be, you know, the
4 kind of arrangement where all I was doing was generating
5 lawsuits for anybody, but particularly for one law firm.
6 My understanding of our arrangement, what I insisted
7 upon, was I would go do what I do, you'll provide the
s economic resources for me to do that more effectively,
9 and if litigation flows from that, that's fine, if
10 litigation doesn't flow from that, that's fine. This is
11 not about going out and getting lawsuits. This is about
12 doing meaningful advocacy, knowing that historically
13 unfortunately litigation very often comes from that. I
14 made it very clear that I would not have any kind of a
15 quota for lawsuits. I would --my income, and this was
16 a very critical part of it, my income was completely
17 unaffected by litigation. I didn't get any more or any
18 less whether we got lawsuits or didn't get lawsuits. I
19 got no more resources or no fewer resources whether we
20 got lawsuits or didn't get lawsuits.
21 And, you know, this was a very agreeable,
22 amicable --Marty and I, as I said, met at his home
23 literally sitting next to his pool. And then after that
24 we went and met Jonathan, his son, for dinner and we
25 kind of talked more about the details of this and away
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1 we went.
2 Q. Okay. So Jonathan was involved in the early
3 meetings with regard to forming this foundation?
4 A. Yeah, my sense of things was that --I --
5 leading up to my trip from Lakeland down to Gulf Stream
6 to meet with Marty, I also had a number of phone calls
7 and e-mail exchanges with Jonathan O'Boyle and Ryan
8 Whitmer who -Ryan was the --as I understood it was
9 his law partner and I had met Ryan before, a very
10 charming guy, a very nice guy. And they were very
11 excited. I've dealt with a lot of lawyers over the
12 years. I change lawyers like most people change socks.
13 And, you know, my perception was you're a couple young
14 guys. They're setting up a law practice. They seemed
15 very excited about open government litigation. And my
16 understanding is they had done a little bit, not very
17 much. They --the big change for me was that I was
18 dealing with people that had real meaningful economic
19 resources because I kept asking the question, not only
20 to Marty, but to the attorneys, what is your capacity?
21 Because when somebody says to me, and I've had attorneys
22 ask me this before, well, you know, like I would love to
23 do litigation, how many cases are we talking about? You
24 know, I would --will ask attorneys what's your --
25 what's your tolerance for pain, how many can you handle?
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1 And they almost always are shocked by the --just the
2 sheer volume of cases that are out there. There's just
3 almost a limitless number of cases when it comes to open
4 government because there's just so many violations of
5 the law
6 Q. Okay. Now the --I'd like to just interrupt
7 there.
8 A. Yeah.
9 Q. Because you didn't start working for the --the
10 foundation wasn't even formed until the 27th of January?
11 A. Right.
12 Q. So you met with Jonathan O'Boyle prior to the
13 foundation being formed?
14 A. No, we -we talked on the --yes and no.
15 We --he and I spoke on the phone. Ryan and I spoke on
16 the phone. We had a conference call. We exchanged
17 e-mails. We met with --when Marty and I had dinner
18 with Jonathan. I believe it was on the 22nd. And the
19 foundation wasn't actually officially incorporated until
20 the 27th. And there were a series of --there were a
21 number of reasons for that. One was Marty had
22 originally proposed that we use, and I don't even
23 remember the name of it now, there was some
24 not-for-profit that had already been created. My
25 objection to using that was that Mart --that Jonathan
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1 was actually on the board and I thought it was entirely
2 inappropriate for an attorney who might represent the
3 foundation to be on the board of the foundation. I
4 thought that clearly showed a potential conflict of
5 interest
6 Q. What was the name of that not-for-profit?
7 A. I have no idea.
8 Q. And had it just been recently formed?
9 A. No, my --my sense was that it had been
10 created --it had actually been -existed for some
11 time, but they had never really done much with it.
12 Q. And did you discuss with lTonathan that would be
13 a conflict
14 A. I did.
15 Q. And with Martin?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Okay.
18 A. Yeah.
19 Q. All right. And at the time that you --you
20 were having the dinner and talking to Jonathan or
21 communicating with him prior to actually going to work
22 for the foundation
23 A. Uh-huh.
24 Q. -did he disclose to you that he was not a
25 member of the Florida Bar?
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1 A. I don't recall. I --you know, I had met with
2 Jonathan and Ryan a couple of times back in 2013. You
3 know, we had dinner, sort of a social talk shop kind of
4 thing. And I remember that both of them --I think
5 Jonathan is licensed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and
6 I think Ryan passed the Bar in New York maybe. Both of
7 them had just sat for the Bar in Florida. I think Ryan
s had gotten his law license in Florida maybe in November
9 and Jonathan was still waiting to --he had passed the
10 Bar, but he hadn't yet gotten licensed. I don't know
11 exactly when I learned that. I don't -I don't
12 remember whether that issue came up or not.
13 Q. Before the foundation was formed, did Ryan or
14 ~Tona than tell you that they had formed the O'Boyle Law
15 Firm?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. And did they tell you they had opened it --
18 whether or not they had opened it in Florida?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. Okay. And did you discuss with them who was
21 working at the O'Boyle Law Firm prior to your forming
22 the foundation? Did Jonathan ever tell you that he was
23 working there?
24 A. I don't remember him ever using those words.
25 It was very clear to me that I was talking to the two
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1 principals of the law firm. I mean that seemed very,
2 very apparent. It was never presented to me as Ryan is
3 the only attorney that I'm dealing with. I mean this
4 again goes back to the issue of, you know, what's your
5 capacity, how many lawsuits are we talking about --
6 Q. All right. We'll get into that. This is very
7 early - -
8 A. Yeah.
9 Q. I'm just trying to nail down --
10 A. Yeah.
11 Q. --the facts concerning your --your dialogue
12 prior to your becoming employed by this foundation.
13 A. Yeah, part of the --part of the issue was
14 and, you know, I am sort of perpetually on the hunt for
15 attorneys who can either assist me as a plaintiff, but
16 more importantly who are available to assist citizens
17 when they have issues with public records access. I get
18 contacted by citizens all the time, almost every day,
19 and I don't --I'm not a lawyer referral service. I
20 don't ask for anything in return. I don't get any kind
21 of a kickback. I don't get any kind of referral fee.
22 It's just, you know, they are people who need help and
23 most of them don't have the resources to hire an
24 attorney and wouldn't know where to start.
25 So before I even met with Marty, so between the
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1 4th of January when I first got this invitation to come
2 down to see him and the 22nd when I went, I had several
3 telephone conversations with Jonathan and Ryan. Part of
4 those were --the initial conversations had nothing to
5 do with the foundation. It was hey, we're starting a
6 law firm, you know, if you need --if you want us to
7 take cases, we're available to do that. We kind of
s talked about, you know, working together in that
9 capacity, either them representing me or me potentially
10 referring clients to them, again, for no compensation on
11 my part. And we even discussed the possibility of them
12 hiring me on a --an ad-hawk basis to consult on public
13 records cases, which I've done for a number of law
14 firms. And during that telephone conversation, I
15 actually said to them that, you know, if a better way
16 of doing this, for a whole host of reasons in my
17 opinion, is to have a non-profit that's actually doing a
18 lot of this litigation as opposed to having individuals
19 doing it. And their response was, you know, sort of to
20 laugh, well, you're really going to enjoy the
21 conversation you're getting ready to have with Marty. I
22 mean they --they clearly knew that the was --this was
23 part of what Marty had intended. And in fact I was so
24 confident of that, the week leading up to my visit with
25 him, I sat down and --in front of my computer and I --
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1 I came up with a budget. I really believed this is what
2 they were going to propose, that --that, you know, they
3 would create some sort of foundation and I'm going to
4 have resources. And ironically, the budget I came up
5 with was virtually identical to what Marty proposed.
6 Now, I was only going to --thinking maybe I'd get paid
7 $60,000 a year and I think I was guessing about $250,000
s a year in total budget. It ended up being closer to
9 300,000 and paying me 120. But, yeah, it was clear that
10 there was and again, I don't --even now I have no
11 objection to that --the concept of a man who's wealthy
12 funding a not-for-profit that does real meaningful civil
13 rights advocacy and operating completely independent of
14 his influence and completely independent of any outside
15 influence, period.
16 Q. And I understand that was the rules you laid
17 down --
18 A. Right.
19 Q. -from the very beginning?
20 A. Right.
21 Q. Now, what what I want to be clear on is even
22 before --before this concept of --of Marty funding and
23 forming, causing to be formed, a not-for-profit, you had
24 discussions with Jonathan O'Boyle regarding having his
25 firm represent you and your entities --or you or your
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1 associates or people that you were assisting
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. --in public records litigation and the state?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. And who was it that said, during these
6 conversations prior to talking to Marty, who was it that
7 brought up the idea of a --forming a not-for-profit,
8 was that Jonathan, Ryan, you?
9 A. I --I brought it up and --and simply because,
10 you know, I really do believe that if you're going to do
11 a lot of advocacy for all the reasons that -that, you
12 know, the protections you get from having a corporation
13 and for --and also frankly from a credibility
14 perspective, to actually have a legitimate entity that's
15 going to defend the public's right to know. I thought
16 that would just be a better way of doing it. And when
17 I --as soon as I mentioned it, they, you know, not in a
18 bad way, but they, you know, laughed like, you know,
19 obviously you and Marty are --are, you know, already
20 thinking the same way. You're really going to like this
21 conversation you have with Marty.
22 Q. So that was Jonathan that said that
23 A. It was Jonathan and Ryan, yeah.
24 Q. Okay. So Jonathan due that your --his father
25 was going to propose that to you, it seemed from your
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1 conversation?
2 A. That --that was very much my understanding,
3 yes.
4 Q. Okay.
5 A. Now --and I was --when I was setting up this
6 meeting to go down --when I went down there, I actually
7 had expected that I was going to meet with Marty and
8 Jonathan and -and probably Ryan. And when I mentioned
9 that to Marty in an e-mail, his response was I want to
10 meet with you privately first, which was fine, and
11 that's why he and I met at his home and then from there
12 we went --he and I went and met Jonathan at a --at a
13 restaurant.
14 Q. Okay. And before you continue, I'd like to
15 follow up on just one other area --
16 A. Sure.
17 Q. ··-if you don't mind, and I'm sorry if I'm_,,
18 A. No, please do.
19 Q. --taking you off track. With regard to the
20 proposal that some other not-for-profit or foundation be
21 used, you mentioned that Jonathan proposed one, but he
22 was on the board of it and you rejected that idea.
23 A. I did.
24 Q. Okay. Did you discuss that with just Jonathan
25 or did you discuss that with Marty or Ryan --
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1 A. No, we were -we were actually in a in a
2 conference room at Marty's business, Commerce Group,
3 which is where all of these --you know, the foundation,
4 the Citizens Awareness Foundation, never had its own
5 offices. We --you know, the Marty, I thought very
6 generously, allowed me to sort of camp out at empty
7 desks in the building and convenient --it was very
s convenient actually because the office in Deerfield
9 Beach also housed the law firm
10 Q. So the Commerce Group off ice is at what
11 address?
12 A. I believe it's - I think it's 1280 West
13 Newport Center Drive, Deerfield Beach, 34422 I think.
14 Q. And what suite number is the Commerce Group in
15 or does it have a suite number?
16 A. I don't think there's a suite number.
17 Q. Okay. And so the --you worked out of the
18 Commerce Group offices?
19 A. Well, I worked from my home in Lakeland, but
20 when I
21 Q. Okay
22 A. Yeah, but when I went down to Deerfield Beach,
23 that's where I went
24 Q.
25 A.
Okay --
--was to the Commerce Group offices.
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1 Q. And was the law firm, the O'Boyle Law Firm, in
2 the same offices as --
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. -the Commerce Group?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. They weren't in a separate suite?
7 A. No, they were literally in a --in a back room.
s It was sort of funny because they --they --right
9 across the hallway I think -I think the address across
10 the hall is 1286, I think, and the --this is a
11 facility. I don't know whether Marty owns it or leases
12 it, but he has control of it. And they were, at the
13 very beginning stages of -of remodeling the space
14 across the hall from the Commerce Group, and while that
15 was going on, the O'Boyle Law Firm had set up shop in a
16 back room and it was just a very --it was a large room
17 that literally -we joked about it. The wires were
18 hanging down from the ceiling. There were no cubicles.
19 It was just --there were desks and it was really,
20 really inconvenient and very annoying actually because
21 if I'd sit in to have --sit down and have a
22 telephone -have a face-to-face conversation with an
23 attorney, you know, one desk over, six feet away,
24 there's another attorney, you know --it's just -it
25 was very chaotic.
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1 Q. And the Commerce Group employees could walk in
2 and out of the law firm --
3 A. They did walk in and out. In fact, they shared
4 employees.
5 Q. Okay
6 A. The
7 Q. And let me follow up on that.
8 A. Yeah.
9 Q. Was there ever a separate sign and a separate
10 door for the law off ices when --
11 A. No.
12 Q. No. So they were just -the law off ice was
13 part of the Commerce Group operation?
14 A. It was housed in the Commerce Group operation.
15 Q. Now, let's get to employees and that because I
16 understand your insistence that the --the total
17 independence --
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. --which I fully appreciate.
20 A. Uh-huh.
21 Q. But what I didn't --I didn't --I don't know
22 the names of any of these people that are involved,
23 so
24 A. Yeah.
25 Q. --I understand that Jonathan was on the board
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1 of the originally proposed foundation, which you
2 rejected. Were there any other people on that board
3 that you thought
4 A. I don't know.
5 Q. --constituted a conflict?
6 A. I don't know.
7 Q. Okay. And as far as when the foundation was
8 formed
9 A. The Citizens Awareness Foundation.
10 Q. Yes. Can you tell me what the names of the --
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. -board members were and who they were?
13 A. Yes. William Ring, Bill Ring
14 Q. Who --who is Mr. Ring?
15 A. He is the
16 Q. I've seen it once.
17 A. Yeah, he is the --he's an attorney. I
18 understand he's not really practiced law in the
19 traditional sense much. He, I have been told, has been
20 working with Marty for about 30 years.
21 Q. Okay. In his business?
22 A. In his business, the Commerce Group.
23 Q. So Mr. Ring was not a member of the O'Boyle Law
24 Firm as far as you were advised?
25 A. Not at the time he was not.
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1 Q. Okay. All right --
2 A. And in fact, Bill had actually represented me
3 in one public records lawsuit against the Town of Gulf
4 Stream.
5 Q. William Ring is Bill?
6 A. Yeah, Bill Ring. My understanding, I don't
7 know if this is accurate or not, but I was told that he
s had never even filed a lawsuit before. So when --when
9 I retained him to represent me in a lawsuit --
10 Q. Keep in mind you don't have to disclose
11 A. No, I'm happy to.
12 Q. unless you choose to --
13 A. No, I'm happy to.
14 Q. Okay.
15 A. I mean literally it was, you know, can you help
16 us draft a lawsuit. And I've done a lot of dra.fting
17 Q. He asked you to draft the --help him draft
18 A. It was either he or --or Ryan Whitmer who at
19 the time Ryan I think had already sat for the Bar,
20 hadn't been licensed yet, so was essentially functioning
21 as his paralegal.
22 Q.
23 A.
24 Q.
25 A.
As Mr. Ring's paralegal?
As Mr. Ring's paralegal, yeah.
And --and who asked you to draft the lawsuit?
I think Ryan did.
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1 Q. For for Mr. Ring?
2 A. For yeah, on behalf -yeah, I don't think
3 there was anything appropriate --inappropriate about
4 it. He was communicating to me from Bill Ring, you
5 know, can you help us. I had --have done a lot of pro
6 se litigation. I --you know, there's a --in fact I've
7 very frequently --this is an issue that comes up in --
s with opposing counsel very often, that they see the same
9 template over and over again and my --you know, my
10 response is well of course you do, I don't get --my
11 I don't -my time is not compensable so why would I
12 draft a lawsuit from scratch for every lawsuit. And,
13 you know, by the way it works. I've won 99 point
14 something percent of the time. It's a --
15 Q. Right --
16 A. It's a good template. They actually --I think
17 with the lawsuit against Gulf Stream where they
18 represented me as the Plaintiff, I think it was my
19 template they used.
20 Q. Okay. Did that case get settled or
21 A. I want to say that it did, and it wasn't for
22 much. It was like --the number that sticks in my head
23 was like $1,200 or something. It's just whatever the
24 legal fees were. I --I got nothing out of it. It was
25 just --
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1 Q. Did you have a written fee agreement with
2 Mr. Ring?
3 A. I don't recall whether we did or not.
4 Q. Do you know if he ever had time records or time
5 billings? Did you ever get a bill - -
6 A. Couldn't tell you.
7 Q. Did you ever get a bill?
8 A. I don't recall seeing a closing statement.
9 Q. And so did you ever see any representation as
10 to how much time he had spent?
11 A. I don't recall seeing anything like that.
12 Q. Do you know if he did any work besides use your
13 template to file a lawsuit?
14 A. Couldn't tell you.
15 Q. So that --that case was pending and has been
16 settled?
17 A. Yeah, I understand it's been settled.
18 Q. And the counsel of record was not the O'Boyle
19 Law Firm. It was William Ring?
20 A. Yeah, this was --this was long before --I say
21 long before. This was sometime in 2013.
22 Q. '13. Any other cases that were filed by
23 Mr. Ring or anyone involving your --the O'Boyle's in
24 any way prior to the foundation being formed?
25 A. No, and --and in all fairness, that --Bill's
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1 representation of me did not involve the O'Boyle's. I
2 mean he --he was not representing me as as I
3 understand, in fact there's an e-mail which which
4 says this, that Bill actually formed, you know, a firm
5 in order to represent me in this case.
6 Q. Okay. What was the name of the firm?
7 A. I don't remember.
8 Q. Okay. So as far as you're concerned,
9 throughout this time Mr. Ring has his own firm he's
10 working for, but he's also Mr. O'Boyle's business
11 associate?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. Okay. So the --Mr. Ring is on the board from
14 the
15 A. He's the - -he was president of the board from
16 the very beginning.
17 Q. And --and I guess he was --I don't want to
18 guess. Is it accurate to --strike that.
19 Who appointed Mr. Ring to the board, was
20 that --
21 A. I have no idea. I mean I
22 Q. Did Martin O'Boyle decide who was going to be
23 on the board?
24 A.
25 I had no
That was very much my understanding,
input. I didn't --I had nothing to
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1 that. I was
2 Q. Who was told --
3 A. I didn't have anything to do with the name. It
4 was I was not at all affectionate towards the name.
5 I was not enthusiastic about it, but it --it is what it
6 is and -
7 Q. Okay. So Mr. Martin O'Boyle told you who was
s on the board; is that correct?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Okay.
11 A. So Bill was on the board and then -
12 Q. Go on.
13 A. and then a woman by the name of Denise
14 DeMartini.
15 Q. And who is she?
16 A. She is also, I understand it, a long-time
17 employee of of the Commerce Group. She's been with
18 Marty for - I think she's been there longer than Bill.
19 Q. Okay. So
20 A. And I had never met her. She works from her
21 home as I understand it in Merritt Island, so I --you
22 know, I would hear her name. I never met her.
23 Q. Okay.
24 A. And when I talked to her the first time --
25 because all this was happening very quickly. You know,
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1 we --we met on the 22nd. I literally stayed at Marty's
2 house for like ten days straight. We were, you know
3 I was looking at trying to hire employees and, you
4 know --I mean this was a very fast paced sort of series
5 of events. And at one point I --I you know, I
6 needed to get a website set up for the foundation and
7 get business cards and, you know, get a logo and that
s sort of thing and I mentioned something to the -about
9 this to Marty and he suggested that I contact Denise
10 because that --you know, she's really good at that kind
11 of stuff, so I actually called and talked to Denise
12 and --by the way, let me correct --I don't --I wasn't
13 in Marty's house .for ten days. I was - - I was in South
14 Florida for ten days. I was at his home for several
15 days and then I when I went down to Miami/Dade, I
16 started staying in hotels.
17 When I called Denise to ask for her help on a
18 logo, she --and I mentioned to her about being a board
19 member. She seemed shocked that she was a board member.
20 She made it very clear she didn't even know she was a
21 board member.
22 Q. And what did you tell her?
23 A. Well, like congratulations, you know, you're
24 apparently you're on the board. And then the other
25 board member, the third and final board member, was a
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1 woman named Brenda Russell. And Brenda has been Marty's
2 personal secretary for many, many years. I think she's
3 probably been there longer than Bill or Denise. That's
4 my impression. A very sweet lady. At least from my
5 perception, her involvement with the foundation was
6 minimal. She was really --she was the person that I
7 gave my, in the beginning, gave me receipts to, you
s know, for reimbursement and credit card stuff. That
9 was -I never dealt with Brenda in any capacity.
10 When --when I did meet with the board, she was never
11 present. Her, you know, involvement seemed, you know,
12 minimal.
13 It was striking to me in the beginning --Bill
14 was the person who seemed to have the most knowledge and
15 experience about government issues, which I would
16 describe as being pretty minimal. Denise seemed
17 completely and utterly unknowledgeable about any
18 government issues at all. And Brenda was the same way.
19 We
20 Q.
21 Commerce
22 A.
23 Q.
24 A.
25 Q.
And all three of them were employees of the
Group?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
And that's one of the reasons you insisted on
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1 having absolute independence?
2 A. That's exactly right. Look, I --I understand
3 that, you know, here you have this very wealthy man,
4 Marty O'Boyle, who is financing this not-for-profit,
5 hopefully going to become a nonprofit, and is --is, you
6 know, prepared to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars
7 a year, in perpetuity by the way. It wasn't just a
8 this is $300,000 to begin with. It was whatever it
9 takes for as long as it takes. And I also understood
10 from -both from Marty, from Ryan, and from Jonathan
11 that Marty was .financing the law firm. I had --I don't
12 know the details, but as I understand it, he was loaning
13 them the money and was.
14 Q. Who told you that?
15 A. Marty, Jonathan, and Ryan did on all --all
16 three of them on separate occasions.
17 Q. So did --they told you that --that Marty was
18 funding the law firm?
19 A. Yes.
20 Q. And loaning the money for the law firm?
21 A. Yes. I don't know how much money. I mean
22 the the number that I heard from Marty was a million
23 dollars. I don't know whether that's true or not or
24 accurate or not. Maybe that was just
25 Q. Do you know if he ever paid salaries of the law
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1 employees from the Commerce Group?
2 A. I couldn't tell you. I can tell you that --
3 that the person who was handling the money is a woman by
4 the name of Carla Clutchen (phonetic), who is a Commerce
5 Group employee. She also is the person that I dealt
6 with for financial issues on behalf of the foundation.
7 She's the person that got my paychecks. She's the
s person that I sent up --gave --initially gave some of
9 my receipts to, Brenda and then very shortly I was
10 directed to start giving all of that to --to Carla.
11 Q. And Carla works for the Commerce Group?
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. And did the foundation ever open a bank
14 account?
15 A. I believe that it did. I mean I was not a --
16 Q. Were your salary --was your salary paid from a
17 Commerce --from a Commerce Group account or from a
18 foundation account, do you know?
19 A. I couldn't tell you. I think that the - -
20 because there were discussions about --in the very
21 beginning, and understand that ,_ -that, you know, I have
22 gone from being, you know --I mean when I went down
23 there to meet with Marty, I had one car. I didn't want
24 to leave my wife and children stranded, so I rented a
25 car, the cheapest car I could find. You know, I'm
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1 scraping together enough money just to buy gas to get
2 down there, so I'm doing everything on a shoe-string.
3 And so I --it was an awkward conversation, but I told
4 Marty when we first got started, look, I don't --I'm
5 not in a position to encourage expenses and get
6 reimbursed, I need money up front do you do you even
7 do this? And he was very gracious about it. He called
B Carla. We were in his conference room. He called Carla
9 and said I you know, cut Joel a check for $1,000 and,
10 you know, and as soon as he needs more money, give him
11 more money.
12 Q. Was this before the foundation was formed?
13 A. This is I think when the foundation got formed,
14 but at that point he did not have any bank account, so
15 I'm trying --
16 Q. So he paid from the Commerce Group for the --
17 A. I think he marked it as a loan because I --I
18 ended up giving that money back once I got reimbursed,
19 but he --he was very insistent that hey, we needed to
20 get a bank account set up for the Commerce Group. I
21 think it was set up at BB&T. We need --we need a card,
22 you know, so that Joel can use a credit card.
23 Q. Did you get a credit card from him personally
24 or from the Commerce Group or both?
25 A. I got one from Brenda and --that was on, as I
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1 understood it, from her. In fact there are a whole
2 bunch of e-mails that will support this, that the first
3 credit card I had was on Marty's account and I know that
4 because it was really annoying. I would --because I
5 was on the road a lot, like, you know, maybe weeks at a
6 time, and she --apparently there were a lot of people,
7 both at the Commerce Group, that had credit cards on
B Marty's personal account because she told me that every
9 single night I had to scan my receipts and send them to
10 her, which was really annoying because I would get in
11 you know, been on the road all day and get in a hotel
12 room at 11:00 at night and the last thing I want to do
13 is sit there and scan receipts, which I would have to do
14 every single night, all my receipts for that day, and
15 then she very frequently would send me credit card
16 statements that had all these charges, not just mine,
17 but other people's, and I had to go through and identify
18 which ones were mine.
19 Q. And those were on Marty's cards?
20 A. Those were on Marty's card, right
21 Q. When you were in Miami doing work or wherever?
22 A. Yeah, wherever, yeah. So --but at some point,
23 within a few weeks, there was actually a credit card
24 that said Citizens Awareness Foundation on it. It had
25 my name on it and, you know, I was no longer --I gave
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1 them back the card that I got because I had Marty's
2 card, but it had my name on it. It was his account with
3 my name.
4 Q. Did you reimburse Citizens Awareness for the
5 charges or I mean reimburse Marty for those charges?
6 A. I turned in all my receipts.
7 Q. I mean you were paid by him and then you were
s paid by Citizens Awareness account?
9 A. I --well, I got a Commerce --I got an advance
10 from the Commerce Group on a Commerce Group check for
11 like $1,000 and I think I went back maybe a week later
12 and needed like another $1,000. And I give them all my
13 receipts and, you know, I - I didn't have anything to
14 do with the money with the --
15 Q. Okay. So you didn't have to repay cash, you
16 just give your receipts for the advance?
17 A. Yeah.
18 Q. Okay, I got you. I understand.
19 A. Yeah, and --
20 Q. And when was the first --was there ever a
21 board meeting after the foundation was formed or did
22 Marty just say your -your title is chairman or
23 something?
24 A. Well, we kind of --yeah, we kind of went
25 around and around about the --the title. I felt
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1 strongly I have a number of friends who are involved
2 with non nonprofit organizations and I've never --
3 personally never been a big person --big on titles, but
4 I was told by some people who are involved with
s nonprofit's that, you know, you really need to be called
6 Executive Director because apparently that matters in
7 the world of nonprofit's I guess. That's code so we can
s tell each other that we're the big wheel of whatever
9 entity we're involved with. So I told him I wanted to
10 be called the Executive Director and he agreed to that
11 and, you know -yeah, so I was the Executive Director.
12 Q. Okay. Did you ever have any employment
13 agreement, written employment agreement?
14 A. You know, I --I told Marty that I wanted a
15 contract, and this was the --the only --I think the
16 only condition that he did not agree to. I wanted I
17 wanted a five-year contract, and the reason I want ed a
18 five-year contract was I thought that that would further
19 enhance my independence that --and he said, no, he
20 didn't want to do that and then I said well, how about a
21 year, and he didn't want to do that, let's just kind of
22 see how it goes. And, you know, he had been so generous
23 and agreeable on --he originally offered me - I think
24 he originally offered me $75,000 and I told him that I
25 wanted 120. I mean why not. I mean --and I was
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1 surprised how fast he said yes. In fact afterwards I
2 thought man, I should have held out for more. He had
3 been so agreeable and --and, you know, Marty has the
4 up until very recently, has always been exceedingly
5 kind, gracious, generous, very deferential to me, just
6 a --you know, my experience with him personally has
7 been nothing but delightful.
8 Q. So you trusted that he would honor your oral
9 agreements with regard to how the foundation would be
10 run without a written contract?
11 A. Yeah, and --and a big part of that was was
12 this sense of deference that he had always given to me,
13 that, you know, he frequently referred to me, and I
14 don't know why he did this, but he would ref er to me as
15 Dr. Chandler, you know, that I was the --I was the guru
16 on public records, which I don't hold myself out as
17 that, but he very much perceived that I was sort of the
18 expert on on public records issues and, you know, if
19 I thought that we needed to do things a certain way,
20 that he would defer to that. And I --I put a lot of
21 stock in that deference because I felt that he would
22 continue to defer to my judgment on issues. In fact, he
23 told me that the reason that he was hiring me was
24 primarily because of my judgment. So that, having been
25 communicated, made me feel a pretty high self of --a
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1 pretty high level of confidence that, you know, they're
2 going to do things the way I think they ought to be
3 done.
4 Q. And by the same token, you didn't --you didn't
5 sign a non-compete or --
6 A. Well, I'm sorry, yeah --
7 Q. --another agreement or anything like that?
8 A. I apologize. I didn't answer your original
9 question about the agreement. We --I ended up drafting
10 memorandum of understanding. That's the closest thing
11 we got to a contract. And he and I batted it around.
12 He asked me to make a number of revisions to it. I
13 never dealt with the board on that issue. It was all
14 with Marty. And I signed it, but I never received a
15 signed copy back from a board member, so I don't --I
16 don't know whether they signed it or not.
17 Q. Okay. And --
18 A. But there was no confidentiality agreement.
19 There was no --you know, he told me --because what I
20 wanted to do originally was I asked for $60,000 a year
21 and the freedom to continue to do pro se litigation and
22 he adamantly refused that. He was really adamant. In
23 fact, he -the way he put it was when I buy people, I
24 want to buy all of them. And I didn't take that to be,
25 you know, offensive necessarily. I didn't think he
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1 was --had mentioned servitude. I got what he meant and
2 he wanted 100 percent of my attention. So there -that
3 was the only real stipulation in the memorandum of
4 understanding that I wasn't really enthusiastic about,
5 but at 120 grand a year and a lot of resources, I can
6 live with it.
7 Q. Did you set forth in the memorandum of
s understanding your independence with regard to
9 instituting litigation, settling litigation
10 A. Yeah, that I would --that I served at the
11 pleasure of the board and I don't --I'm more than happy
12 to furnish you a copy of the --
13 Q. Okay --
14 A. --memorandum, but I don't remember the exact
15 details. But, yeah, it was --you know, this was a --
16 Marty was not --he's not on the board. He's not on
17 the -
18 Q. But you negotiated this with Marty though?
19 A. Oh, absolutely, there wasn't anybody else to
20 negotiate with.
21 Q.
22 A.
23 Q.
24 that.
25 A.
Right, okay.
Yeah.
So, if you don't mind, I would like a copy of
Sure.
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1 Q. So I think I diverted you from your --your
2 chronology and your --and what I'd like to do is take a
3 five-minute break.
4 A. Sure.
5 Q. And then come back and --I think we were at
6 the point where you were describing the formation of the
7 entity and the board and your dealings at that time, so
s we' re, I guess, still in early lJanuary or late January?
9 A. Late January, early February, yeah.
10 MR. SWEETAPPLE: Okay, great. How about a
11 five-minute restroom break?
12 THE WITNESS: Sure.
13 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We're off the video record
14 at 11:43 a.m.
15 (A short recess was taken.)
16 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We're on the video record at
17 11:51 a.m.
18 Q. All right. Mr. Chandler, would you please
19 continue with what you wanted to relate to me regarding
20 Mr. O'Boyle?
21 A. Yeah. So we got --we -things really got
22 rolling in earnest starting January 27th. The first
23 week I did a it was very exciting. I did a seminar
24 for a couple of activists and Giovanni Mesa, one of the
25 attorneys for the O'Boyle Law Firm, sat in on that. And
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1 I actually hired the first --or I guess I was the first
2 employee for the foundation, but the second employee, a
3 guy named Terrell Elliston (phonetic) . He only worked
4 for a very short time, two or three days. He and I had
5 been friends for a long time and he just decided he
6 wanted to go in a different direction. But I met with
7 he and his wife. He and I went out and actually made a
8 bunch of public records requests together. In fact, he
9 was with me on that first audit I did in South Florida.
10 All of my interactions I didn't have any interactions
11 with the board at all except in any official
12 capacity. I talked to Denise DeMartini early on about
13 helping me develop a logo for the foundation and that's
14 when she expressed her surprise that she was on the
15 board. But we -we had that conversation by phone. I
16 still hadn't met her. I would see Bill Ring on a pretty
17 regular basis, but just because he was there at the
18 Commerce Group. We never really interacted much. In
19 fact, we kind of had this ongoing running joke, that
20 when I would see him, I --you know, I'm supposed to
21 be - I serve at your pleasure and, you know, at your
22 direction
23 go --you
24 was sort
25 of a nod
and his response would be I direct you to
know,
of - -
and a
go do something. I mean, you know, it
it was sort of in a friendly way, sort
wink that, you know, they're really not
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1 doing anything. I'm --I'm doing it, which was great
2 for me because the --frankly the --I was very happy,
3 delighted actually, to be accountable to somebody for
4 the money, for what I was spending, but I was equally
5 delighted that I wasn't really having to answer to
6 anybody about where I spent my time and what I was
7 doing. And I was having lots of meetings with civil
B rights groups. I was meeting with other activists. You
9 know, I had meetings with the Society For Professional
10 Journalists. I had meetings with student organizations
11 and felt like I was really doing what I am passionate
12 about doing. And I was pretty much left alone. There
13 wasn't a whole lot of --actually there wasn't any
14 interaction with the --with the board per se. I did
15 talk to Marty. When I was in South Florida in Palm
16 Beach, I would stay at his home. He was very generous
17 in that respect. And I welcomed the --his hospitality,
18 but also he's very busy and when I was in the office,
19 the Commerce Group office in Deerfield Beach, he's very
20 inaccessible because he's busy. Whereas when I stayed
21
22
23
24
25
at his home, he would get up early in the morning. I
would get up early in the morning. We literally
know, we'd meet
at 6:00 in the
hour or more I
in the kitchen and have a cup
morning or 5:30 in the morning
- -it was just the two of us.
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and
And
you
coffee
for an
I
53
1 would try to kind of give him updates on what I was
2 doing and it was a little frustrating because he didn't
3 really seem at all interested in the advocacy part of
4 it, you know. For example, I was last year, and
5 again this year, I was invited to Tallahassee to meet
6 with Don Gates who's president of the Florida senate to
7 just kind of talk about the government issues. Last
8 year I --he asked for me to give testimony in front of
9 a State Senate Committee on --on government
10 accountability and oversight. And when I was invited to
11 go again this year, I had a really good meeting and we
12 talked about some proposed open government legislation
13 and in that conversation with the Senator Gates, I
14 told him about the foundation and my new job and he was
15 very positive, very pleasant about it. Senator Gates is
16 a delightful man anyway. And I was really excited about
17 that. I felt like a big piece of what I was bringing to
18 the foundation wasn't just my ability to - -to do audits
19 and the potential litigation that came out of that, but
20 the --and not just my expertise on open government, but
21 I've always cultivated, I think, very meaningful and
22 significant relationships with Barbara Peterson and the
23 First Amendment Foundation and Senator Gates and a
24 number of other public officials, with a lot of other
25 organizations, the Society for Professional Journalists
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1 and the Associated Press and I have a lot of meeting
2 contacts that I've developed
3 Q. The research I did on you before coming here to
4 meet you, it appears that you've done quite a bit of
5 work with open government, First Amendment, for
6 journalism. You have quite a bit of expertise in that
7 area.
8 A. A lot, yeah, and I --I am --it would not be
9 hyperbole to say that I get contacted every single week
10 by reporters. I mean, number one, I --I source for a
11 lot of reporters. I spend my time digging through
12 public records and very often that leads to interesting
13 newsworthy stories. So frequently I'm called by
14 reporters who are asking me for --for leads on the
15 stories
16 Q. You're researching for them basically?
17 A. Very much so, yeah, with the --not in any
18 formal way. I just --I'm not a --I'm not --I don't
19 pretend to be a traditional media outlet. I don't care
20 about getting credit for the story. I just want the
21 story told. If I find some graft or corruption or
22 something --you know, something I feel the public ought
23 to know about, I just want the story told. So I'm
24 frequently contacted by reporters under that set of
25 circumstances. But also very frequently attorney --
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1 reporters will contact me saying hey, look, I've asked
2 for this record, they're not giving it to me, what do
3 you think? Well, I'm not an attorney. I can't give you
4 legal advice. I can tell you what I would do if I were
5 similarly situated. And we sort of talk shop about that
6 sort of thing. So I've --I've cultivated a lot of
7 relationships.
8 Q. And your integrity and your credibility are the
9 cornerstone, I take it, of those relationships?
10 A. Yeah, the way reporters describe me is I'm 100
11 percent source. If I tell a reporter something, they
12 can take it to the bank. I don't exaggerate it. I
13 don't claim it unless I can prove it. I mean frequently
14 that's how reporters -have said that --I'm described
15 as 100 percent source. And it's because I'm a
16 straight-shooter. I mean even if people I think even
17 to a very large extent the public officials that I've
18 had a fairly adversarial relationship with, I think that
19 at the end of the day most of them would acknowledge
20 that, you know, there's a reason why I win. It's
21 because my facts are right. Now, I don't pull the
22 trigger on a lawsuit unless the facts are -are 100
23 percent. And I think that's part of the reason that
24 I've developed good relationships not only with the
25 media, but with some legislators and with people like
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1 Barbara Peterson and -and even some academics.
2 So I was --one of the frustrations I had in
3 these meetings that I would have with Marty over coffee
4 is he'd seem completely disinterested in this. So I was
5 trying to explain to him the significance, for example,
6 of this --I had a dinner meeting with the president of
7 the Florida Chapter of the Society of Professional
s Journalists, which is the largest journalist
9 organization --journalism organization in the world.
10 And here's a guy who is the head hauncho for that
11 organization for the State of Florida. He's really
12 eager about working on projects. And a big part of my
13 time with the foundation was working on specific
14 projects. So for example, I'm very interested in
15 learning the particulars about school resource officers
16 and what kinds of resource officers, what kind of police
17 officers, end up in that position. So for example, I've
18 been told, had a lot of antidotes, that it's just sort
19 of a dumping ground for bad cops. Well, I don't know if
20 that's true or not, but I can look at public records and
21 find out. So for instance, in Hillsborough County, if
22 you look at the --if you look at the Hillsborough
23 County Sheriff and the Tampa Police Department, which
24 provide SRO's to Hillsborough County School Board, 80
25 percent of their officers have no disciplinary history,
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1 none, but of the officers who have been provided as
2 SRO's, 97 percent of them have disciplinary histories
3 and some of those disciplinary issues are very serious,
4 including a TPD officer who was invested for aggravated
5 sexual battery. Well, that has the potential to be a
6 really great story. And what I was after in doing these
7 projects, and I had about --literally about 40 of these
s things. These stories showcase why public records
9 access is so important. The SRO's for example --it
10 doesn't matter whether you're a liberal or a
11 conservative or rich or poor, if you got kids going to
12 public schools, you probably care whether Officer
13 Friendly is a -is a creep or not. If Officer Friendly
14 has impulse control issues for, you know, beating
15 suspects, you probably want to know about that. And
16 there --I had a whole bunch of these projects. And to
17 me, why these were important, is they --we hold these
18 up as examples of why public records access matters.
19 And I was disappointed because the response I
20 got was really tepid, sort of like, uh, you know in
21 fact, Marty told me at one point when I was telling him
22 about the dinner I had with SJP --SPJ, because they
23 wanted to collaborate on these stories, it was sort of
24 like don't tell --I don't --why are you telling me
25 about this, I don't care.
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1 Q. And you expected that would be part --a big
2 part of the foundation's --
3 A. It was a big part of it. That was the deal,
4 yeah, absolutely, that --you know, I --getting a
5 paycheck is nice and having lawyers to --to litigate is
6 nice because I need lawyers to litigate when I want the
7 records and to enforce the public's right to know.
B That's all great. What I care about are the resources
9 to work with groups like the Society of Professional
10 Journalists or student groups like Dream Def enders to
11 empower them in their membership to do public records
12 access. But I also want to work with the media to
13 develop these stories that that continue to show the
14 public why it matters that we have access to records.
15 It's a constitutionally protected civil right and it's
16 really important.
17 All the rest of this stuff for the foundation
18 was entirely ancillary to me. I got it. I understood
19 that, you know --I understood that Marty want ed
20 something out of this and what it --what Marty wanted
21 out of this was cases for his son's law firm. Okay,
22 fine, as long as that's a byproduct of what I do. And
23 that was in February when Marty and I had these --these
24 meetings in his kitchen over coffee. It was sort of the
25 beginning of me really feeling like maybe -there
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1 wasn't any pushback. He wasn't keeping me from doing
2 it, but he just didn't seem interested in it, which at
3 that point it was just sort of disappointment. It
4 wasn't really a concern. It wasn't like he was saying I
5 don't want you spending your time doing that. He wasn't
6 telling me that I couldn't take reporters to dinner. It
7 wasn't that I couldn't meet with student groups. It was
8 just he didn't seem to really care.
9 Q. So this is in February?
10 A. This is in February and
11 Q. So that was --that was let me see --I
12 don't want to put words in your mouth. Was this --in
13 the business, we ref er to a red flags. You may have
14 heard that. Lawyers see red flags --
15 A. Yeah.
16 Q. Was this something that you saw as a red flag?
17 A. It --no.
18 Q. A major concern at all?
19 A. It --no, it wasn't a concern. It was just
20 disappointment. I would have been concerned if he had
21 put the brakes on it. He wasn't putting the brakes on
22 it. He never said you can't do it. It was just I don't
23 really care, don't -don't bother me with the details,
24 was sort of his attitude. In fact, I sent him a number
25 of e-mails when I --when I --after I had my meeting
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1 with Senator Gates in Tallahassee, I sent him a very
2 detailed e-mail explaining why I felt this was
3 important, that some legislation was pending, and, you
4 know, again, his response was sort of tepid.
5 I had a meeting with Barbara Peterson, the
6 First Amendment Foundation, about coordinating our
7 efforts in working together. And again, his response
s was sort of tepid, like he didn't really care about
9 that, which I found puzzling and dis --personally
10 disappointing because I felt like Marty was sort of a
11 true believer and really cared about the open government
12 part of it and that made me feel like what he was
13 really interested in was litigation. But again, I don't
14 care as long as you don't interfere with what I'm doing.
15 Q. All right. And you have the complete
16 discretion that you agreed upon to --
17 A.
18 Q.
19 A.
20 Q.
21 /client
22 A.
23 Q.
24 A.
25 Q.
Correct.
run it properly?
Correct.
Now, did you get any -I don't want any lawyer
communications
Yeah.
--or advice --
Sure.
--your seeking advice, receiving advice, but
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1 did you get any complaints from anyone that they were
2 having ethical concerns? I'm including any lawyers in
3 the firm or any --any staff or --did anybody ever
4 contact you in February with regard to any --any --
5 A. Yeah, when I --because my in the memorandum
6 of understanding I had with Marty --I say with Marty,
7 technically I guess with the foundation, although it
s sat --I don't think that anybody ever signed it, at
9 least I never got a signed copy of it, but I negotiated
10 with Marty. You know, part of the deal was I could no
11 longer do any pro se litigation. And I had --when the
12 foundation was created, I had several cases. I can't
13 remember if I had filed them pro se or not. I don't
14 remember, but there were - -there were several cases
15 that needed to be litigated.
16 Q. Where you're the plaintiff?
17 A. Where I was the plaintiff personally. And I - -
18 I gave those to the O'Boyle Law Firm for several
19 reasons, one, it was convenient. I was down there a
20 lot. And I was --you know, it was sort of the
21 beginning of trying to develop a rapport with the other
22 attorneys, who I came to like very much by the way,
23 Marrett Hanna, who I have tremendous respect for, and
24 for Giovanni Mesa. And neither one of them had done
25 any -I don't think they had really done any public
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1 records litigation, so it was also sort of a teaching
2 opportunity to kind of -you know, not only did I want
3 the foundation to have a particular culture, which I
4 wanted to control, but I also wanted to cultivate the
5 culture of the firm to the extent that --that the
6 foundation was its client and we were its principal
7 client. Now, my understanding was that we represented
s virtually --not all because then Marty was also a
9 client, but we represented the vast majority of the
10 cases that the O' Boyle r,aw Firm had. And I'm very, very
11 insistent that I want things done a certain way for a
12 whole lot of reasons, none the least of which is I don't
13 like to lose because losing you know, bad facts make
14 bad law and I don't want to litigate cases unless we're
15 going to do them the right way.
16 And in the beginning, Marrett Hanna was the
17 attorney that was representing me personally in a number
18 of cases and I was very happy with her --
19 Q. Keep in mind anything you discuss in terms of
20 her advice representing you, you have the right to keep
21 confidential --
22 A. I understand.
23 Q. --or you can waive it.
24 A. I understand. I --I'm more than happy to
25 waive it. And I don't know that we're really going to
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1 get into the particulars of anything that would be
2 privileged anyway. The --I --for example, in one of
3 the cases that the firm was representing me on where she
4 was the attorney of record, I actually sat in with her
5 when she was talking to opposing counsel for the
6 purposes of settlement. Frankly I wanted to hear how
7 she did on the phone. This is somebody who presumably
B is going to be representing me, or is representing me,
9 and is going to be presumably representing the
10 foundation on a lot of cases and I wanted to get a sense
11 of what her style was. And I was very pleased. I
12 thought she did a really fine job. She was very
13 detail-oriented. She seemed very committed to doing
14 things ethically. In fact, one of the very first things
15 I did when I got --when I'm going to work for the
16 foundation, was I --Jonathan came to me, Jonathan
17 O'Boyle came to me, and said that Marrett Hanna had
18 expressed real reservations about being involved with
19 this. And when I talked to her and I
20 Q. This you mean the foundation
21 A. The foun -doing public records litigation,
22 yeah, because her perception, I think understandably,
23 was sort of oh, we're just going to be going around
24 doing --engaging in got-you litigation. I mean I think
25 her attitude was sort of this is like slip and fall
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1 stuff. And I met with her, just the two of us, at one
2 of the conference rooms of the Commerce Group and it was
3 the first real conversation we ever had. And by the
4 time I got done talking to her, I --you know, I think
5 she was really sold on --on the concept of what I do.
6 And she expressed to me that as long as I was involved
7 she wanted to be a part of it, that she --I was very
s flattered. She's -you know, she said I want to
9 represent the white knight. I mean she felt like I was
10 really --you know, what I --the reason I was doing
11 it --my motives were pure. She didn't feel like
12 everybody else's were, but she --she was and we were
13 sort of joined at the hip at that point. I was very
14 happy with her representation and she and I exchanged a
15 number of e-mails I think beginning in February where
16 she felt like she was being pressured by Jonathan to
17 demand --make monetary demands and settle my cases
18 for that were beyond reasonable --
19 Q. Beyond the time that was spent?
20 A. Yeah. All I was asking for --I mean my
21 arrangement with the foundation is that I would not be
22 involved in any other money-making opportunities or any
23 money-making ventures, so I was not seeking anything out
24 of these lawsuits. I wanted nothing. I didn't want
25 I didn't want a penny out of them. I
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1 Q. The ones where you were plaintiffs?
2 A. Where I was a plaintiff, that's right.
3 Q. Right.
4 A. And so all I was asking --and I always do the
5 same I --I make three demands whenever I'm involved
6 with public records litigation or open government
7 litigation. First you got to produce the records
s without further condition. Secondly, the defendant has
9 to take some kind of meaningful remedial action so I
10 don't have to sue you again. This isn't about seeing
11 how many times I can sue you. It's about you actually
12 make the records available to the public. They have a
13 right to see it. And third, I want to be reimbursed for
14 my - -or be comp my attorney's fee paid. There are
15 reasonable attorney's fees pursuant to 119.12
16 Q. And that's --that's their actual time and the
17 value of their services. This is not a contingency case
18 in terms of the --there's no money being obtained from
19 the government. They just pay the fees, correct?
20 A. Yeah, I --yeah, I --yes, and I --and I'll
21 even make a distinction here. There --you know, I
22 personally, because this issue's going to play into some
23 of our further conversations today, you know, when --
24 when I've been the plaintiff in public records lawsuits,
25 when I have an attorney, you know, we will --we will
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1 make a demand, those same three demands, produce the
2 records, take some meaningful remedial action, and it's
3 surprising how reluctant public agencies are to do that,
4 which seems like sort of the --you know, let me help
5 you fix the problem so we don't have to do this again,
6 and then I want to be reimbursed or my attorney's fees
7 paid. There have been instances where I have --I
s defendants, particularly State contractors who have been
9 very recalcitrant to correct the problems --I'm not --
10 I may not make a demand for my attorney's fees. I just
11 may make a monetary demand, period, you know. I'll
12 you want me to give up my right to be vindicated in
13 court. If you'll produce the records and take remedial
14 action, I'll dismiss the case for $2,500 or $5,000 or
15 whatever number --
16 Q. Where your fees are at least that much?
17 A. No, where my fees aren't that much. I mean I
18 have done this where I -I have been pro se and I've
19 had defendants who have said we want you to dismiss the
20 case. Well, that's great, I want you to obey the law
21 and I want to be vindicated in court. We're having a
22 settlement negotiation and I'm very blunt. I'm asking
23 for money that I'm not entitled to. I want you to pay
24 me $1,500. You want me to dismiss the case, pay me
25 $1,500. And defendants are like well, you're not
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1 entitled to that. You're right, I'm not. That's why
2 it's called a settlement negotiation. We're talking
3 about things we're not entitled to. You're not entitled
4 to have me dismiss the case. The only thing either one
5 of us are entitled to at this point is due process. If
6 you're going to ask me for something you're not entitled
7 to, I'm going to ask for something I'm not entitled to.
s I have no problem with that as long as that's what's
9 being communicated, as long as you're making it very
10 clear I'm not asking for something under the pretense
11 that I'm entitled to it, I'm saying, I'm acknowledging,
12 I'm not entitled to this. This is consideration.
13 You --you want me to do something, then I want you to
14 do something for me. When it comes to --
15 Q. And that would go to the plaintiff, that money,
16 not to the law not to lawyers?
17 A. Yeah, well, I'm talking when I --when I've
18 done that as a
19 Q. Pro se?
20 A. -pro se. You know, we're --you know,
21 frankly, these --these --you know, I don't --this is
22 not with public agencies, you understand, public
23 operated agencies because that's tax money. Those
24 are --taxpayers are pay them money. I got a real
25 problem with -with that. I mean you're talking about
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1 a for-profit corporation that has a, you know, billion
2 dollar contract with the State of Florida and they have
3 violated their contract and violated the public's right
4 to know. I don't have --I'm not even slightly bashful
5 about saying yes, you want me to dismiss this case, your
6 claim is, your defense is we didn't know. We didn't
7 realize we were subject to the Public Records Act. Well
s guess what, I did you a big favor by bringing it to your
9 attention and I did it at my own personal expense. I'm
10 not completely unapologetic about saying yeah, pay me
11 $1,500 or 2 grand or 2,500. That's one thing. It's
12 something entirely different for an attorney to make a
13 demand and to suggest or outright claim that the demand
14 is for attorney's fees when it's something --when
15 they're actually asking for more money than what they've
16 earned.
17 The issue that Marrett was having, and the
18 issue that I shared with her, we shared the same
19 concern, was if --if the O'Boyle Law Firm, at $350 an
20 hour, has billed $4,000 and they've got $500 in
21 expenses, why would you ask for anything more than
22 $4,500?
23 Q. Of a government agency?
24 A. Or of anybody, of --of anyone. Now, if you -
25 if you're suing a private contractor, which these cases
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1 were --where I was being represented were against State
2 contractors, it would be fine if you wanted to make a
3 monetary demand of, you know, $6,000 and your --my
4 legal fees are $4,000 as long as you present it that
5 way, as long as you present it as my client,
6 Mr. Chandler, is willing to settle the case for a
7 monetary payment of $6,000 out of which you will cover
s his expenses.
9 Q. And in that scenario, the plaintiff would get
10 anything beyond what the fees were I take it? That
11 wouldn't go to the lawyers?
12 A. Yeah --well, you would think, right? I mean
13 that -that --that was --and this was the and
14 thankfully this really didn't enter into the equation,
15 at least I didn't think because I wasn't seeking to get
16 anything out of it. I don't want any money out of it.
17 Q. As the foundation?
18 A. As an individual.
19 Q. As an individual, okay.
20 A. Right. And the -and there were --I think
21 there were three or four cases against these private
22 contractors. All I wanted was
23 Q. And the O'Boyle Law Firm was representing you?
24 A. That's right.
25 Q. And they --that was done through Hanna you
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1 said?
2 A. Marrett, yeah.
3 Q. Marrett Hanna.
4 A. And and Marrett
5 Q. All of them?
6 A. I don't remember. I can't -I think they
7 were, but I'm not 100 percent sure of that.
8 Q. Okay.
9 A. The the problem --the pushback that Marrett
lo was getting, as I understood it, and she and I talked
11 about this on the phone a number of times, we exchanged
12 e-mails about this, was she was getting pressured to
13 make higher demands. And my response was why, that
14 Q. Who was she getting pressure from, the -..
15 A. Jonathan.
16 Q. O'Boyle?
17 A. Yes, to - -to ·--
18 Q. Now, was he in - -in the Commerce Group off ices
19 full time whenever you were there working at the O'Boyle
20 Law Firm?
21 A. Yeah. He was living at his morn and dad's house
22 in Gulf Stream and he was there, yeah.
23 Q.
24 A.
25 Q.
Full time?
Yeah.
So he worked out of the --the Commerce Group
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1 off ices where the law office had its room?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. On a full-time basis?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. And she told you that Jonathan was putting
6 pressure on --on her to ask for more in fees than had
7 been earned?
8 A. Yes.
9 Q. How many times did she communicate that to you?
10 A. Repeatedly.
11 Q. And that was in February?
12 A. Yes, and she she --you know, my --my
13 response to her was it's --it's you know, I
14 understand that you guys want to get your reasonable
15 attorney's fees, and I'm all in favor of that and I'm
16 and that's going to be part of our settlement
17 discussions. I couldn't care less about you guys
18 getting any a penny more than that. That's not my
19 interest. And it's frankly not your decision to make.
20 It's not Jonathan's decision to make. It's mine and
21 mine alone. I'm the client. I get to make that
22 decision. That's the way it works. And, you know,
23 frankly if I said that I was willing to settle the case
24 for --for no attorney's fees, that's my choice to make.
25 It's not your's. You guys took this case on a
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1 contingency. It is what it is.
2 Q. Contingency meaning they wouldn't get their
3 fees unless they were awarded?
4 A. That's right and
5 Q. Not a percentage of any recovery?
6 A. That's right.
7 Q. And there was no fee agreement on any of these
8 cases?
9 A. That's right, and which again I tried with
10 them --about that repeatedly, look guys, we got to have
11 these fee --because if you get to a fee hearing and we
12 don't have a fee agreement, if I were opposing counsel,
13 I'd be arguing that you're not entitled to anything
14 because the Florida Bar is really clear about this on
15 a --any kind of a contingency fee agreement has to
16 be --it shall be in writing. It's not --you don't
17 have any latitude there.
18 Q. All right.
19 A. As a result of --of Marrett expressing --and
20 again, this is what she told me --
21 Q. So you told --you made it clear to --to the
22 O'Boyle Law Firm through Marrett that any contingency
23 had to be in writing?
24 A.
25 Q.
Yes, and I --
Which is clearly a Bar requirement?
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1 A. I --I communicated that to Ryan, with mar --I
2 communicated that to Jonathan O'Boyle. I communicated
3 that to Giovanni Mesa.
4 Q. And it was just ignored?
5 A. It was ignored. So as a result of my support
6 for Marrett's position, I think she was emboldant to
7 to sort of stand her ground with Jonathan and as a
B result of that, she was removed from the cases without
9 my consent, without my knowledge. I just found out
10 after the fact that she's been taken off the cases and,
11 you know, Ryan Whitmer Ryan Whitmer was going to
12 handle them and --
13 Q. And who told you that was being done?
14 A. Marrett.
15 Q. She told you she had been removed --
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. And by -by Jonathan or by -
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. By Jonathan?
20 A. Yes.
21 Q. And Jonathan appointed Ryan to handle the
22 cases?
23 A. Yes.
24 Q. And what did --what did you do when you
25 learned that? This was in February?
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1 A. Yeah, I believe it was in February. I was --I
2 was you know, I was --I was annoyed by it. I was --
3 I was frustrated by it. I mean it wasn't one of those
4 things that you took -it wasn't a complete deal
5 breaker for me. I --it was --my perception was this
6 is just young attorneys not thinking very clearly, not
7 Marrett, I'm talking about Jonathan in particular. And
B there --I also kind of had the feeling that there was
9 sort of this little bit of a power struggle. I think
10 that he perceived that he was the one that was in charge
11 and if he want to be in charge, it's his law firm,
12 that --more power to him, but I'm the one that's in
13 charge of the foundation and I'm the client. So when it
14 comes to the litigation --and in these particular cases
15 where I - -it was me personally, I -I know who's in
16 charge. It's me. It's not the attorney. I'm the one
17 that's calling the shots here. The attorney is a
18 technician who provides advice. That's it. I get to
19 make the decisions about litigation strategies and what
20 we're going to demand for settlement. And again, I am
21 far more interested in the first two settlement
22 conditions than I am the third. You got to produce the
23 records without further conditions and you have to take
24 some meaningful remedial action.
25 Q. So who were the defendants in these -in
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1 these --you said about three cases that you were the
2 plaintiff in?
3 A. Yeah, there were --and there were great facts.
4 Every one of the facts were just gold. First Coast
5 Advantage is one of them and the other one's -
6 Q. What county?
7 A. In Duval County.
8 Q. Okay.
9 A. There an AHCA contractor.
10 Q. AHCA is --
11 A. Yeah, I'm sorry, Agency for Health Care
12 Administration.
13 Q. Okay. And where was that?
14 A. Well, AHCA is in Tallahassee, but the --First
15 Coast Advantage was in in Duval County.
16 Q. So all three filed --filed in Duval County?
17 A. I think I --it was First Coast Advantage and
18 then it was Memorial Healthcare Group
19 Q. Where --where was that case filed?
20 A. They're in Duval County. That's another one
21 with just --just golden facts. Northwest Behavioral
22 Health. And again, I'll --I stand by the facts of
23 these cases and to my knowledge, the cases are --have
24 been
25 Q.
are being handled ethically.
Yeah, they --they haven't been settled. You
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1 didn't let them --you didn't let them settle them for
2 more than the fees were?
3 A. That's exactly right.
4 Q. You stopped them?
5 A. Yeah, we --we are going to do that. So that
6 led to -
7 Q. So all three of these are in Duval County?
8 A. I believe they are, yes.
9 Q. Okay. And you're the named plaintiff?
10 A. Yeah. Yeah, both of just, you know, these
11 are I would say that the facts of these -of those
12 cases, that's very typical for the work that I do. I
13 mean you walk in, you make the request. The contract
14 clearly says that they're going to have to produce the
15 records. You ask for a record that you know exists
16 because it's required to be created in the contract.
17 You ask for it. They tell you no. You know,
18 sometimes I mean I've actually been --had instances
19 where they called the police to have you removed for
20 doing nothing more than politely making a public records
21 request. I love those facts.
22 Q. Right. Now, you don't have to disclose this, I
23 don't believe it's privileged communication, but
24 obviously you're the client and it's your call
25 A. Yeah.
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1 Q. do you have an oral agreement with the
2 O'Boyle Law Firm as to what the hourly charge is for
3 different lawyers on these cases or do they just charge
4 what they think is fair?
5 A. I believe that Ryan is handling them now
6 because Marrett left the firm, largely over these
7 issues. I think he charges 250 an hour. Marrett, who
s is a much more seasoned attorney, much, much more
9 seasoned attorney, I think was charging 350 an hour.
10 Q. So you agreed to pay 250 an hour for those
11 cases --
12 A. I didn't agree to pay it. I agreed that --
13 that --
14 Q. That was a reasonable fee?
15 A. A reasonable fee, yeah. Yeah.
16 Q. Okay. This --
17 A. Their fees for expenses.
18 Q. Are there any writings that memorialize that
19 just a conversation?
20 A. It was part of my suggestion urging
21 Q. Okay --
22 A. --that we should have -that we should have
23 it in writing. It hasn't been.
24 Q.
25 A.
So
So things --things --
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1 Q. Back to --you're starting to see a red --some
2 red flags?
3 A. That was a concern for me.
4 Q. Right.
5 A. And it wasn't that big a deal to me at that
6 stage of the game as far as the involvement of the
7 foundation because the vast majority of the cases that
B we had at that time were against publically operated
9 agencies or municipalities, State agencies, not
10 contractors.
11 Q. And as I understand it from your description,
12 you like Ryan. You considered him charming. And the
13 fact he took over the cases didn't didn't alert -
14 didn't offend you from the standpoint that you had
15 respect for him?
16 A. Yeah, it offended me that --that Marrett had
17 been removed because I --I liked what she was doing. I
18 thought she was very competent. More --more important
19 even than me thinking that she was competent, which is
20 usually important, I felt that philosophically we were
21 aligned. I think --I felt that we were after the same
22 thing and that's really important to me.
23 Q. Did you have to same kind of conversation with
24 Ryan, telling him what was important to you and public
25 records and open government?
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1 A. Yeah, and I my sense of Ryan is that he is a
2 decent human being who's trying to do the right thing.
3 I --I --you know, I think he is in a very --was in a
4 very difficult position. I think there is a tremendous
5 amount of influence that Marty has over the firm. One
6 of the issues that came up repeatedly --now, I
7 witnessed this. You know, I I would be there, you
s know, for a day or part of the day to talk to attorneys
9 about cases or whatever and --and a lot of my
10 interaction with the firm wasn't just as a client, it
11 was also hey, what do you think we ought to do or, you
12 know --there were some procedural questions they had,
13 but mainly it was sort of really trying to understand
14 the lay of the land as far as public records litigation
15 is concerned because I obviously had done a lot more
16 than they had. And I was very happy to --to engage in
17 that respect. But frequently when I was there, Marty
18 would come in and, you know, just sort of --it was a
19 train wreck. I mean he was very opinionated about how
20 cases ought to be handled, which I found --at first it
21 was a little charming, but then it just became really
22 annoying because it's like wait a minute, I understand
23 you're financing the foundation and you're financing the
24 law firm, but you don't have a voice here. This
25 isn't --the foundation is not your toy. You don't have
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1 any standing to have any input here even if you are the
2 donor. You're --you're not on the board. You're not
3 an employee. I'm the only person that has the
4 discretion about this.
5 Q. So he would come in and in front of the lawyers
6 and you try to direct the litigation?
7 A. I don't know if direct is the right word. He
8 would come back there and very much sort of, you know,
9 this is what I think ought to be done on these cases.
10 Q. Was this a regular occurrence while you were
11 there?
12 A. Oh, yeah, very regular. Yeah, I mean I --at
13 least when I was there, yeah, it was very common.
14 Q. And you expressed your disappointment or
15 A. Yeah, I you know, I --I never told him to
16 but out. You know, it was one of those you know, I
17 kind of rolled my eyes and, you know --but this was a
18 real issue for Marrett and she was --as far as the
19 escalation of her being marginalized to the point not
20 only she was removed from the cases that where I was
21 the plaintiff in spite of the fact I was very happy with
22 her representation, but then she was excluded from
23 conversations. She was you know, they would ---they
24 being Jonathan and --Ryan would --and sometimes
25 Giovanni even would go and --literally go into Marty's
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1 private office and exclude her from the conversations
2 about cases that she should have been involved with.
3 And she just felt more --and you'll see this in the
4 e-mails. She felt more and more marginalized, and I
5 think she was, and eventually she --she left. I think
6 it was sort of a mutual --I don't know if she was fired
7 or quit. I think she was probably more fired than she
s was than she quit.
9 Q. Okay. Let me ask this, when -when you had,
10 in February, these conversations with her about Jonathan
11 trying to negotiate more in fees than had been earned in
12 your cases --
13 A. Uh-huh.
14 Q. --did that ever, in February, result in you
15 having any direct communication with Jonathan on that
16 topic? And if there's a conversation later, you can
17 tell me that and we'll deal with that in --
18 chronologically.
19 A. Yeah, I well, I don't know that we had
20 conversations about that in January -in February
21 specifically. I can't say that within within that
22 particular timeframe. We may have. Certainly this is
23 an issue that Jonathan and I really battled over
24 subsequent to this.
25 Q. Okay. We'll get to that. I don't want to keep
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1 you let me let you get back to your --
2 A. So
3 Q. your chronology of what you were relating to
4 me.
5 A. Yeah, so things --you know, for --to the very
6 large extent I was left alone for most of February and
7 most of March. And then in --in April, I believe it
8 was in April, let me look at my timeline here, I was
9 contacted by Denise DeMartini and --let me find it
10 here. Yeah, it was in -I'm sorry, it was in March
11 27th. That is when Marrett Hanna told me she had been
12 removed from the cases.
13 Q. What date?
14 A. It was in March.
15 Q. Okay.
16 A. So some of the other --you know, where I
17 started seeing what I refer to red --red flags, I got
18 a --I got an e-mail from a woman named Jill Mohler,
19 M-o-h-1-e r --
20 Q. And who is she?
21 A. She is the secretary, receptionist, for the
22 Commerce Group, very sweet lady, very nice lady.
23 Q.
24 A.
25 Q.
She's --she's an employee of Marty's company?
Yes.
And has been for how long, do you know?
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1 A. I --not long.
2 Q. Okay.
3 A. A year or so maybe.
4 Q. Receptionist, okay.
5 A. Yeah, very nice lady. I found out from her
6 that --and I had been completely unaware of this, that
7 she was actually making public records requests on
s behalf of the foundation. This was in April.
9 Q. Without your knowledge?
10 A. Without my knowledge. I had no idea she was
11 doing it.
12 Q. She's not an employee --
13 A. No, she's not an employee. She's not an
14 employee or a volunteer or anything else. She's
15 she's she has no affiliation with the foundation,
16 none.
17 Q. How did you learn this?
18 A. She --she --I got an e-mail from her and --
19 this is what the e-mail says, "Hi, Joel, Marty requested
20 that I send you the attached records request from
21 responses to review as well as the records requests cost
22 estimate spreadsheet also attached, after review all,
23 Marty would like to speak with you about them, I left
24 you a voicemail and" --you know, and this was in
25 relationship to public records requests that had been
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1 made to Gulf Stream and I was --
2 Q. In the name of the foundation?
3 A. Yeah, in the name of the foundation, which I
4 there were a number of issues there for me. One was,
5 okay, you guys aren't being very clever about this
6 because you might want to take into consideration that
7 while you're sending this from a --a Citizens Awareness
s Foundation e-mail, you're transmittal sheet has the
9 Commerce Group phone number and address on it, so, you
10 know, it's pretty transparent who's really making the
11 public records request. Two, I didn't authorize you to
12 make the request. Three, the requests aren't well
13 written. They're they're defective in my opinion.
14 And four, why are we sending all these public records
15 request to - -to Gulf Stream? I
16 Q. How many were there?
17 A. Well, at one point it came to my attention that
18 hundreds of have been made. It was well over --I say
19 hundreds, well over a hundred. I think the number that
20 sticks in my head was like 160 or something.
21 Q.
22 period?
23 A.
24 Q.
25 A.
And these were made in what month or what time
I don't know. I don't know.
2014?
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Since the foundation
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1 got started, yeah.
2 Q. Okay. So they were made after January 22nd?
3 A. Oh, yes.
4 Q. Over 100 and --
5 A. In the name of the foundation. I did not know
6 about them. I didn't authorize them. And part of
7 the --part of the problem I had with this was the deal
s I had with Marty sitting by his pool on Wednesday, I
9 think January 22nd, was no enemies list. I knew that
10 Marty had a sort of had an ax to grind with the
11 city --with the Town of Gulf Stream and while I think
12 that the Town of Gulf Stream has had a remarkable series
13 of public records challenges, they in my opinion have
14 not been very compliant with the Public Records Act,
15 I --I don't want to beat up on them. I mean how many
16 times do you need to sue somebody to make your point? I
17 mean if I have to sue the same defendant ten times in a
18 row, fine, but I don't want to sue them ten times all at
19 once. And I didn't see any point in making all these
20 public records requests to a town with 500 people. I
21 mean there are all of these other agencies in the state
22 of Florida. There are --there are 412 municipalities.
23 There's 67 counties, which means there's 67 school
24 districts and 67 sheriffs. There are over 100 State
25 agencies and there are 1,600 community development
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1 districts. And there are probably 10,000 state --state
2 contractors under the Public Records Act. There are
3 lots of other people out there besides just the Town of
4 Gulf Stream. And if we're making hundreds of public
5 records requests to one very small agency, it really
6 looks like we're picking on them.
7 Q. Like an enemies list?
8 A. Yeah, which was part of the deal, no enemies
9 list.
10 Q. And you knew that Marty had a bone to chew with
11 Gulf Stream, I take it, from your prior conversations
12 with him?
13 A. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean I knew about him
14 painting his house and -and I mean I personally
15 look I personally had sued Gulf Stream over a public
16 records violation, so I --I knew that --that the
17 public records issues there were very real and frankly,
18 it is remarkable to me that they have been slow, so
19 slow, to really get their house in order for --
20 Q. It's a
21 A. It's a
22 Q. --one
23 A. Sure.
24 Q. Local
25 A. Yes.
tiny, tiny local government --
tiny town - -
or two employees
employees?
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1 Q. Let me ask you this, when you learned that Jill
2 Mohler when you learned in March that Jill Mohler --
3 A. April I think.
4 Q. April, April -had at Marty's direction, sent
5 out well over 100 public records requests in the name of
6 the foundation to Gulf Stream without your permission,
7 what was your --what did you do? What was your
s reaction?
9 A. I was pretty upset and this led to
10 conversations that I had with Bill Ring as the president
11 of the foundation that we couldn't be doing this. This
12 is --we can't have this. I --I needed to be the only
13 person that's making public records requests, or if I'm
14 not the only person making public records requests,
15 then --then I need to be the only --I need to be the
16 person that approves them. By this juncture, there were
17 three employees for the foundation. I was the Executive
18 Director. I hired a woman by the name of Cathy Zollo,
19 z o-1-1-o, who worked from her home in Sarasota, to my
20 knowledge. I don't think she's ever been to the office
21 in Deerfield Beach. I don't think she's ever met Marty
22 or any of the other I think she's talked to Denise
23 DeMartini on the phone, but she's never had any contact
24 with them. And then we had an intern, a guy named Dylan
25 Bouscher. And I directed them to make public records
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1 requests on behalf of the foundation. But I never
2 directed anybody else to make public records requests,
3 certainly nobody outside of the foundation.
4 Q. I take it you didn't even know who Jill Mohler
5 was at the time she was making --
6 A. No, I knew who she was. I mean I spoke to Jill
7 every time I walked through the door, hey, Jill, how are
s you
9 Q. So you --you knew she was a receptionist for
10 the for the Commerce Group?
11 A. Yeah. What I found out was --you know, it's
12 funny because she --you know, we I walk in and
13 there's this big stack of paper and she's --you know,
14 all the time doing something on the computer. I found
15 out later what she was doing on the computer was making
16 public records requests. I mean my understanding from
17 her and from other people in the at the Commerce
18 Group, this was like a full-time enterprise where she
19 was doing nothing but making public records requests. I
20 don't know --
21 Q. Making them to other entities besides Gulf
22 Stream?
23 A. No, Gulf Stream over and over again.
24 Q. But what about any other entities, did she do
25 any other --
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1 A. I don't know.
2 Q. Okay.
3 A. I mean I know one time on --you know, for
4 Marty or the Commerce Group she's making lots of public
5 records requests, the State Attorney and other agencies
6 like that, but --and I didn't care about that. The --
7 what I was concerned about was that the --that there
s was somebody who was presenting themselves as being a
9 representative of the foundation and making public
io records requests on behalf of the foundation without my
11 knowledge, without my authorization. And I had a
12 problem with that for the --the first big issue I had
13 was it looks like an enemies list.
14 Q. And then the only --when you learned about
15 being done in the name of the foundation through Jill
16 Mohler and Marty, was --Gulf Stream was the target, no
17 others?
18 A. I think there was I think at one time I
19 found out about --there's an engineering firm I think
20 that --that worked for Gulf Stream, but they had -
21 they all related to Gulf Stream, the ones that I knew
22 about. And I found that very upsetting.
23 Q. And these were not authorized by the foundation
24 or you?
25 A. Not by me.
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1 Q. And when you talked to Bill Ring, you
2 complained to him about this?
3 A. I sure did.
4 Q. And what did he say?
5 A. Sort of like, yeah, you know, okay, I'll talk
6 to Marty about it kind of thing and, you know --and
7 I -and the reason I didn't escalate this was each --
s this came up over --more than one time. Every time I'd
9 sort of get this pat on the head, yeah, you're right,
10 okay, we'll take care of it. And bear in mind I wasn't
11 there very much, right. I --I showed up at the offices
12 in Deerfield Beach once a week, once every couple of
13 weeks. The rest of the time I was out on the road, you
14 know, being with civil rights groups and doing audits.
15 So I --you know, I didn't really have a lot of contact
16 with them, certainly not not on a daily basis.
17 And then and in the during this period
18 in in April is when things really started to become
19 more unhinged. The --yeah, on April 14th, I got an
20 e-mail from Denise DeMartini, who was a board member,
21 who I was ultimately directed by the board, meaning Bill
22 Bring and Denise DeMartini, that she was the person that
23 I answered to directly. She was my direct superior.
24 Q.
25 A.
And she's Marty's administrative assistant?
I think she's more than that. I think she --I
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1 don't know what her official title is, but she's --
2 she
3 Q. His right hand?
4 A. That's very --I yeah, my sense is, and I
5 think that other people that are at the Commerce Group
6 would share this sense, that there's Marty and then
7 there's Denise and Bill and then there's everybody else,
s way, way, way behind them. They --she --I don't think
9 anything happens at the Commerce Group of any import
10 without Bill and Denise being involved with it.
11 So I got a --I got an e-mail from her and this
12 precipitated the conversation that I had subsequently
13 with Bill Ring and led to a whole series of other
14 conflicts with the board. She described her involvement
15 with the firm, and I'm reading from her e-mail, which is
16 April 14th, 2014, "My involvement with the firm", the
17 O'Boyle Law Firm, "is primarily to get procedures,
18 priorities, expectations in place for the attorneys so
19 that things run smoother. The firm's priority is to
20 keep up with the intake of cases so we want you to run
21 with it, no holding back, so we can properly staff up.
22 Obviously there are going to be bumps along the way that
23 we can overcome." My concern was that it became --
24 Q. She --is she writing --she's --as far as you
25 understood, she was on the board and she was an employee
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1 of Mr. O'Boyle's, Martin O'Boyle's, Commerce Group?
2 A. Yes.
3 Q. She sent you that e-mail. Did you understand
4 she was trying to now assist Jonathan's law firm?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. Did that come as a surprise, surprise to you?
7 A. Yes, it did. It was shocking to me and I
8 objected to it vociferously.
9 Q. And she --because your whole idea of
10 independence was out the window?
11 A. Yeah. Yeah, and --and it was portrayed --the
12 reason she's -the reason she's giving this explanation
13 in an e-mail is I'm objecting to, wait a minute, what
14 why is a board member involved with the law firm and
15 what I understood her to try to be saying is I'm just
16 kind of --you know, I'm kind of helping them
17 Q. Make sure they get business?
18 A. Well, no, that's not what I understood for her
19 to be saying. I'm just --I'm just kind of helping them
20 figure out, you know, procedures, how to you know,
21 the work
22 Q.
23 A.
24 Q.
25 A.
flow, just make things - -
Consulting with them - -
Yeah.
--to
Yeah.
try to help them - -
Yeah.
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1 Q. --staff up?
2 A. Which was utter nonsense and I raised this
3 issue with Bill Ring. I said look, you cannot have
4 Denise DeMartini, a board member of the foundation and
5 an employee of --of Marty, involved with the operation
6 of the law firm. And my argument that she was involved
7 with the operation of the law firm is she was actually
s managing the law firm meetings.
9 Q. You went to meetings at the law firm where she
10 was there?
11 A. She was --no, she was --wait, this was --
12 this is the creepy part, right. She's not even there.
13 She's on speaker phone running the meeting so
14 Q. Who's present during these meetings?
15 A. The entire law firm. Now, I was there. I --
16 which I you know, I subsequently refused to go to
17 the the law firm meetings.
18 Q. How many of these meetings were you at?
19 A. Just the one.
20 Q. And she ran it from a speaker phone?
21 A. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
22 Q. What lawyers were there?
23 A. Giovanni Mesa, Nick Taylor, I think Marrett was
24 still there at this time, Jonathan O'Boyle, Ryan
25 Whitmer, and Beth Canali(phonetic), who's the --the
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1 paralegal. And I was uncomfortable with the meeting for
2 several reasons. The first and most obvious is that you
3 have a non-attorney who's a board member who I report to
4 directly who is clearly, clearly running this meeting.
5 That's the first thing that just struck me as beyond
6 bizarre.
7 Q. Did she was doing it on behalf of --that she
8 was given direction from Martin O'Boyle?
9 A. No. It was simply just clear that she was
10 running the meeting.
11 Q. Okay.
12 A. And when I say running the meeting, it's --
13 it's sort of, you know, which cases do we have coming
14 in, which attorneys are these --these have been
15 assigned to, what's the status of this case. And it
16 wasn't even --when I say status of the case, just has
17 it been filed yet or not, not a --any meaningful case
18 management, which I found very frustrating. There
19 didn't seem to be any comprehension on her part about
20 settlement risings or, you know, procedural issues, you
21 know, are we doing an immediate hearing, are we, you
22 know, going to go for summary judgment, just none of
23 that. It was just sort of -
24 Q. Every --it sounds like everything was about,
25 tell me if this is correct, everything she was focusing
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1 on was about generating a number of lawsuits for the
2 O'Boyle Law Firm --
3 A. Yes. The second objection I had was that I
4 thought I was there because we were going to talk about
5 the foundation cases. It made perfect sense to me that
6 we would get all the attorneys together because it would
7 be much more efficient to do that. But what we ended up
s doing is they -well, while I was there, they ended up
9 having conversations about other clients, which I found
10 very troubling because I'm not a party to the
11 lawsuits
12 Q. Public records cases?
13 A. Yes. I had referred to the --the firm a
14 number of clients, people that had contacted me,
15 people -some that I've known for years, some that just
16 contacted me out of the blue, you know, I have public
17 records issues and I'm not an attorney but I have a law
1s firm that ,_ -
19 Q. Can you give me names of those people?
20 A. Yeah, a guy named Jeff Gray, who gave them a
21 large number of cases, which in my estimation has been
22 terribly problematic.
23 Q. Where is Mr. Gray?
24 A. Jeff Gray lives in Saint Augustine. He's a
25 civil rights activist. We do a lot of work together.
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1 He's a good guy, very --
2 Q. Okay.
3 A. --very reasonable -
4 Q. Later I may want to get his phone number from
5 you, but
6 A. I'll be happy to give that to you. The problem
7 that he ran into was the cases that he was --in fact,
B he was the --he was one of the activists that was
9 attending this seminar I did the first week of the
10 foundation. He had referred a number of cases too. I
11 think he gave a total of 42 cases to the firm and they
12 were not filing them in a timely fashion. It was very
13 frustrating and he didn't feel like they were
14 communicating with him.
15 Q. Were these cases in Saint Augustine or --·
16 A. No, all over the state.
17 Q. All over the state?
18 A. Yeah. And I was frustrated because, number
19 one, Jeff and I are friends and I didn't feel like he
20 was really being treated very well. I didn't think he
21 was getting good customer service. But also just from
22 an advocacy perspective, my --I feel, generally
23 speaking, that if you're going to file a public records
24 lawsuit, you need to do it pretty quickly after the --
25 the violation of your rights for a whole lot of reasons,
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1 not the least of which --if you wait six months to do
2 it, it doesn't really look like --look like you're all
3 that interested in the records. So that was one of the
4 issues. He didn't --he just didn't feel like he was
5 being treated very well.
6 Q. And did they discuss lJeff Gray at these --
7 A. Oh, yeah.
8 Q. --meetings in front of you?
9 A. Yes, absolutely.
10 Q. Even though it was a different client?
11 A. Even though it was a different client, just no
12 consideration for privilege whatsoever.
13 Q.
14 A.
15 Miami.
16 Q.
17 A.
18 Q.
19 A.
20 Q.
21 A.
22 Q.
23 A.
24 Q.
25 A.
And who else --who else did you refer to them?
A .fellow by the came of Al Crespo down in
c-r-e s-p-o?
Yeah.
I may want his number later.
Yeah.
Did they discuss him in front of you --
Yes.
--at
Yes.
Okay.
I mean
this meeting too?
And --and no protection of his
I --now, I knew about the cases
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1 these --Al had contacted me asking for a referral.
2 Jeff had contacted me asking for a referral. So I knew
3 the basic and I --I guess one of the value-added things
4 I brought to the relationship was I have enough
5 experience in public records litigation and I can look
6 at the facts of the case and I have a pretty good sense
7 of whether I think they're worth doing or not. I don't
s make that judgment and I don't share that judgment
9 with --with the potential plaintiff, but I certainly
10 share that judgment with the attorneys. The attorneys
11 are going to ask me, is this a good case, yeah, I think
12 it is or no, I don't think it is. I mean do I think you
13 should take it, no, yes, you know, you should, whatever,
14 based on the facts. So I was very intimate --
15 adamant
16 Q. Some of the lawyers at the firm would ask
17 you
18 A. Yeah, sure.
19 Q. --at the O'Boyle firm?
20 A. Yeah.
21 Q. But Crespo and Gray had never authorized the
22 lawyers to speak to you about their case?
23 A. I don't know whether they did or not. I - I
24 would assume they didn't
25 Q. They never told you that --
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1 A. Yeah, but I --I was very uncomfortable with
2 this because it was very clear that Denise was running
3 the meeting. And then subsequent, she --she started
4 demanding from me an accounting of how many cases I was
5 giving to the firm. And in fact, I received an e-mail
6 from her, just to kind of show that this was not a
7 one-time event -you know, and again, Marty was still
s very involved at this point, so for example, Marty was
9 approving the mission statement. And this is in --on
10 April 16th I get an e-mail from Denise saying that
11 Marty's approved the --the mission statement.
12 I got a --well, let me just shift gears a
13 little bit because we're going --we're kind of all over
14 the map here. The just to kind of keep things in
15 chronological order. So on --on April 14th, I get the
16 e-mail from Denise explaining her involvement with the
17 law firm. Then I get an e-mail from Jonathan saying
18 that he has assigned a case to himself.
19 Q. A Florida case?
20 A. Yes. So he --he's asking me --I got an
21 e-mail from him, I think it was on a Saturday
22 Q. Do you know which case it was?
23 A. Yeah, it was a case against the Department of
24 Children and Families Services, DCF --DFC --I think he
25 meant DCF.
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1 Q. Brought by whom?
2 A. The foundation and
3 Q. He told you he was assigning that case to
4 himself?
5 A. Well, I'll read you the e-mail, "Hey, Joel",
6 the says DFC, but I think he meant DCF, "the DFC link is
7 not working." And what he means by link is I would --I
s had set up a drop-box account and I would upload --you
9 know, if I had video or if I had e-mail exchange,
10 whatever documents, whatever --whatever I had to
11 support the facts of the case, I would upload those to
12 the drop-box and that's how I shared them with the
13 attorneys at at a distance
14 Q. Let me let me just ask you this on this
15 topic --
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Did you ever direct Jonathan O'Boyle to take
18 over that case or did he just tell you he was taking
19 over the case?
20 A. I didn't direct him to do anything.
21 Q. Okay. Let's move on to the next thing then.
22 A. Yeah, well he said --then he says "I have
23 assigned myself the case, any chance you can get that
24 link", get the link to the video. So I mean that --
25 here he clearly seems to be saying that's he's not
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1 working at the direction of another attorney. He's
2 assigned it to himself.
3 Then it's --on the 16th of April I get the
4 e-mail from Denise DeMartini saying that Marty's
5 approved the mission statement for the foundation. Then
6 I get a very troubling e-mail on --from Denise on April
7 28th. And the e-mail reads, this is April 28th, 2014 at
s 11:17 a.m., "Joel, I am in a law meeting now and have
9 been told that you have only provided eight new cases
10 for this week. We were expecting a minimum of 25 a
11 week." I pretty much flipped out after that. Number
12 one, I don't have a quota for cases. Any cases that
13 that are the result of the advocacy that I do, or
14 however many we get, if it's a lot, it's a lot. If
15 there's none, there's none. My paycheck's not affected
16 by whether we get lawsuits. That's not what I'm being
17 paid to do. I'm not hired to go out and gen up
18 lawsuits. I'm hired to go out and do civil rights ad
19 advocacy. And it's very clear at this point that she
20 thinks that my job is nothing more than to get lawsuits
21 and I was very disturbed by that.
22 I was also disturbed that she was continuing to
23 be a part of these meetings. So she's clearly in the
24 law firm meeting as, I guess a Commerce Group employee,
25 a member of the board, I don't know, working for firm,
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1 who knows what the deal is. But I have somebody who I'm
2 reporting to while she's in a law firm meeting telling
3 me she expects 25 cases a week and suddenly this starts
4 to feel like something very different than what I signed
5 up for. And what it's feeling like is I'm really
6 getting paid to go out and get lawsuits, which is not
7 what I agreed to do. It was not my job description.
8 Q. Well, were the lawsuits ever - -did you ever
9 try to send the lawsuits to some firm other than the
10 O'Boyle Law Firm?
11 A. I did as a matter of fact. There was a case
12 that I tried to send to the --to Thomas and Locicero
13 (phonetic), who in my estimation are the preeminent open
14 government litigators in the state of Florida and have
15 represented me personally for a number o.f years. There
16 was actually a very good case with excellent facts. The
17 University of South Florida, Barnes & Noble College Book
18 Sellers, they operate the -have the contract to
19 operate the book store at USF as well as a number of
20 other book stores around the state at State
21 universities. And my brother and I went in there in
22 April, I think it was April 24th, to --I made a public
23 records request on behalf of the foundation and he made
24 a public records request on his on behalf and they told
25 us no, we couldn't have --we asked for the adoption
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1 forms, the --the book store sends out a request to all
2 of the faculty asking which text books they're going to
3 need for the upcoming semester and they fill out these
4 adoption forms and we wanted copies of them. And the
5 reason we were making this request is --Barnes & Nobles
6 got sued over this a number of years ago. In fact there
7 was a Fourth DCA decision and it said that they have to
8 make these forms available. They're clearly public
9 record because they're acting on behalf of the
10 university. And the facts that they got in that audit
11 were virtually identical to the --I want it was a 1998
12 case, Booksmart versus Barnes & Noble, virtually
13 identical facts to the --an appellate decision started
14 to come down and I my brother continues to use Thomas
15 and Locicero. Thomas and Locicero still represents me
16 personally. It's ongoing public records litigation.
17 And we shared --Robert shared with them, my brother
18 Robert shared with them, what happened and they
19 expressed an interest in the case. It's interesting.
20 It's a good case. And because the cause of action
21 accrued in Hillsborough County and Thomas and Locicero
22 has an off ice in Hillsborough County and they are
23 excellent public records litigators and appellate
24 attorneys, and they had expressed an interest in it, I
25 thought well, this would be --this is the one --if
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1 we're going to refer one to another law firm, this is
2 where I'd like to start.
3 And so I sent an e-mail to Bill Ring asking
4 his for his approval as chairman --as president of
5 the board to do that and he responded by telling me I
6 couldn't do it. He and Denise had talked about it and I
7 can't --I can't ref er it to them, that he's not
8 inclined to let me ref er any cases to any other law firm
9 besides the O'Boyle Law Firm.
10 Q. What was your reaction to that?
11 A. I was very unhappy about that. And a lot of
12 these things came to a head in May. I had a we had
13 tried to schedule a meeting it was the first and only
14 face-to-face meeting I had with the board the entire
15 time I was there, and this was in --in May.
16 Q. Okay. Before you go to that --
17 A. Yep.
18 Q. help the reporter and m.e, the law firm was
19 Thomas
20 A. Thomas and Locicero.
21 Q. T-h-o-m-a-s?
22 A. Uh-huh.
23 Q. And?
24 A. Locicero, L - -see, you're going to ask
25 spell it and I'm going to be embarrassed because
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1 Q. Locicero?
2 A. Yeah, L
3 Q. Just get close. Where are they, in what town?
4 A. They're in --they're in Tampa. Hold on a
5 second, if I was writing it out I could tell you. I can
6 look it up and tell you. I can give you the exact
7 spelling here - -
8 Q. And they represent you currently and have
9 represented you --
10 A. For a long time. Locicero, is capital L, lower
11 case 0, capital C-i-c-e-r-o.
12 Q. And in Tampa, okay.
13 A. Yeah.
14 Q. You were going to give me the names of other
15 clients that you had referred to the O'Boyle Law Firm.
16 A. Yeah - -
17 Q. Al Gray -Al Crespo.
18 A. I'd have to go back and look. I can't
19 remember.
20 Q. Okay.
21 to --you were
22 A. Yeah,
23 Q. --and
24 little lunch.
25 A. Yeah,
All right, now please, you were going
going to go to May --
so we
then let's break. I'd like to get a
sure. There were --these issues that
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1 were --that were building, the first was --they're not
2 in any particular order. It was the issue of --of Jill
3 Mohler making public records requests on behalf of the
4 foundation without my knowledge or authorization. And
5 apparently a lot of them going to Gulf Stream, which I
6 found deeply troubling. Then I found out that a lawsuit
7 had been filed on behalf of the foundation against Gulf
s Stream without my knowledge.
9 Q. Only one you learned of?
10 A. I think there was one.
11 Q. But you don't know now if there were more or --
12 A. No, I don't --who knows. I mean the problem
13 was no lawsuits were supposed to be filed without me
14 authorizing them and me supervising the -the
15 litigation and making decisions about settlement. And
16 then I come to find out that now a lawsuit had already
17 been filed against Gulf Stream without my knowledge.
18 Q. Do you know which lawyer filed it?
19 A. I don't know. Somebody at the O'Boyle Law
20 Firm.
21 Q. Do you know if Jonathan O'Boyle had any
22 direction --directed that?
23 A. I don't know.
24 Q. Okay. How did you learn that a lawsuit had
25 been filed by the foundation against Gulf Stream without
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1 your knowledge?
2 A. I want to say that --I think Giovanni Mesa had
3 mentioned it to me because he didn't -he was
4 expressing real concerns, ethical concerns, as well,
5 very much like what Marrett had --Marrett Hanna had
6 expressed. So leading up to this --this meeting, which
7 I believe we had on May 19th
8 Q. This is the board meeting, the only board
9 meeting that ever occurred?
10 A. Yeah, and just kind of leading up to that, on
11 May 7th I got an e-mail from Denise DeMartini where she
12 is talking about having access to CLEO, which was the
13 firm's case management software. So she has direct
14 access to the firm's --
15 Q. The law firm's?
16 A. The law firm's, yes.
17 Q. You didn't have access to that
18 A. No, I didn't have access. No.
19 Q. What was your reaction when you found out she
20 had access to -CLEO is the firm's --that's the
21 that's the short name for the firm's --
22 A. Yeah, it's their --it's their --yeah, it's
23 their case management software. The e-mail, this is May
24 7th, 2014, "I have attached Jeff Gray and Jeff Fraser's
25 report", Jeff Fraser is another client, "are there any
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1 other clients you need or is this just --just the three
2 that you need?" And then she later says to me --later
3 that day I get an e-mail from her. She's --I get
4 copied on this. This is to Beth Canali, who is the
5 paralegal, "Please review the cash report and tell me if
6 this matches your records? This is what came out of
7 CLEO, so it should be accurate." I mean she clearly has
s access to --
9 Q. So the law firm has given her records regarding
10 all of the clients that she's giving you as the
11 foundation executive director?
12 A. Yeah. Why would I --why would I --I mean I'm
13 interested individually, and even as the executive
14 director of the foundation. I'm interested in --in
15 general terms, getting a sense of, you know, if I've
16 referred Jeff Fraser or Jeff Gray or Al Crespo, are you
17 guying taking care of them, you know, how's --you know,
18 as an advocate for open government, I'm interested to
19 hear the details generally
20 Q. Right --
21 A. --about about how things are going. And
22 her response is that she's been climbing around in CLEO
23 and she can give me the --all the details.
24 Q. So not only are they discussing these clients'
25 cases in your presence at law firm meetings, but now
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1 they're sending you reports regarding the people you
2 ref erred as cases to them?
3 A. Yes.
4 Q. What was your reaction to that?
5 A. Well, what about attorney/client privilege
6 and but more important to me than that is the why
7 is it that the person that I report to, who is a member
s of the board, why is she involved with the day-to-day
9 operations of the law firm? This seems like a very
10 serious problem especially when this person is now
11 telling me that she expects me to generate 25 cases a
12 week. And then she and Bill are telling me you can't
13 refer cases to any other law firm. I mean it becomes
14 now it's becoming clear to me that we are having a
15 failure to communicate. I understand that I work for a
16 foundation that's independent of Marty's influence and
17 independent of the firm's influence. I understand my
18 job is to go out and do civil rights advocacy. And if
19 litigation results from that, I make the decision about
20 where that --what law firm it gets referred to. I make
21 the decision about commencing litigation. I make the
22 decisions about settlements. I make the decisions about
23 litigation strategies. I'm the only person that
24 authorizes public records requests be made. That's my
25 understanding. And what I'm beginning to see is that's
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1 not what's happening, that --and I --you know, in an
2 effort to try to not overreact, I sent a series of
3 e .. ·mails about this. I sent memorandums to the board
4 about this. And it led to a meeting which I requested
5 which we ultimately had on May 19th
6 Q. Before you get to May 19th
7 A. Uh-huh.
8 Q. --there's a couple little things I want to --
9 A. Yeah.
10 Q. --clarify. If you --if you authorized a
11 public records request be made, would you do that by
12 e-mail or orally? How would that be done and who on
13 your staff would make it?
14 A. The only people I ever authorized to do that
15 would have been Dylan Bouscher, who's an intern, and
16 Cathy Zollo.
17 Q. So any that were made by people other than
18 those were not authorized by --
19 A. That's exactly right.
20 Q. Okay. And if you authorized the lawsuit to be
21 filed, would you -how would you do that?
22 A.
23 writing.
24 Q.
25 to?
General it could be either verbally or in
Okay. And who would you give the authorization
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1 A. The --well, to the law firm, you know
2 Q. Would you keep records of any lawsuits that you
3 did authorize for their
4 A. No, that was one of the --that was one of the
5 first --that was one of the ongoing issues that we had,
6 was there were so many cases, so for example, on on
7 May 16th, I have an e-mail exchange with Denise and
s she's really very, very eager to find out about how many
9 cases were filed. So I go back, and it was very
10 difficult to piece this together because the firm was --
11 would - -had great difficulty in generating any kind of
12 a report that would show me what cases had been
13 referred, what cases had been filed, what's the status.
14 So as best I was able to piece together, I gave her a
15 summary, which she then responded to me, "Joel,
16 according to the case management spreadsheet you sent
17 me, I come up with the following number of cases.
18 Please let me know if this is correct and whether they
19 include all your people, Jeff Gray, et cetera", and I
20 assume she means the people that I referred to the
21 foundation --or the firm. January, there were ten
22 cases. February there were 25 cases. March there were
23 35 cases. April there were 90 cases. And May thus far,
24 51 cases. And this was sent to her on May 16th. And
25 she expressed to me on more than one occasion her
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1 frustration that I was not you know, like there
2 should be more cases. And my response is no, there
3 shouldn't be. There --there will be however many there
4 are.
5 Q. Did you ever check to see if these cases had
6 all been authorized by you to be filed?
7 A. Well, what the numbers that I'm giving her
8 are ones that I --that either I have referred to her
9 for --on behalf of the --not to her, referred to the
10 firm on behalf of the foundation or people that I have
11 referred to the firm that I thought were, you know,
12 meritorious cases.
13 Q. Okay. So these are --these cases that you
14 looked at on this sheet are the cases that you either
15 referred or authorized to be commenced?
16 A. Yes.
17 Q. Okay, so you know about that. So if there are
18 others that were filed --
19 A. I don't know about them.
20 Q. You didn't authorize them?
21 A. Right. So
22 Q. Does this sheet list all the names of the cases
23 that you authorized to be filed?
24 A.
25 Q.
Yeah, it should have. Yeah.
Okay. All right.
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1 A. Yeah. So I had gotten --prior to this --this
2 meeting with the board, Bill and Denise, I had gotten a
3 document from Jill Mohler that was sent apparently on
4 behalf of the foundation, the board, called Procedures
5 and Protocol. If you want to stop for lunch, this might
6 be a good time to do it before we get into more detail
7 or
8 Q. Okay, that's perfect.
9 A. Is that okay?
10 Q. That's perfect. So we're going to start --
11 that's May 19th?
12 A. May 19th, yes.
13 MR. SWEETAPPLE: We'll start at May 19th
14 when --when I come back. All right, thank you.
15 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We're off the video record
16 at 1:04 p.m.
17 (A short recess was taken.)
18 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We are on the video record
19 at 2:04 p.m.
20 Q. All right. Mr. Chandler, I think when we broke
21 you were at May 19 in your --
22 A. Yes.
23 Q. --narrative.
24 A. Yes. So on --after several weeks of trying to
25 schedule a meeting, what ended up being the first and
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1 the last face-to-face meeting with the with the
2 board, I --I drove down to Boca --Deerfield Beach and
3 had a meeting with Bill Ring and Denise DeMartini.
4 Prior to that, I had received a memorandum from Jill
5 Mohler on behalf of the foundation. And again, Jill did
6 not work for the foundation. And it was a memorandum
7 entitled "Procedures/Protocol" and -so I prepared a
s memorandum which I use as my notes for the meeting that
9 I had with the board. So if you'll bear with me, I'm
10 going to --it's a couple of pages. I'm going to read
11 this because it captures -everything that's in this
12 memorandum I addressed with the board specifically. So
13 I wrote "I have read and thoughtfully considered the
14 protocol Procedure/Protocol memo, the memo that
15 received that I received from Jill Mohler on Friday,
16 May 16th, 2014. There are several points that I would
17 like to address." And again, I used what I'm reading
18 now as -as my notes for my conversation with Bill and
19 Denise. "Specifically, the items enumerated 1, 2, 7,
20 and 8, each of these deal squarely with the question of
21 who has the authority to make public records requests on
22 behalf of the Citizens Awareness Foundation and who has
23 the authority to authorize the commencement and
24 settlement of open government litigation on behalf of
25 the foundation. The memo expressly states that there
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1 are four parties who have direct authority to make
2 public records requests and to authorize the
3 commencement of settlement --commencement and
4 settlement of open government litigation, Bill Ring,
5 Denise DeMartini, Brenda Russell, and Joel Chandler.
6 Additionally, the memo clearly states that each of those
7 parties has the authority or power to delegate to,
s quote, anyone, end quote, the same authority. At this
9 point, I want to express in unequivocal terms my
10 disagreement with the aforementioned policies. In my
11 judgment, it is imperative that only one person be given
12 authority to make public records requests and to engage
13 in and settle open government litigation on behalf of
14 the foundation and that person should be me. It would
15 be difficult to overstate the degree to which the
16 foundation will be scrutinized by defendants, opposing
17 counsels, the courts, and the legislature given the
18 number of open government lawsuit s we are presently
19 engaged in and the volume of cases we anticipate in the
20 future. Based upon my experience in open government
21 advocacy, I have estimated that we can expect to file
22 about 100 cases per month. That number includes cases
23 filed by the foundation and those the foundation has
24 provided some meaningful assistance in bringing. To put
25 that number in perspective, the top ten open government
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1 litigators in Florida combined probably file less than
2 100 cases per year. We are, consequently, the focus of
3 various well-funded and politically powerful
4 adversaries. There are 412 municipalities, 67 counties,
5 66 sheriffs, Miami/Dade County does not have one, 67
6 school boards, more than 1,600 community development
7 districts, 20 State Attorneys, 20 medical examiners,
8 more than 100 State agencies, and thousands, perhaps as
9 many as 10,000, State contractors. They are all subject
10 to Florida's extraordinarily broad open government law
11 and they despise what we do. More importantly, they are
12 extraordinarily well-funded and collectively the most
13 powerful political entities in Florida. Here I can
14 speak from long personal experience. They will do
15 whatever is within their power to stop us. They are
16 presently scrutinizing public records requests that we
17 make and every case we file. They are actively looking
18 for opportunities to exploit any weakness they can find.
19 And they communicate with each other to an extent that
20 is shocking to the uninitiated. From my personal
21 experience, they are willing to engage in threats of
22 civil litigation, criminal prosecution, and violence.
23 They're willing to launch criminal investtgations and
24 unlawfully access both DMV and criminal databases.
25 They're willing to engage in criminal conduct as
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1 evidenced by the prosecution and conviction of the
2 general counsel for the school board of Polk County and
3 criminal conspiracies. And they are most assuredly
4 willing to gut Florida's open government laws in order
5 to stop us. Because of that certainty, I believe that
6 we must employ every effort to deprive our adversaries
7 of any claims of misconduct on our part. In addition to
B a series of very practical reasons that I would be happy
9 to articulate at another time, the fact that we live
10 with targets on our backs should be reason enough to
11 make us very concerned - -make us take a very
12 conservative approach to making public records requests
13 and engaging in open government litigation. This is
14 ground that I've successfully navigated for the last
15 for the past eight years and I've done so at great
16 personal costs. Given my considerable experience in
17 this area, I believe that I am extraordinarily
18 well-equipped to help the foundation avoid the pitfalls
19 that lay ahead. I am equally convinced that if I'm not
20 given the authority and resources to do so, the efforts
21 of the foundation will --will result in an erosion of
22 the public's right to know. My goal is to sustain what
23 we are doing and to continue to work with the foundation
24 to promote open government. I am absolutely committed
25 to the cause of open government and I'm willing to serve
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1 at the pleasure of the board of directors and to be
2 accountable to it. If, however, I do not have the
3 confidence of the board to have both the resources and
4 the authority to act on its behalf, then I believe we
5 should now consider how best to bring to a close my
6 relationship with the foundation."
7 I did not read that in the meeting that I had
s with Bill and Denise, but I did cover every point in
9 there and then some. And this was the result of the
10 series of concerns that I addressed earlier, the fact
11 that public records requests were being made by parties
12 that were not a part of the foundation that I did not
13 know about, I did not authorize them, the lawsuits had
14 been filed without my authorization, the fact that
15 Denise DeMartini was functioning both as a board member
16 of the foundation and she was involved with the
17 day-to-day operations of the law firm --
18 Q. And also worked for Mr. Martin O'Boyle's
19 company?
20 A. And she worked for Marty O'Boyle, that's right.
21 And my concern was that given the scrutiny that we were
22 going to be under, we really have to behave ourselves.
23 We can't do things that would allow anyone to
24 legitimately claim that we were involved with things we
25 shouldn't be involved with. And that if I did not have
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1 the authority to --to make decisions about litigation,
2 settlements, and public records requests, that I didn't
3 feel like I could continue to work for the foundation.
4 Denise DeMartini, her response was --she was
5 incredulous that I would quit my job and her response
6 was something to the effect that, you know, there's no
7 way you're going to quit a job paying you $120,000 a
8 year. And my response to her was that if you don't --I
9 think my exact words were if you guys don't stop this
10 nonsense, I'm going to fucking quit. She again
11 expressed her incredility that I would just quit and
12 that --I think this was on a Monday and I had --was
13 scheduled to be there all week because I was scheduled
14 to be deposed in some cases later in the week. And when
15 I went down on Sunday night, I checked into a hotel
16 right up the street from the -the foundation. I got a
17 room for one night and I packed my bags on Monday
18 morning before I went into the off ice because I expected
19 I was going to be going home. I mean my expectation was
20 I'm --I'm going to quit, and I told her that.
21 So we broke --took a break in the meeting and
22 sometime later we reconvened and Bill and Denise
23 announced to me that they agreed, that I would be given
24 sole authority to make public records requests, no one
25 will make public records requests without my knowledge,
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1 that there would be no more cases filed without me being
2 involved, that they had utterly and completely
3 capitulated.
4 Q. Now, did they tell you they called Marty in the
5 recess, during the recess?
6 A. They said they were going to talk to him. In
7 fact at one point during this conversation, Bill told me
s that this is the way it has to be, all these things I
9 was objecting to. And I believe his exact words were
10 that's the way big daddy wants it, meaning Marty
11 O'Boyle, and he actually made a --he said if --if it's
12 not going to be this way, then big daddy is going to
13 turn off the spigot of money. And my response was well
14 this big daddy is going to turn off the spigot of cases.
15 And Bill says so this is just a pissing match between
16 you and Marty. I was like I guess so. I can tell you
17 who is going to win. And his response was, oh, yeah,
18 Marty. And I was like no fucking way. I guarantee I
19 win this fight. There's no way I'm going to continue to
20 be a part of this if we --if we don't stop this
21 nonsense.
22 And again, this was the most --probably the
23 most volatile conversation we had during my tenure with
24 the foundation. I had raised a lot of these issues
25 prior to this and every time I sort of got the pat on
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1 the head, we're going to straighten up and fly right, we
2 won't do it anymore, we're going to do the right thing,
3 you're in control, we'll -we'll, you know, defer to
4 your judgment. And I --I actually left this meeting
5 somewhat optimistic that things were going to work out.
6 In fact I went back to the hotel and checked back in and
7 ended up staying for the week only to find out the next
s day that a lawsuit had been filed against Gulf Stream
9 without my authorization and without my knowledge. So
10 they did the same exact thing the very next day.
11 Q. The next day they filed the lawsuit?
12 A. The next day they filed the lawsuit without me
13 knowing about it.
14 Q. On behalf of the --
15 A. Citizens Awareness Foundation.
16 Q. Okay.
17 A. Now, later that day, Marty called me into the
18 conference room and it was just the two of us and he
19 said to me I got your message loud and clear and I
20 understand this is the way it has to be. So I took from
21 that him to mean that -that, you know, okay, you
22 you win, we'll do it your way and we'll all behave.
23 Unfortunately that's not the way things played out.
24 So after the --after that meeting on the 19th,
25 on the 21st I was copied on an e-mail exchange between
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1 Ryan Whitmer and Jonathan O'Boyle where Ryan says, on
2 May 21st, 2014 at 5:03 p.m., "John, do you have the
3 draft CAFI," it's an acronym for the Citizens Awareness
4 Foundation, "Do you have a draft of the CAFI fee
5 agreement yet? We need one rather sooner rather than
6 later." And this goes back again to my you know, I
7 guess I sound like a broken record. I kept telling them
B we have to have fee agreements, we have to have fee
9 agreements, which to my knowledge they never did. I
10 certainly never signed one.
11 Then on May 26th, things began to spiral out of
12 control. I got a - I had a conversation with --the
13 week that I was there, the week of the 19th, during that
14 week, Denise was there in the office in Deerfield Beach
15 and I had talked to her and the firm on a number of
16 occasions about trying to streamline the process of
17 drafting complaints. And because many of these cases
18 have very, very, very similar facts, it's unnecessary to
19 draft a complaint from scratch. You're --you're
20 dealing with the same issues over and over again and
21 in many instances. So for example, I had done an audit
22 of charter schools in Florida who are subject to the
23 Public Records Act and I had done that electronically by
24 e-mail, made the same exact request to each of these.
25 Their responses were very similar. Those that violated
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1 the Public Records Act -you know, there's a limited
2 number of responses you get; no, we're not going to give
3 you the records, who are you, why do you want it, you
4 have to make your request in writing, et cetera. And
5 because you have this very repetitious process, it
6 seemed foolish to me to draft complaints from scratch
7 each time because it's time consuming and because it --
8 it opens them up to making errors. And what the firm
9 had done a number of times is they had taken a
10 previously drafted complaint and gone in and just
11 changed the names of the defendants. And a couple of
12 instances they didn't make all the changes, so the style
13 of the case says ABC and the --in the body of the
14 complaint they refer to a completely different
15 defendant, which is certainly something you can cure by
16 filing an amended complaint, but it looks foolish and
17 unnecessary and I think terribly unprofessional.
18 So in an effort to try to avoid that, my
19 suggestion was that we --that they use the --Microsoft
20 Word's mail-merge functionality. And, you know,
21 basically you go in and you fill in some blanks and it
22 populates the fields and wa-la, 15 minutes later you
23 have a complaint. And I had asked them to do this over
24 and over again and they had just kind of dragged their
25 feet about it. And my concern was not so much the
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1 productivity issue as it was I wanted them to eliminate
2 the possibility, or reduce the possibility, of having
3 silly errors.
4 So finally the week of the 19th, Denise seemed
5 to be on board with that and she seemed committed to
6 implementing that because she was apparently running the
7 day-to-day operations of the firm
8 Q. But did you ever believe she was employed by
9 the law firm or just volunteer
10 A. No, I don't --no, I don't --I don't think she
11 was ever paid by the law firm. She was being paid by
12 the same person who is financing --she wasn't paid by
13 the foundation either to my knowledge. She was being
14 paid by Marty O'Boyle and her time is being spent
15 managing me and managing the law firm. And while she's
16 fulfilling both those responsibilities, she's demanding
17 that I produce more lawsuits and, you know, where are
18 the lawsuits, why aren't you giving me 25 a week, and
19 that sort of thing.
20 So during this conversation that happened the
21 week of the 19th, she asked me about helping the law
22 firm implement this mail-merge functionality. And
23 during that conversation, she told me that she wanted me
24 to draft a new template from scratch, a new verified
25 complaint from scratch that the attorneys would use.
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1 And she sent me a follow-up on the 26th and she says
2 "Would you please give me an estimated date on when I
3 can expect the form complaints. I have a very busy week
4 this week and have to go out of town at the end of the
5 week, so I'm trying to schedule my days, thanks." And I
6 responded to her -that was at 3:04 in the afternoon.
7 At 7:10 that evening, I sent her -excuse me, at 11:10
s p.m. I sent her the following response: "Denise, after
9 long consideration and a discussion with my attorneys,
10 I've decided not to provide any verified complaints,
11 template or otherwise. According to my attorney, doing
12 so would constitute the unlicensed practice of law.
13 Simply put, a non-attorney may not draft legal
14 instruments for another person or entity unless he or
15 she is doing so at the direction of a member of the
16 Florida Bar. Drafting complaints is something I was
17 able to do before because I was either working pro se or
18 in the capacity as a paralegal." I'm talking about
19 before I went to work for the foundation.
20 "Unfortunately, that's not the case here. I'm sorry
21 that I did not think about this more fully earlier last
22 week. It would have saved me many hours of work and
23 avoided disappointing you. By the way, I've added cases
24 to the drop box." So I basically just refused to --to
25 draft the complaint because I really thought this was
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1 unlicensed practice of law because she's not an
2 attorney. I'm not an attorney. It would have been one
3 thing for the attorneys to ask me to do it. It was
4 something all together different for a non-attorney to
5 ask me to do it.
6 She responds the next day with "Please give me
7 a call to discuss. I'm only looking for you to assist
B me with setting up the mechanics in Excel for the
9 mail-merge because you already have done it and I don't
10 have the knowledge. I'm looking for --I'm only looking
11 for the template." And I had a follow-up telephone
12 conversation with Bill Ring about this and I again
13 objected thinking that Bill's a member of the Florida
14 Bar, he'll --he'll get it, he'll understand what my
15 problem is. And Bill did not understand what my problem
16 was. He thought it was perfectly fine for Denise, a
17 non-attorney, to direct me, a non-attorney, to draft a
18 legal instrument. And as I explained to Bill, that in
19 Florida paralegal is sort of a catch-all for
20 non-attorneys. There's no regulation of paralegals.
21 Anybody that wants to call themselves a paralegal is a
22 paralegal. And paralegals are not authorized to
23 complete any kind of legal instrument unless it's a form
24 that's been approved by the Florida Supreme Court, and
25 that ain't this. Our --you're asking me to draft
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1 something from scratch, that is absolutely prohibited.
2 And his rationale was I don't see the big deal, just do
3 it. And again, I refused to do it.
4 Q. At this time Mr. Ring is not a member of the
5 law firm, he's -
6 A. He's president of the foundation.
7 Q. And an employee of Mr. O'Boyle's company
8 A. Right.
9 Q. - -Commerce Group?
10 A. Right.
11 Q. Or partner?
12 A. Right. So, you know, now I'm beginning at
13 this --but at this stage of the game, you know, I've
14 had this blow-out with the firm --with the foundation
15 board. They seemed to have gotten on board and then the
16 next day I find out that they really are still filing
17 the lawsuits without my authorization. And as soon as I
18 caught them doing that, it was sort of like, well ghee,
19 that one slipped through the cracks, we're sorry.
20 But and that was also sort of the response
21 Q. Do you know which lawyer filed that?
22 A.
23 Q.
24 A.
25 was.
I don't. It would have been --
We can look and see.
Yeah, I don't --I don't remember which one it
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1 Q. But it filed -if that's the day, it will have
2 that date on the -
3 A. Yeah, I think it would --I think it would have
4 been filed on the 20th.
5 Q. Okay.
6 A. Or it may have been filed the 19th. I didn't
7 find out about it until the next day. But, you know,
B things just seemed to be escalating because we've gone
9 from things that I -were problematic for me because of
10 the perception that it creates to what I perceive as
11 ethical issues to what I perceive as potential Bar
12 violations to now I'm being directed by my direct
13 superior, Denise DeMartini, both the president of the
14 foundation who is a lawyer, not acting as an attorney,
15 to draft lawsuits on behalf of the law firm. Well, I'm
16 not a lawyer and I'm not really in a position to draw
17 legal conclusions, but somehow that just didn't feel
18 right. And I had talked to a couple of my own personal
19 attorneys and the consensus was universally that that's
20 UPL, it's unlicensed to practice law. It's a felony.
21 You can't do it. And I have been very, very circumspect
22 over the years about making it very clear to people that
23 contact me through my website or, you know, in newspaper
24 article or TV or a story comes out about something that
25 I'm doing, and inevitably I get a barrage of phone calls
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1 from private citizens wanting help, and I have been
2 religious about, you know, giving my profunctory
3 disclaimer I'm not an attorney, I'm not authorized or
4 qualified to give you legal advice. I can tell you what
5 I would do if I were similarly situated, but I'm not an
6 attorney.
7 If you go on my website, both the website that
B I had before the foundation, and I've resurrected that
9 website since then, it very --it very clearly states on
10 there I'm not a lawyer. I'm -I'm very, very careful
11 about UPL. And it real 1 y concerned me that not only are
12 they asking me to do that, but even after I explain --
13 expressed my concerns and explained my reservations,
14 they still were pushing me to do something that I
15 believe would constitute a criminal act. And they just
16 seemed to have a total disregard for my concerns there.
17 Then on May 28th, I get an e-mail from Denise
18 because she's very frustrated and Jonathan O'Boyle are
19 frustrated, both, because I'm insisting that every
20 lawsuit that gets filed on behalf of the foundation be a
21 verified complaint. And the reason I want these cases
22 to be verified --there are two reasons. One is I want
23 to be sure the facts are right. Secondly, that seemed
24 to me to be a pretty solid way of eliminating the
25 possibility that -that lawsuits are going to get filed
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1 without my knowledge. If every one of them is verified,
2 and I'm the only person that's verifying them, it's
3 going to require my physical signature before it gets
4 filed. And Denise sent me an e-mail on the 28th
5 Q. And again, she's not an employee of the law
6 firm at this time?
7 A. No. "Joel, I understand that we are back to
s you certifying the complaints before they are filed. I
9 also understand this requires a notary. John," Jonathan
10 O'Boyle, "and I would like to discuss this procedure
11 with you to better understand your thoughts of doing it
12 upfront whereas John thinks it can be done just as
13 easily after the filing", which I just was completely
14 baffled by that. I mean you can't verify a complaint
15 after it's been filed. It certainly sounds like John is
16 involved with giving legal advice to Denise DeMartini
17 who is the board member that I report to and is wanting
18 to give me legal advice as executive director of the
19 foundation, trying to explain to me why I need to be
20 verifying complaints.
21 Q. And he's not a lawyer in Florida?
22 A. To my knowledge, he is not a member of the Bar
23 in Florida.
24 Q.
25 A.
All right.
Then moving on, I, on June 2nd, we talked about
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1 this a little bit earlier, on June 2nd I traded e-mails
2 with Bill Ring. I was seeking authorization for the
3 board to refer the Barnes & Noble case to Thomas and
4 Locicero and I got an e-mail from Bill -well,
5 here's --here's what I asked him on June 2nd --
6 Q. You're writing him as --
7 A. I'm writing him
8 Q. --president of the
9 A. I'm writing I'm writing him as the president
10 of the foundation, "Going back to a phone conference
11 that Marty and I had with Bob Twill", who's a tax
12 attorney in West Virginia, "the issue of using a law
13 firm other than the O'Boyle firm has come up. The
14 rationale is that if we use the O'Boyle Law Firm
15 exclusively, it will appear to be self-dealing by the
16 IRS. Although there may not have been any concrete
17 suggestions as to how many cases should be referred
18 elsewhere, the consensus has been we should refer at
19 least some elsewhere. With that in mind, I would like
20 the board to authorize me to engage Thomas and Locicero
21 to take one case, CAFI v. Barnes & Noble. My brother
22 Robert was with me when I visited the USF campus book
23 store. The book store is operated by Barnes & Noble.
24 Robert mentioned the facts of the case to one of the
25 attorneys that Thomas and Locicero and they have
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1 expressed an interest in the case. I've not yet
2 discussed this with Thomas and Locicero. Thomas and
3 Locicero is a preeminent open government law firm in the
4 state. Greg Thomas, the firm's senior partner, has
5 argued many of the landmark public records cases, many
6 of which are regularly cited in briefs written by the
7 O'Boyle Law Firm. I would ask them to take the case on
s the same terms as the O'Boyle Law Firm, contingency with
9 the firm bearing all litigation costs. I suspect that
10 T-Lo", Thomas and Locicero, "is interested in the Barnes
11 & Noble case because it is in Tampa and because Barnes &
12 Noble is --was sued over virtually identical facts in a
13 case that was made that made its way to the Third DCA a
14 number of years ago. I think an appellate decision is
15 what T-Lo is most interested in. Let me know if there
16 are any questions or concerns. I think we need to refer
17 something to someone other than the O'Boyle Law Firm and
18 this would be a good case to use for that and T-Lo would
19 always be my first choice. It will enhance the standing
20 of the foundation." And what I meant by that is Thomas
21 and Locicero, Greg Thomas in particular, is so highly
22 regarded on open government issues, having him represent
23 the foundation would have elevated our stature. And I
24 was hoping that this would be the first of many cases
25 that I would be able to refer to other law firms.
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1 And Thomas and Locicero has always been very,
2 very picky about the cases they take. They're not
3 really interested in run-of-the-mill simple public
4 records violations. They're not interesting to them.
5 They want something that's going to be --typically
6 things that are going to lead to appellate decisions,
7 and Greg has a lot of them.
B Bill's response later that day was "Denise and
9 I are speaking with Mr. Twill of Jackson Kelly again
10 this week, most likely Wednesday or Friday, however at
11 this point I am not inclined to authorize CAFI to engage
12 another law firm based upon my last conversation with
13 Twill. We will be --get back to --to you with a
14 definitive answer after that conversation." And, you
15 know, the --what I got back from him was no, we can't
16 do it, the only firm we're going to give cases to is the
17 O'Boyle Law Firm, which again had been one of the
18 conditions I laid down with Marty in the very beginning,
19 that we have to be able to use other firms.
20 Q. So all of the cases that were filed by Citizens
21 Awareness were filed by the O'Boyle Law Firm?
22 A. To my knowledge, yes.
23 Q. Ones either you authorized or that were not
24 authorized by you?
25 A. Correct.
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1 Q. Okay. And they -were they all filed --were
2 they all contingency fee cases, in other words they only
3 got paid fees if they recovered them from the defendant?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. Okay. And there was no written agreement
6 discussing how filing fees were to be covered or
7 reimbursed or who was responsible?
8 A. Well, the fine --no, the in practice what
9 happened was the --the firm, the O'Boyle Law Firm,
10 would pay all the litigation costs, filing fees
11 Q. But there was no written agreement discussing
12 who's going to be responsible for those or --
13 A. I've never seen a written agreement.
14 Q. --or how the fee was going to be determined
15 or
16 A. No.
17 Q. --what rate would be used by what lawyers?
18 And there was no written agreement of a contingency
19 contract that said anything like that?
20 A. Correct. So that was -that exchange was on
21 June 2nd. So my mindset at this point was I have other
22 people outside of the foundation that are making public
23 records requests without my knowledge or consent,
24 without my authorization, lawsuits are being filed
25 without my authorization, cases that shouldn't have been
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1 filed in the first place. They were defective cases,
2 meaning that the facts weren't good. My --my standard
3 for cases that I would approve of is very, very high and
4 my brother Robert and I have a running joke. It's WWGD,
5 What Would Greg Do, Greg Thomas. You know, he's sort of
6 the standard that we use. And just so we're clear, he
7 has --has never had any affiliation or anything to do
8 with the foundation or the O'Boyle Law Firm. But he's
9 the has been my attorney for many years and I hold
10 him in very high regard. He's the standard by which all
11 attorneys are measured in my book. And, you know, my
12 view of this is that bad facts make bad law and I don't
13 want adverse decisions because that doesn't support what
14 I'm after, which is more access, not less access.
15 And I --so I was very frustrated that he had
16 these cases that were being filed that shouldn't have
17 been filed. In addition to that, I'm being told that I
18 have to produce 25 cases a week. I'm being told that
19 I'm not allowed to refer cases to other law firms. And
20 this is really at this point --by early June it's
21 really beginning to feel like this is not something I
22 can continue to be a part of.
23 Q. And and no one's doing what they're telling
24 you they're doing, they're not
25 A. Right, I'm repeatedly yeah, and it's --
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1 it --and, you know, sort of the grand scheme of this is
2 the thing starts in January. We're very --I'm very
3 busy in February trying to get things lined up, get the
4 website up and business cards and, you know, get things
5 going. I mean meeting with the legislature and in
6 February I'm meeting with Barbara Peterson in
7 Tallahassee. In February I'm all over the state meeting
s with civil rights groups. And more or less I'm left
9 alone until towards the end of --of April, Denise
10 becomes very involved and that's when things take a
11 very, very radical shift and there's the --there's just
12 one problem after the other. It seems about every week
13 or two there's some major issue that comes up.
14 Q. And did you conclude that what Denise was doing
15 was at the behest of Martin O'Boyle?
16 A. There's no question in my mind about that.
17 Q. And at the behest of Jonathan O'Boyle?
18 A. There's no question in my mind about that.
19 Q. Okay.
20 A. So on June 11th, at this point I --I've just
21 come to the I'm concerned that I'm not going to be
22 able to continue to be a part of this. I recognize that
23 I'm sort of predisposed to --as Greg described -Greg
24 Thomas describes it getting up on a ledge. You know,
25 I'm concerned that maybe am I -am I exaggerating the
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1 significance of these things, is it --is it my ego, is
2 it --am I just pissed off because I'm not getting my
3 way. So I really wanted to talk to somebody to kind of,
4 you know, get --get a gauge on what's going on.
5 So between June 2nd and June 11th, I spoke with
6 11 different attorneys that I've worked with over the
7 years. Some of them currently represent me. Some of
s them represented me in the past. Some of them I knew
9 socially. And I presented to each of them the basic
10 facts of what were going on
11 Q. What you described to me but --
12 A. Yes.
13 Q. --in a synopsis?
14 A. And of those 11 attorneys, all 11 of them had
15 the same reaction, and that is what's happening is
16 certainly there are a series of very serious Bar
17 violations, what may --was going on may very well rise
18 to a criminal act and you need to get out.
19 So the --the litmus test I had was Greg
20 Thomas. So I --I scheduled an appointment with Greg
21 and I met with Greg and two of his associates and I
22 expressed to him what was going on. I remember right
23 after I took the job at the foundation, I met with Greg
24 and laid out the arrangement and these safeguards that I
25 put into place and he cautioned me, you know, as long as
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1 everything is independent, then this could be a
2 wonderful thing for --for the public. And now four or
3 five months later it's very clear to me that things
4 aren't what we thought they were going to be, so I want
5 to get his take on it.
6 So I met with Greg on June 11th in his office
7 in Tampa and he echoed this the reaction of the
s previous 11 attorneys that I spoke with. I think his
9 exact words are, you know, why are you still there.
10 Now, he did also say, you know, this --because this has
11 the potential to be such a wonderful benefit to the
12 public, you know, can you try to fix it, is there --is
13 there any possibility of trying to fix it, you know, try
14 one more time to fix it, but if you can't, you need to
15 get out.
16 Then the next day I met with Barbara Peterson,
17 who is the president of the First Amendment Foundation.
18 She's also an attorney. She and I are very good friends
19 and you'll recall earlier in our --in my narrative I
20 met with Barbara right after the creation of the
21 foundation. She's the person that actually introduced
22 me to Marty O'Boyle. And I was very concerned about how
23 this might impact her because the -the Citizens
24 Awareness Foundation I had with the approval of the
25 board and Marty O'Boyle's direct approval, I had agreed
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1 to sponsor the First Amendment Foundation's Sunshine
2 seminars, which they do each fall and they do ten of
3 these around the state and they're very well attended,
4 in fact they're approved by the Florida Bar for CLE.
5 It's a big deal. And we were going to pay for
6 everything. We were going to --we were going to
7 provide box lunches for all of the attendees and give
s away Sunshine manuals. We were going to pick up the tab
9 for everything. And as part of that, we were going to
10 get, you know, acknowledgment that we were paying for
11 it. And this was very important to me because the First
12 Amendment Foundation is so highly regarded by the
13 legislature. I mean if a --if there's new legislation
14 that affects public records, the first thing the
15 legislators do, they call Barbara and find out is this
16 good or bad. It's a big deal. She is taken very, very
17 seriously. In fact she was a chairwoman of the
18 governor's commission, open government reform. I mean
19 she's a big deal. And the idea that we would be able to
20 be aligned with her -and during this time by the way,
21 I actually participated in a press conference with equal
22 billing with Barbara. I mean I had really worked very
23 hard to affiliate the Citizens Awareness Foundation as
24 much as I could with Barbara Peterson --
25 Q. And with legitimate officials and legitimate
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1 public interests?
2 A. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, and not
3 in a manipulative way
4 Q. No.
5 A. -in a --in a we're --you know, we're on the
6 same side. And I was concerned that as --you know, I
7 had worked so hard to do that and Barbara had been in --
s I think allowed me to do that because of me, not because
9 of the foundation, because of my relationship with her.
10 I was concerned that I may have put her in a position
11 might cause her some embarrassment.
12 So she was meeting with her board in Tampa on
13 June 12th and she was kind enough to --to meet with me
14 at the hotel in Tampa. And I started describing to her
15 what was going on and she had almost the --verbatim,
16 why are you still there, you need to go. But again,
17 with the same sort of, you know, this has the potential
18 to be such a wonderful thing, is there any chance of
19 fixing it, maybe you ought to take one more crack at
20 fixing it, but if you can't, you need to go. And I
21 think her exact words were if they won't do what you
22 want them to do, you need to tell Marty O'Boyle to go
23 fuck himself. She cusses like a sailor, delightful lady
24 and a very dear friend.
25 Ironically, I when I was meeting with her, I
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1 got a phone call which I did not take and when I got up
2 to the parking garage of the hotel, I returned the phone
3 call and the phone call was to Bill Ring. And Bill put
4 Denise DeMartini on the phone and Jonathan O'Boyle, so
5 it was a conference call with the four of us. And this
6 is at the Intercontinental Hotel in Tampa. That's when
7 the conversation began. And the conversation did not
8 end until I had almost gotten all the way home in
9 Lakeland, so we were on the phone for about an hour.
10 And the conversation resurrected an issue that had come
11 up once we started getting involved, we the foundation
12 started getting involved, with litigation against State
13 contractors. While we were litigating against
14 publically operated agencies, municipalities and State
15 agencies, the firm had been pretty good I think about
16 just asking for their actual hourly billable's and
17 expenses
18 Q. Now, this is not a conversation with --at the
19 law firm regarding any legal advice -
20 A. There wasn't a single lawyer on the --the only
21 people that were on this phone was Jonathan O'Boyle, who
22 is not a lawyer in the state of Florida, and Denise
23 DeMartini --
24 Q.
25 A.
And your board?
And Bill Ring as president of the board. So
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1 there's nothing privileged here. And what had started
2 happening was once they started litigating against
3 contractors, who are notoriously bad actors when it
4 comes to public records access, what they were doing was
5 demanding flat monetary settlements. When I say flat, I
6 mean just pick a number. The problem that I saw with
7 this, and I raised this issue repeatedly with the board,
s and this was the --the purpose for this conference
9 call, if the O'Boyle Law Firm's actual fees and expenses
10 are at $250 an hour, let's say are $1,500, and they
11 demand $5,000 from the defendant and the defendant
12 agrees to pay that, what happens to the windfall, the
13 difference between their hourly billable's and expenses
14 and the total number. My reading of the Florida Bar
15 rules is that that would constitute a contingency fee
16 arrangement and that a percentage, not less than 60
17 percent, has to go to the client. The problem is I had
18 told State Legislators and reporters that the foundation
19 was not profiting from the litigation. We don't get any
20 of the money. Well, Jonathan's solution to that is
21 fine, we'll keep it. Well --
22 Q. That's what he said to you?
23 A. Yeah. Oh, yeah, we got --we got into it over
24 this. In fact, this issue had come up before. There
25 were several instances where Giovanni Mesa, one of the
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l attorneys at the O'Boyle Law Firm, was engaged in
2 settlement negotiations and would call me. He was a
3 good attorney, straight arrow, trying to do the right
4 thing. And he would call me and say look --
5 Q. Don't get into any --is this lawyer/client or
6 is this with the foundation where in your - -
7 A. Yeah, it might be. Yeah.
8 Q. Then don't --
9 A. Let me just - -suffice if to say, this wasn't
10 the first time this issue had come up and I had made my
11 views on this very, very clear, that the - -if you're
12 going to claim attorney fee and expenses, it really has
13 to be your attorney's fees and expenses. You can't be
14 getting more than that. And what I have told attorneys
15 is if you've got $1,200 in fees and expenses at this
16 point, I think it's perfectly fine to tell opposing
17 counsel, you know, today I'm at $1,200, it's going to
18 take us probably another hour to draft this up, so I'm
19 going to add, you know, another two hours to this and I
20 will --you know, I'm estimating we're going to close
21 this out at $1,700. I think that's perfectly fine as
22 long as you're communicating to them what you're doing.
23 What I'm not okay with is suggesting in some way that
24 your fees and expenses are $5,000 when they're really
25 only $1,200
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1 Q. And that's what you believe was occur
2 A. I believe that they --I believe they were
3 either - -either suggesting that, if not outright saying
4 it, or they were not saying that and just saying this is
5 a monetary settlement for $5,000 and keeping all the
6 money. Either --either one would be a serious Bar
7 violation.
8 Q. Did they provide the foundation -·-when you
9 were there, did the law firm provide you with any
10 closing statements?
11 A. I have never seen a closing statement.
12 Q. Had they
13 A. Ever.
14 Q. Had they ever provided you with any
15 documentation showing how much they collected in fees on
16 cases that were settled?
17 A. Never.
18 Q. Have they ever sent you, while you were at the
19 foundation, a schedule of any expenses that they
20 incurred?
21 A. Never.
22 Q. So you've had no financial reporting from the
23 law firm at all?
24 A. No. No, and I made it very clear to them
25 that --that my understanding, and I feel very strongly
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1 about this, is that they have a very clear obligation to
2 have a written fee agreement and at the close of every
3 single case, I would have to see a closing statement --
4 Q. And sign it, right?
5 A. That's correct, that I would have to approve
6 the closing statement and then it was --it was a
7 serious, a very serious Bar violation, to disperse any
B funds without the client agreeing to the closing
9 statement. They can't pay themselves. They can't pay
10 anybody until they presented a closing statement and
11 I've agreed to it.
12 Q. And did you tell Jonathan O'Boyle
13 A. I did. I told Jonathan that. I told Ryan
14 that. I told Giovanni Mesa that. I told Marrett Hanna
15 that. Marrett Hanna and Giovanni Mesa I think were very
16 much in agreement with me. I think that Ryan, to a very
17 large extent, was in agreement with me. There was a --
18 it would be privileged. I can't say that.
19 Q. Let --I appreciate that. Let me ask you this,
20 who who was the bookkeeper that ran the accounts at
21 the firm?
22 A. It would have been Carla Bucletchen (phonetic)
23 Q. Okay. And when the firm advanced costs, were
24 those monies put in trust from the --from the
25 foundation?
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1 A. No.
2 Q. Did the foundation give money for the --
3 A. No.
4 Q. They came from the firm itself?
5 A. Yes.
6 Q. Or from Mr. O'Boyle, you don't know?
7 A. I --not from the foundation that I'm aware of.
8 Q. Okay. So they were
9 A. I mean I'd actually I had actually suggested
10 at one time because --you know, think of Marty as the
11 bank. You have one guy. He's either loaning money to
12 the foun --to the firm or he's giving contributions to
13 the foundation, but the money is coming from the same
14 place either way. My suggestion at one time was that
15 instead of Marty loaning money to the firm to be used
16 at --for filing fees, that he simply give that money to
17 the foundation and then the foundation would make
18 litigation grants. I proposed that because I thought it
19 would be --it would add some validity to what we were
20 doing and that I would be in a position to be able to
21 make those grants on behalf of citizens who wanted to
22 to litigate, which I thought was useful for a number of
23 reasons. One is there are lots of people out there who
24 simply don't have the means to litigate. I thought it
25 would make the whole thing that we were doing seem much
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1 more legitimate if you have more than just one primary
2 plaintiff. I mean if you have -if the O'Boyle Law
3 Firm has six clients and the Citizens Awareness
4 Foundation represents 95 percent of their caseload, that
5 might look, if not --if not inappropriate, it might
6 look fishy. We'd be far better off if --if we were
7 willing to help individuals and other organizations,
s other civil rights groups, to be able to do litigation
9 by giving them the grants. And I didn't get any
10 traction with that suggestion.
11 Q. Okay. So -so after you had this one-hour
12 conversation where you were, I take it, arguing as to
13 how the firm was attempting to pay itself, or paying
14 itself, or Mr. --how Jonathan O'Boyle thought the firm
15 should be paid, what occurred?
16 A. Well, I was pretty near apoplectic. I mean I
17 was really animated about this because this was a
18 really, really big issue for me. Partly because if the
19 foundation was going to get any of the money, you know,
20 it's going to damage my credibility with --with
21 reporters and with legislators who I have assured this
22 is not what we're doing. If on the other hand the
23 foundation --the firm is just keeping this windfall, I
24 think that's a very serious Bar violation. You just
25 can't do it. And they kept telling me that they had
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1 a --an ethics opinion
2 Q. Okay, don't --don't --there was a
3 A. Well, this isn't privileged because what I'm
4 going to say is not privileged because --
5 Q. Okay.
6 A. --Jonathan O'Boyle, who's not an attorney in
7 Florida, said this to me and to the board of the
s foundation, so I don't think this is in any way
9 privileged. In fact, they sent me a copy of it, so I
10 know it's not privileged, that there was an opinion
11 letter from an attorney, Kevin Tynan (phonetic), who
12 they kept talking about as being this amazing,
13 wonderful, highly regarded ethics attorney, who said all
14 this is okay. And my response was I've talked to 13
15 attorneys who say that it's not. Well, our guy knows
16 what he's talking about and he knows what he's doing, to
17 which I responded well, I could paint any hypothetical
18 to any attorney I want and get the answer that I want.
19 I mean, you know, it depends on how you ask the
20 question. I suspect that if I were to --if I were to
21 describe to this guy what I believe is going on, I think
22 I'd get a very different answer than what you're
23 getting.
24 Q.
25 A.
Right.
And they were really adamant that's not the
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1 case, that this is okay, we want you to agree to do
2 this, and I was like there's no way I'm going to agree
3 to do this. And I --the way I left it with them is I'm
4 willing to be --the way --I think my exact words were
5 I'm willing to be disabused of my opinion, but until I
6 am, we're not doing it.
7 Q. And were any cases on behalf of the foundation
s settled by the O'Boyle Law Firm?
9 A. Oh, yeah.
10 Q. How many?
11 A. Well, I have no idea because they were engaging
12 in settlement negotiations without my authority.
13 Q. Okay. And --
14 A. So --so --I mean --
15 Q. And you've never seen any closing statements,
16 you've never signed any closing statements while you
17 were there, and while you were there they were settling
18 cases on behalf of the foundation and not accounting to
19 the foundation?
20 A. Right. And what I told them --and just so I'm
21 clear I -you know, I've worked with many, many, many
22 attorneys over the years on public records litigation
23 and as I said, Greg Thomas, who is not in any way
24 involved with any of this nonsense, is the --you know,
25 the standard by which I measure all other attorneys. I
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1 would trust Greg with a million dollars cash. I'd trust
2 him with my life. I think he's just is as honorable
3 of a man has ever been a member of the Bar
4 Q. It's nice to know there are attorneys like
5 that.
6 A. There are --there are a few of them out there.
7 But even with Greg, as high as my regard is for Greg and
s for his firm, I insist that I see every communication.
9 If you're going to communicate with opposing counsel, I
10 want to see it without exception. I want to know what's
11 going on. I --and part of it is intellectual
12 curiosity. I --I mean I --one of the reasons why I
13 think I have some expertise in this --on this field is
14 because I've taken that approach. I want to see what's
15 going on. If there's a hearing, I want to go. I want
16 to be involved with every step of the process. And I
17 communicated that same expectation to the O'Boyle Law
18 Firm yet they did not do it and that becomes very clear
19 when they were engaging in --I mean not only have
20 they they settling cases without me knowing about
21 it, but they're not even telling me that they're engaged
22 in it. I haven't even authorized a settlement.
23 Q. And they're asking for more in fees than
24 they're entitled to and not even agreeing with you in a
25 written closing statement what's happening with the
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1 money?
2 A. Right. Bill Ring told me on more than one
3 occasion, and this is a quote, it's none of your fucking
4 business how much money they're getting.
5 Q. So that's what he told you when he was
6 president of the foundation?
7 A. Yes, it's --it's none of our business what
8 they're getting. They --if they can get $10,000 for a
9 case where they only have $500 worth of work in it, so
10 what, good for them, why -why should you care. And my
11 response was I care because number one, if it's a public
12 agency, there's --there's tax dollars that are being
13 spent and, you know --
14 Q. Maybe defrauded?
15 A. Potentially. And even if it's contractor who's
16 a for-profit corporation who's getting rich on the backs
17 of taxpayers by screwing them and not delivering on the
18 contract like they're supposed to, who I'm not very
19 sympathetic towards, I --I don't want to cheat. I win
20 fair and square. When I go into court and I kick the
21 shit out of some attorney over a public records issue, I
22 do it fair and square. I don't have to cheat. I have
23 really good facts. I don't file unless I have great
24 facts. And -and that is a very important part of how
25 I operate. If --if opposing counsels figured out that
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1 I had crappy facts and I was, you know, playing on the
2 margins, they'd figure it out very quickly and nobody
3 would --would take me seriously.
4 Q. Okay. So --so by this point, after this
5 one-hour conversation, and all of the lawyers you met
6 with, did it occur to you that Martin O'Boyle and the
7 O'Boyle Law Firm were engaging in illegal conduct?
8 A. I was concerned about that, yes. I --I am
9 I am very confident that if I were to draft a legal
10 instrument for someone who was not an attorney, that
11 that would be a felony. That would be unlicensed
12 practice of law. And I have no doubt --
13 Q. What about if you as a law firm ask a
14 government entity for $10,000 in legal fees when you've
15 done $500 worth of work?
16 A. Again, I think it would depend on how it was
17 presented. I think if you said these were --our fees
18 are $10,000 when you really only did $500 worth of work,
19 I think that would --
20 Q. Any time you get money for work you didn't
21 do --you're only entitled --the law firm is only
22 entitled to attorney's fees. There's no money damages
23 in these cases.
24 A. Right, I think that --I think the --and not
25 to put too fine a point on it, I think the issue is
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1 whether you're presenting it as entitlement. I agree
2 with you. If you say I'm entitled to $10,000, you have
3 to really be entitled to it.
4 Q. What if you say I want 10,000 to settle the
5 case? You're only allowed to collect, as an attorney,
6 your attorney's fees per the statute. How could you
7 possibly collect more than your fees under any
s circumstances?
9 A. I --I think that -that the --I think -
10 here's the distinction.
11 Q. Okay.
12 A. If we're engaged --if you and I are on the
13 opposite sides of this and you represent --
14 Q. The government entity, I represent Gulf
15 Stream
16 A. Okay.
17 Q. - -and you've sued - -
18 A. Yeah.
19 Q. Okay. And you've --you've got -you're the
20 attorney and you have $500 worth of time. You just
21 filed a template. You call me up. I call you. We
22 admit we did wrong. How can you even say I'll take
23 $10,000 to settle the case?
24 A. I would --I would agree with you. I think
25 that would be unethical to do that.
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1 Q. Why wouldn't it be criminal? Why wouldn't it
2 be defrauding the government of money?
3 A. I --again, I think if you were to -if the
4 attorney were to claim entitlement, I think it would be.
5 Q. Well, if --the only thing the attorney is
6 entitled to ask for --on monetary relief is his fees
7 and costs. So whatever he asks for is
8 A. Yeah, you're you're asking me to draw a
9 legal --
10 Q. That's a legal conclusion, yeah, I understand
11 you're not --but I just --I'm sure you didn't really
12 analyze that because they're telling you the whole time
13 this is a contingency agreement, this can be done, but
14 I'm curious --
15 A. Well, here --here's the thing, my --my
16 issue --
17 Q. But that's not -this isn't for you to figure
18 out or understand
19 A. Yeah, my -my issue with what we were doing
20 here --what they were doing here is that I --I don't
21 think it's legal. I am confident that --that it
22 constitutes a very serious Bar violation. But even if
23 you were able to satisfy --and this is what I told them
24 in this conversation, even if you were able to satisfy
25 my concerns with respect to --I mean if you got -if
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1 you showed me an opinion letter from the Florida Bar
2 saying that what you guys are doing is completely
3 legitimate, I would still object to it. And the reason
4 I would object to it is because it creates the wrong
5 perception. We're not doing this to create a --an
6 economic enterprise. We're --the foundation cannot
7 function in that role. The foundation is here to defend
8 the public's right to access -
9 Q. Right.
10 A. This is --you know
11 Q. You're against it you were against it on
12 principle separate and apart from any ethical or illegal
13 consideration --
14 A. But did I --yes, but did I --did I believe as
15 a lay person that there was a very strong likelihood
16 that this was illegal, yes, I did.
17 Q. Okay. And so did you, after that conversation,
18 decide to ultimately disassociate yourself?
19 A. Well, the next day I got a phone call from two
20 of the attorneys at the O'Boyle Law Firm and they told
21 me that Bill Ring, Denise DeMartini, and Jonathan
22 O'Boyle called a meeting of the firm and told the
23 attorneys that I had in fact agreed to this windfall
24 scheme. And those are two --
25 Q. They called you and said this, that --repeated
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1 that you had agreed to it?
2 A. Yeah. Yeah, what happened was the next day
3 after --after being really vociferous in my objection
4 to it, I mean unequivocal
5 Q. Apoplectic -apoplectic you called it?
6 A. Apoplect yeah, I mean just --just really
7 almost unglued in my objection to it. Bill, Denise, and
s Jonathan convened a meeting of the firm and told the
9 other firm --told the other members of the firm, the
10 other lawyers -
11 Q. Was Bill a member of the firm?
12 A. No.
13 Q. And was Denise?
14 A. No.
15 Q. And Jonathan's not a lawyer?
16 A. Right.
17 Q. Okay.
18 A. They --they tell the other attorneys, Giovanni
19 Mesa, Nick Taylor, and Ryan Whitmer, that I had agreed
20 to this scheme. And two of the attorneys, who I won't
21 mention their names at this point, but two attorneys
22 called me separate from each other. One attorney didn't
23 know the other one was calling me. They called me
24 within ten minutes to each other to tell he that --that
25 they had --had said that I had agreed to this and I was
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1 livid. And the reason they called me was because they
2 were like this doesn't sound like you. You've been --
3 you've been objecting to this all along. I you know,
4 this doesn't sound like something you would have agreed
5 to. And I was like, hell no, I didn't agree to it,
6 absolutely not I didn't agree to it.
7 So yeah, at that point, you know, I --I have
s this input from Greg Thomas, Barbara Peterson, and all
9 these other attorneys that I talked to. Things are just
10 getting worse and worse and worse and now the board and
11 Jonathan have I can't imagine there was any
12 misunderstanding about what I said and where I stood on
13 this issue. They lied to the other members of the firm
14 and told them that I'm okay with this. So yeah, at that
15 moment I think I probably knew that I was going to have
16 to leave.
17 Q. What did you do?
18 A. Well, I kind of check ed out a little bit.
19 I --I decided that I wanted to kind of think about my
20 departure. Barbara's counsel, which I took to heart,
21 and Greg's too, was that if I resigned that I needed to
22 do it pubically so I could disassociate myself from the
23 foundation. You know, I feel like one of the greatest
24 assets I have as a civil rights advocate is my
25 credibility. I know a lot of people don't like me. I
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1 mean I was described in one newspaper article as the
2 most hated man in Florida, which I don't mind, but I
3 think that I have a reputation for being a
4 straight-shooter and playing fair and -
5 Q. Being respected?
6 A. Yeah. I mean that's the reason I get to sit at
7 the table with the legislature.
8 Q. And that's why lawyers often say I don't care
9 if I'm loved, as long as I'm respected.
10 A. Yeah, I --I you know, once you loose your
11 credibility doing what I do, it's over. So I --I
12 didn't want to make a rash decision. I I wanted to
13 give some thought about how I was going to depart and I
14 very much had the sense that there were other members of
15 the --there were members of the firm who would probably
16 be leaving as well. And so I --
17 Q. You had heard from other members of the firm
1s that they were leaving?
19 A. They were very concerned, yeah.
20 Q. Because of what was going on?
21 A. Yeah, over the --over these same exact issues.
22 I mean everything we talked about today, yeah, same
23 same exact issues, and chief among those would have been
24 Denise's involvement with the firm. You know
25 Q. And I take it from your descriptions that Ryan
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1 Whitmer was one of the people that told you he was
2 leaving, that he was not
3 A. He had actually announced his --yeah, he
4 publically announced his resignation. Giovanni Mesa has
5 announced his resignation as well - -
6 Q. And Marrett
7 A. They hadn't at this point.
8 Q. But - -but you knew that they were not
9 tolerating this conduct?
10 A. They were -they were objecting to it, yeah,
11 absolutely.
12 Q. And Mr. Ring, did he ultimately become a member
13 of the law firm?
14 A. He did.
15 Q. When did that occur?
16 A. I'll come to that in just a moment.
17 Q. Okay.
18 A. So back to your question, what did I do, I said
19 I checked out. What I mean by that is I decided that I
20 was going to, you know, occupy my time doing advocacy
21 stuff and, you know, just try to kind of you know, I
22 guess the way some people play tennis or go boating or
23 whatever to --· or dance to find some distraction from
24 their work, I - I went on the road and --and was
25 working with some civil rights activists and just kind
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1 of, you know, not really --trying to minimize my - I
2 was trying to minimize my communications with the -
3 with the foundation and with the board. I was still
4 working for the board and still doing what I was being
5 paid to do. And I was, you know, just trying to kind of
6 collect my thoughts about how this is going to --how I
7 was going to leave.
B And then they actually ended up making it real
9 easy for me. I --on --just to kind of give you some
10 more things that happened after that, during this
11 after the --this telephone call on this June 16th and
12 on the 19th, I get --I was in Jacksonville on this day
13 working with some civil rights activists. I got an
14 e-mail from --from Bill and Denise saying that they
15 were resigning from the board of the foundation and that
16 I was going to be appointed as a board member and I
17 would become president of the foundation. Nobody had
18 talked to me about this. Nobody had asked me if I
19 wanted to be on the board. Nobody asked me if I was
20 willing to serve as president. I just got an e-mail
21 saying that's the way it was going to be. And so I
22 called Bill and for a moment I --I had a little hope.
23 I thought maybe, maybe they after me just kind of
24 going silent for a few days and --I mean I was working
25 the whole time, but not really communicating with them,
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1 maybe they kind of got the message I was not happy. And
2 I thought, okay, well maybe they're going to finally let
3 me do things the way they needed to be done. And so I
4 called Bill and that's when Bill told me that - I asked
5 him, you know, do I have a say in this as far as
6 becoming president of the foundation, and he just kind
7 of like no, not really, and then he explained to me why
s they had resigned. And why they resigned was because
9 Denise was going to go to work full time for the firm.
10 Q. The law firm?
11 A. Yeah. And Bill was going to become a partner
12 in the law firm. And that was just one more nail in the
13 coffin, just like you guys just don't get it. I mean
14 remember, I had objected to us using this preexisting
15 not-for-profit that Marty had created because Jonathan
16 was on the board of it and because I thought that looked
17 terrible. And now they have the guy who's --the
18 president of the foundation resigns to become a partner
19 in the law firm, a law firm that he told me I had to use
20 exclusively, and Denise DeMartini is resigning from the
21 board to go to work for the firm, the same woman that I
22 reported to and kept demanding that I produce more and
23 more lawsuits for the firm and that I could not refer
24 cases to other firms.
25 Then on the --the same day, I got an e-mail
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1 from Jill Mohler, the receptionist to the Commerce
2 Group, with more public records requests that she was
3 making on behalf of the foundation without my knowledge
4 or consent --
5 Q. So you learned that when?
6 A. Same day, on June 19th.
7 Q. That Mohler was again making --the
s receptionist is again making public records requests?
9 A. Yes, and I - -
10 Q. On behalf of the foundation -..
11 A. Yeah.
12 Q. - -without your knowledge?
13 A. Yeah, I got --I got two e-mails from her that
14 day acknowledging that. Then on the 23rd of June, they
15 actually file an amendment with the Florida Secretary of
16 State naming me as --as a board member and as president
17 of the foundation, again without my knowledge or without
18 my consent.
19 Then on June 25th, Jill Mohler lets me know
20 that again she's making --and she's telling me about
21 these public records requests after the fact. It's not
22 like hey, I'm going to make this, is it okay. It's we
23 made the request, oh, yeah, here it is.
24 Q.
25 A.
And you tell her you have no authority to do
Yeah. Yeah, you can't be doing this. And I
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1 don't blame her. She's just doing what she's told.
2 She --I want to be clear, Jill, she's a receptionist.
3 She's just doing what she's told
4 Q. By Marty?
5 A. I assume by Marty. I mean I don't know who
6 else would be telling her --
7 Q. Or Denise?
8 A. Then --then I get a phone call and I get a
9 phone call on June 26th and it's just really unusual. I
10 get a phone call from a guy named George Ellis who is
11 the executive director of a State contractor called
12 Miami's River of Life and they were being sued by the
13 foundation in a lawsuit that I had signed off on. And
14 the facts of the public records violation were very
15 clear and I, to this day, will stand by the facts of the
16 case. And it stands out in my mind because there's only
17 been a handful of times in my career of doing this
18 that --that a defendant's actually contacted me
19 directly, not their attorney, just the defendant. And
20 George, it turns out, he and I are connected about 20
21 different ways. We -he's an African American fellow
22 and I'm very active in several African American
23 communities, worked with black churches and the black
24 civil rights groups, and it turns out we know a bunch of
25 the same people. There's some African American
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1 ministers that I'm good friends with that he's also good
2 friends with. And this just kind of came up in the
3 course of our conversation. And he said, look, I --I
4 blew it. You made a public records request, I ignored
5 it, and you sued me and I realize that I shouldn't have
6 ignored your public records request, I should have
7 handled this differently and I'm sorry. And then he
s went on to say I you know, we don't have very much
9 money, you know, as fast as we get a grant from the
10 State, it gets spent, but, you know, I'm willing to try
11 to resolve this with you. And on top of that, would you
12 be willing to work with me to help me better understand
13 what my responsibilities are and how I can do a better
14 job of responding to public records requests in the
15 future.
16 Well, because I care about public records
17 access and I couldn't care less about the money, there's
18 nothing I'd rather hear from a defendant. I mean I
19 don't know what else I can ask a defendant to do than to
20 say I --I blew it, I'm sorry, will you help me not do
21 it again, and let's resolve this. What more can you
22 ask? And he said I so I asked him, I said what
23 are --what are you you know, what's going on. Now,
24 bear in mind I did not even know that they were --that
25 we were in settlement talks to these folks. I didn't
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1 authorize any settlement discussions, didn't authorize
2 any monetary demands, or any other settlement demands
3 for that matter. And George told me that the O'Boyle
4 Law Firm had demanded $4,300 and I expressed to George
5 my shock at that number because I asked him, I said has
6 there been any hearings, no. I said did you guys file
7 an answer to your --to the complaint, no. He said the
s only thing that's happened up to this point is they
9 filed a verified complaint, is that right, yeah, that's
10 it, that's all that's done --
11 Q. You had signed the verified complaint?
12 A. I believe it was a verified complaint. And he
13 said that they --that he had authorized his attorney to
14 offer to the O'Boyle Law firm a settlement of $500,
15 which the O'Boyle Law Firm rejected. And I didn't tell
16 him --I said look - I told George, I said look, you
17 know, I --I can understand them number one, their
18 they're not authorized to accept or reject anything
19 because I - I haven't agreed to it, but I understand
20 that $500 a probably not reasonable because that would
21 just cover their filing fees and service and summons
22 and, you know, they -I'm sure they do have, you know,
23 actual hourly's in it. He said, well, after they
24 rejected our $500 offer, I --I offered $1,500. I'm
25 going to have to borrow the money. I'm going to have to
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1 scrape it up. I mean somebody is not going to get paid
2 this week, but we offered $1,500 and they rejected that
3 and countered with a demand for 3,800. This was on a
4 Thursday. So I told George, I said well, look, let
5 me let me call the firm, let me find out, and Nick
6 Taylor was the attorney of record, I said let me call
7 and talk to Nick and find out what's going on and if I
s can help you, I will.
9 So the next day, on Friday, I called Nick and I
10 asked Nick about this and he said yeah, we're engaged in
11 settlement negotiations. We demanded $4,300. They
12 countered with 500. We rejected that. They countered
13 with 1,500 and we've now demanded $3,800. So then my
14 question was well, what are your actual fees and
15 expenses? And Nick told me that the fees and expenses
16 were $1,200, at $250 an hour plus the filing fees,
17 process service, and summons, $1,200. So my question
18 was why in the hell are you demanding 3,800, well,
19 because that's what Jonathan told me to do, well, I
20 don't agree with this. And I was very adamant with him
21 about this and told him, I said, in a few minutes I'm
22 going to send you an e-mail memorializing our telephone
23 conversation and I want you to acknowledge receipt of my
24 e-mail and I want you to confirm the contents of my
25 e-mail.
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1 So this is what I wrote to Nick, this is
2 Friday, June 27th, 2014 at 11:05 a.m., "Nick, I'm
3 writing this e-mail to memorialize our telephone
4 conversation this morning. As we discussed, I was
5 contacted by the defendant in the case referenced above.
6 He expressed his regret in his failure to properly
7 respond to CAFI's public records request and asked for
B our help in better understanding his obligations under
9 the Public Records Act. He also explained the dire
10 financial condition of his organization and said that he
11 had instructed his attorney to offer to settle this
12 matter for $1,500. In our conversation this morning, I
13 understood from you that the O'Boyle Law Firm has about
14 $1,200 in costs and fees in the case up to this point.
15 I also understood that you have been instructed by
16 Jonathan O'Boyle to demand $3,800 to settle the case.
17 If such a demand is accepted by the defendant, that
18 would create a windfall of about $2,600 beyond actual
19 fees and expenses. During our telephone conversation, I
20 expressed in unequivocal terms my objection to such an
21 arrangement. Until I received a telephone call from the
22 defendant yesterday, I was unaware that any settlement
23 discussions were taking place with the defendant. I did
24 not authorize any discussions, nor did I approve in any
25 way the demand for payments of any kind, much less the
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1 demand for payments far beyond the actual fees and
2 expenses billed by the O'Boyle Law Firm. In sum, I
3 understand that you were directed to make the
4 aforementioned settlement demands by Jonathan O'Boyle
5 and I have not and do not approve of such demands.
6 Please confirm your receipt and understanding of this
7 e-mail."
s And at 11:19, Nick Taylor responded by saying
9 "This e-mail is to confirm our conversation today and to
10 reiterate that all offers for settlement are made
11 pursuant to the policies of the O' Boyle Law Firm." That
12 was on Friday and at 11:19 and about 11:00 on Monday I
13 resigned.
14 Q. And then how did you resign?
15 A. I --the foundation --originally they were
16 going to buy a new car, but that never happened. We
17 I decided it was cheaper, because of the miles I was
18 driving, to rent cars. So I turned in my rental car on
19 Sunday in Lakeland and I packed up what few things I had
20 that belonged to the foundation, a couple of harddrives
21 and a scanner and a couple of thumb drives and a few
22 Sunshine manuals and drove my 14-year-old Volvo down to
23 Deerfield Beach and walked in and walked into Bill
24 Ring's office and I said here are all the things that I
25 have that belong to the foundation and here's my letter
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1 of resignation and inside is the foundation credit card,
2 thank you, and I left. It took about 30 seconds.
3 And Bill didn't act surprised. And frank
4 frankly I kind of figured that he knew it was coming
5 after everything that had happened. And in fact, I - I
6 kind of half expected that I was going to get fired
7 before I got there. I had hoped to meet with Marty
8 because I wanted to thank him for, you know, the
9 opportunity and I'm sorry things didn't work out, no
10 hard feelings, and I just can't be a part of this, but
11 he wasn't there.
12 So after I exited Bill's office, I stepped
13 across the hall to Brenda Russell's, Marty's secretary
14 and also a member of the board, and asked her to have
15 Marty call me. And then I walked over to the law firm
16 and announced to the lawyers that I had resigned and
17 then I left.
18 Q. What happened next?
19 A. Before I got out of the parking lot, Marty
20 tried calling me. I didn't take his call. I was --I
21 wasn't angry. I just frankly didn't feel like talking
22 to him at the moment. So I waited until, I don't know,
23 I was driving back and called Marty and then Marty got
24 Denise and Bill on the phone, so it was the four of us,
25 and they expressed their surprise and shock and didn't
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1 know it was coming and, you know, I tried to disabuse
2 them of that notion and said I, you know, warned you in
3 writing that I was going to quit and I --I warned you
4 guys on May 19th that I was going to quit. I actually
5 had a telephone call - -call with Jonathan back in June,
6 earlier in the month, I think it was June, and the
7 reason I remember this is because I was on my way to
s meet with one of my attorneys in Sarasota to talk to him
9 about this whole ethical dilemmas and what he thought I
10 should do, and just before I I ended up being late to
11 that meeting because I had this phone call with
12 Jonathan. And I, you know, sort of in sum, all of the
13 things we talked about today, the --all this nonsense
14 going on and I told Jonathan at least six times I'm
15 going to fucking quit if you don't stop this, I'm going
16 to fucking quit if you don't stop this, you know, Denise
17 being involved. And Jonathan was like, you know, yeah,
18 yeah, we'll fix this, we'll take care of it, so again I
19 was really annoyed that they were now claiming that they
20 didn't know that I was going to quit. But it --the
21 tone of the conversation wasn't particularly
22 adversarial. It was just sort of, you know, we --we
23 were surprised and we can't believe you are really upset
24 about all of this stuff. And Bill kept going back to
25 this whole, you know, we have this ethics letter that
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1 says that you -it's okay for us to do this and I don't
2 see why you care and, you know and I was like, you
3 know, I'm --I'm not --well, I'm not debating this with
4 you. I mean I - -I think they kind of thought maybe
5 that I was bluffing about quitting or that somehow I was
6 going to get talked off the ledge or I was just, you
7 know, throwing a fit or whatever. And I was like, it's
8 over. I mean there's -there is no going back. I mean
9 there's no amount of money, no nothing you could tell
10 me now would make me come back. And I said to Marty
11 I told him, I said the reason I asked you to call me
12 the reason I asked Brenda to have you call me is I just
13 wanted to thank you for the opportunity and, you know,
14 no hard feelings and you guys go your way, I'll go mine,
15 and, you know, I'm willing to just now move on with my
16 life. I'm going to go back and do what I was doing
17 before.
18 And then Marty demanded that --he said what
19 were you thinking when you wrote that e-mail to --to
20 Nick. I said well, I think you know exactly what I was
21 thinking. He said well, you need to retract that
22 e-mail. And I was like, no, well why not, because it's
23 the truth. And then Marty proceeded at least five
24 times, maybe six times, but at least five times --and I
25 remember this very distinctly because I had pulled over
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1 at the Locks on Highway 60, Lake Kissimmee, and I pulled
2 over there to look at the water while I was having this
3 unpleasant conversation. And Marty proceeded at least
4 five times to say that he was going to make my life very
5 unpleasant, that your refusal to withdrawal this e-mail
6 is going to force us to respond and our response will be
7 unpleasant and it will bring great unpleasantness in
8 your life. He used that word, unpleasant or
9 unpleasantness, at least five times. And of course as
10 soon as I heard him say it the first time, I perceived
11 that very much as a threat and I said well, you know,
12 what do you mean by that, what do you intend to do, oh,
13 well, you'll see. And I told him I felt that he was
14 being threatening and my response was, you know, bring
15 it on, do what you want to do. And he said I don't
16 think you understand how how unpleasant this is going
17 to be and I remember saying to him, Marty, I'm the guy
18 that shows up at offices unannounced and uninvited to
19 demand to look at public records knowing there's a good
20 chance that somebody is going to call the police and
21 threaten to have me arrested. I live in a world of
22 unpleasant. I don't --you know, I don't care --
23 threatening unpleasantness, okay, all right, great, I --
24 I deal with that every single day. I was really
25 puzzled. It surprised me that he decided to --to take
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1 that approach. I was surprised that he didn't know me
2 better than that.
3 Q. And so what happened after those conversations?
4 A. That's the last time I've - I think that's the
5 last time I talked to Marty. I believe it was the last
6 time we spoke on the phone. We have traded e-mails
7 since then, a few. I have gotten a bunch of e-mails and
s phone calls, which I have not taken, from Bill Ring and
9 Denise DeMartini, from their IT guy at Commerce Group.
10 I gave them all the data that belonged to the
11 foundation. I put them on harddrives. They were
12 encrypted harddrives. I gave them a password and they
13 were having trouble accessing them because they were
14 formatted for Mac and they used PC's.
15 They have been pretty animated in their demands
16 that I come down there and meet with them and they want
17 me to help them identify all these un-filed lawsuits
18 that they're convinced are on these hard-drives, and
19 there probably are. There probably would be, I'm
20 guessing --you know, if somebody were to go through
21 those hard-drives, I could probably identify 200
22 lawsuits that are that are worthy of being filed, but
23 I am not about to help them do that.
24 Q. So that's what they want --they want you to do
25 is
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1 A. Yeah, they want --yeah, I found this really
2 remarkable and --and, you know, I --I am convinced
3 that I made the right choice to leave and I believe that
4 I did it the right way. The next --in fact that night
5 when I got home, I actually sent out a press release to
6 more or less the same people that I had sent the first
7 release out to in January announcing that I went to work
s for the foundation, to make it clear that I had left
9 and
10 Q. Okay. Now, on that topic, I did not know who
11 you were and I received a copy of that press release.
12 A. Yep.
13 Q. How many people got that press release?
14 A. About 100.
15 Q. Okay. And was that done to make it clear you
16 were disassociating yourself from anything to do with
17 the foundation or the O'Boyle's?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Okay. Because it was clear from that press
20 release that that was the case?
21 A. Yes.
22 Q. Which is --I guess that was your intent?
23 A. Yes, and the next day I gave a you know, one
24 of the reporters, a guy that called me, and I actually
25 gave a very blunt interview - -
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1 Q. What did you say?
2 A. A lot of what I've said here today. He didn't
3 publish a lot of that --
4 Q. Who was the interview with?
5 A. It was with the Lakeland Ledger. Rick Russo is
6 the attorney --I mean, not the attorney, the reporter,
7 somebody that I -he's their investigative reporter I
s know very well.
9 Q. And in these contacts from either Marty or his
10 associates --
11 A. Yeah.
12 Q. after you left, the sole desire was to get
13 you to help them identify more lawsuits --
14 A. Absolutely. There --you know, it's it's
15 very telling from my perspective. There has not been a
16 single query about anything other than ac -getting
17 access, which by the way, they have access to the data
18 and what I delivered to them I explained in great detail
19 in an e-mail. The --I probably looked
20 obsessive/compulsive to an IT guy when you look at the
21 file structure. I mean it's --it is neat and tidy and
22 the file structure and the nomenclature of the --the
23 file name and --I mean all that is just, you know,
24 very, very simple, very straight-forward and anybody
25 with half a brain could get in there and find it. So
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1 it's not that I in any way gave them back --I didn't do
2 anything deliberately to try and make it difficult to
3 access the data. In fact the exact opposite, I made it
4 as easy as possible.
5 Having said that, the only thing they have
6 expressed an interest in is help us get the data so we
7 can file more lawsuits, which I find puzzling because I
B thought it was really clear from my letter of
9 resignation. I thought it was very clear from my
10 telephone conversation with Bill, Denise, and Marty.
11 And I thought it was very clear from my interview with
12 the Lakeland Ledger that I wanted no part of helping
13 them file more lawsuits. In fact I think that what
14 they're doing is terrible. I think it hurts the cause
15 that I have fought for for a long time and sac --
16 sacrificed a lot for personally. It's terrible and it's
17 very telling to me that I made the right choice by
18 virtue of the fact that all they had asked about are the
19 lawsuits. They haven't asked a single time about are
20 there any
21 need to be
22 need to be
23 expecting
24 there any
25 any civil
civil rights events that are coming up that we
prepared for, are there any seminars that we
prepared for, is there anybody that's
to get copies of the Sunshine manual, are
meetings we need to plan to go to, are there
rights activists that we're supposed to be
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1 helping. There's not a --are there any, you know,
2 citizens that --that need our help, nothing to do with
3 the stated purpose of the foundation, nothing to do with
4 what I believed my job to be. It's only and all about
5 we want more lawsuits to file.
6 Q. Generating lawsuits?
7 A. That's it.
8 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: Counsel, I need to change
9 the tape. You have about one minute left.
10 Q. All right, let me just wrap up before he
11 changes the tape. When you contacted me, how did you
12 know who I was? When you sent me the --the letter of
13 resignation --
14 A. Your name had --your name had come up many
15 times at the O'Boyle Law Firm as being a hired gun for
16 Gulf Stream.
17 Q.
18 A.
19 Q.
20 A.
21 Q.
22 A.
23 Q.
24 A.
25
And what did they say about me?
I don't remember anything in particular, but --
But my name was mentioned?
Oh, yeah.
So you located me through the Bar --
Yeah.
--Journal?
Yeah.
MR. SWEETAPPLE: Okay. Well, let me go ahead
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l and change the type.
2 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We're off the video record
3 at 3:25 p.m.
4 (A short recess was taken.)
5 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We're on the video record at
6 3:28 p.m.
7 Q. Have --have you gotten any contacts from
s anyone relating anything Mr. O'Boyle has said since
9 A. Yeah, I've been told repeatedly by various
10 people that that we've kissed and made up and I'm
11 coming back and that I was just --you know, I needed to
12 take a few weeks off to kind of collect my thoughts and,
13 you know, that I'm just was throwing a fit. And I
14 understand that Jonathan's told people it was just a
15 power struggle.
16 Q. That you'll be back?
17 A. That I'll be back, I'm --I'm coming back,
18 there's no way I'm walking away from that much money.
19 Q. What's your reaction to those statements?
20 A. You know, when I started doing this, I don't
21 know, about 2008 is the first public records lawsuit I
22 filed --before I started doing this, I --I think the
23 last high-water mark economically for me was, I don't
24 know, about $240,000 gross in a year, and that would
25 have been I guess about 2007. In 2012, my total income
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1 from all sources was $4,963. That's for a family of
2 four. I lost count of the number of yard sales that
3 I've had. I mean, you know, the first yard sale you get
4 rid of the stuff you haven't used in five years and the
5 second one you --you know, stuff you haven't used in
6 the last couple years. By the time you get to the tenth
7 one, you're deciding what furniture you really need to
B sit on. I have lost count of the number of times my
9 electricity has been turned off. I --you know, the
10 first thing I did when I started running out of money
11 was I used up the cash that I had. Then I cashed in my
12 children's college funds. That will show where my
13 priorities are. Then I sold my boats, including my
14 power boat and my sailboat. And then I sold my Van
15 Staal fishing gear. And then I sold my collection of
16 Taylor guitars. My point is, I don't care about the
17 money. I --I went broke doing this.
18 Q. So there's no way you're going back to this
19 enterprise?
20 A. Yeah, the --look, the -the --here's the
21 thing, it was nice getting $120,000 a year. That was
22 really nice. I liked that. That that was --it was
23 great because my wife and my kids you know, my wife
24 wasn't worried about buying groceries for the first time
25 in, you know, seven or eight years. You know, I was
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1 able to send my --my kids, you know, got to go to camp
2 this summer. They haven't been able to do that in a
3 while. But I don't care about the money. I cared about
4 the resources to do more advocacy, but I was doing
5 advocacy before I got hooked up with Marty and I've - I
6 mean I quit on June 30th and on July 1st I was right
7 back to doing advocacy so --now, there's no chance,
s there's no possibility that I'm ever going to go back.
9 In fact, in response to one of Marty's numerous e-mails
10 asking me for help, you know, getting access to these
11 records, I close --I won't read you the whole e-mail,
12 but I close the e-mail --this is addressed to Marty and
13 this is on July 7th, "I bent over backwards to make this
14 as easy as possible for the foundation to access data.
15 I have delivered in good repair in a well-organized
16 fashion what belongs to the foundation. As I stated in
17 my letter of resignation, I have severed "all",
18 italicized, bold, underlined, "all" connections with the
19 foundation. Because my time and attention must be
20 directed preparing for the unpleasantness you promised,
21 I am unable to lend further assistance." And his
22 response --and if the deal wasn't already sealed, then
23 it was, this really did it, "lJoel, the unpleasantness I
24 promised, I don't understand." I --I found that
25 enormously insulting. I mean if you're going to be
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1 stupid enough to threaten me and maybe you've realized
2 that was a dumb thing to do, how about just apologize.
3 But, you know, whatever.
4 Look, it's clear that they're going to keep
5 doing what they're doing. The fact that they want all
6 these un-filed lawsuits makes it clear to me they
7 don't --they're going to keep doing this. And I really
s believe that what they are doing is going to hurt the
9 public's right of access because this is going to become
10 the poster child of what the Florida League of Cities
11 talks about when they discuss abuse of litigation. And
12 I think what they're doing to Gulf Stream --and I
13 don't --just so we're clear, I don't have an
14 adversarial attitude towards Gulf Stream. I would love
15 to help them. I would love to help them sort out their
16 public records issues. I think --
17 Q. Did you ever offer to Mr. O'Boyle to help --
18 A. I did, I actually --I actually proposed to
19 Marty - I said, you know, instead of filing another
20 lawsuit against Gulf Stream, how about if I just call
21 Bill Thrasher and, you know, offer to go over there and
22 have a meeting, just to two of us, and, you know, maybe
23 talk to him about working with him to, you know, come up
24 with some way to fix this. And he was very dismissive,
25 it will be a waste of your time, don't --don't even
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1 bother and I'm --you know, I've only --I've met Bill
2 Thrasher a couple of times. He seems like a nice guy.
3 He seems, you know, reasonable.
4 Q. He just wanted to continue this pattern of
5 conduct?
6 A. Yeah, I think so, you know.
7 Q. Were you familiar with --did you become
s familiar with Mr. O'Boyle's background while you were
9 working at the foundation in terms of his activities in
10 New Jersey, Tennessee, with the State Attorney in --in
11 Palm Beach County?
12 A. I knew a little bit about --I knew sort of the
13 high points of the --of his disagreements with Dave
14 Amber, the State Attorney. I knew that he had staged
15 some protest where he --I understood he had hired
16 actors to basically stage a phony protest and that he
17 was either flying a blimp or banner planes or something
18 around downtown West Palm Beach. I understood it was a
19 blimp and I don't know if that was the case. I know he
20 has a blimp. They actually offered to donate it to the
21 foundation. Yeah, I've seen videos of these banner
22 planes that he's flown in New Jersey and --
23 Q. He's shown you videos of --
24 A. Oh, I've seen the videos, yeah. He described
25 it as --he said --the way he put it was it looked like
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1 Pearl Harbor. There was so many planes coming in. He
2 hired a whole bunch of planes. It wasn't just one. It
3 was it was --the number that sticks in my head was
4 like 40 planes or something. It was a lot of planes. I
5 mean I --I remember when he described it, wondering how
6 they didn't all run into each other.
7 You know, when I hear stuff like that --I knew
s about him painting his house, which frankly I thought
9 was, you know, actually funny. Because at the time I
10 don't even remember all the facts now. At the time I
11 thought, well, you know, I think maybe --maybe the
12 guy's got a legitimate beef with Gulf Stream. You know,
13 I --as far as the --the nonsense like in Tennessee, I
14 did not know about that until very recently. In fact, I
15 didn't --I think the first time I read about it was
16 after I left the foundation. I didn't know
17 Q. Where did you read about that?
18 A. I went online and found an article about it
19 that had been --I think it was 1.6 million dollars in
20 legal fees and 1.2 million in sanctions.
21 Q. Did you ever see any of the motions I filed in
22 any cases involving the O'Boyle Law Firm or for
23 sanctions?
24 A. No.
25 Q. Okay
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1 A. Well, no --
2 Q. So you never seen those?
3 A. No, your name came --you asked me earlier
4 about your name coming up. The --the time where your
5 name was mentioned where I was most involved in the
6 conversation about you was in connection with a public
7 records request where there had been some redactions on
s billing statements and on a check. And there was
9 Q. That's what the --that was with the law firm
10 or with Mr. O'Boyle?
11 A. Well, it was actually --again, I can remember
12 where I was when I had the conversation. There was a
13 very nice little park that you should enjoy on your
14 drive back on the south side of I --of 60 after you get
15 past Lake Wales. I pulled over there so I could
16 because I had good reception. It was Jonathan, Marty,
17 and me. I think it was just the three of us.
18 Q. This was a case I'm involved in now probably?
19 A. Well, they wanted to file -the issue was do
20 we file a petition for Writ of Mandamus and
21 Q. Yeah, let's --that's getting into let's not
22 get into legal
23 A. Okay.
24 Q. --discussions about that case. So you heard
25 my name through Marty?
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1 A. Yes.
2 Q. And that's why you sent me the - -the press
3 release?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. Okay
6 A. And partly because, you know, a --because of
7 Marty's apparent obsession with Gulf Stream, a lot of
s the issues that we've talked about today, all these
9 public records requests that Jill Mohler was making,
10 cases getting filed without my knowledge, had to do with
11 Gulf Stream and I knew that you represented Gulf Stream,
12 at least in some matters, so I wanted to reach out to
13 you and let you know that I was no longer associated
14 with the foundation.
15 Q. Let me just look through my notes and see if I
16 have anything else. Why don't we take a five-minute
17 break --
18 A. Sure --
19 Q. --so you don't have to sit while I look
20 through my notes.
21 A. Sure.
22 Q. Thanks.
23 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We're off the video record
24 at 3:38 p.m.
25 (A short recess was taken.)
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1 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We're on the video record at
2 3:46 p.m.
3 Q. Okay. Mr. Chandler, I asked you to look online
4 to see if you're --if you're listed as being affiliated
5 with the Citizens Awareness Foundation.
6 A. Yes.
7 Q. And are you listed?
s A. Yeah, hold on a second, let me pull it up
9 again. Yeah, on Sunbiz.org, I'm still listed as being a
10 board member, which I did not agree to do, to serve as a
11 board member. I'm also listed as president of the
12 foundation, which I've never agreed to.
13 Q. How long have you been listed in that capacity?
14 Is that what they listed you
15 A. Yeah --
16 Q. --as executive director?
17 A. Yeah, this was filed on June 23rd, so seven
18 days before I resigned.
19 Q. Okay. And they did not take it off after you
20 resigned?
21 A. No, it's still there.
22 Q. And then when did Bill Ring show that he
23 retired from the board?
24 A.
25 Q.
It was the same filing.
And what about Denise, when did she resign?
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1 A. Same, it was the same filing date.
2 Q. And then the new members of the board allegedly
3 are Peter DeLeo?
4 A. Yeah, Peter DeLeo and Cathleen Laca.
5 Q. L-a-c-a?
6 A. Yeah. Now this --now this says --yeah, it
7 was filed by the --by the Citizens Awareness Foundation
s on June 23rd, 2014.
9 Q. By whom? Who signed it?
10 A. By Brenda Russell.
11 Q. Okay. And is she affiliated with the
12 foundation? On that date was she affiliated?
13 A. She was the secretary, but she's not listed on
14 the the --she's still listed on Sun Biz as --as a
15 member of the board, but on the amendment she's not.
16 She's just --she's --it says that she's secretary, but
17 her name is no longer on the --on the add, change, or
1s move.
19 Q. Okay. So
20 A. She's the only --I think she's still there
21 my point, I think she's still the secretary of the
22 foundation.
23 Q. Okay. And Ca th - -Cathleen r~aca, is she a
24 Marty O'Boyle --
25 A. Yeah, she's
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1 Q. employee?
2 A. an employee of Marty O'Boyle and Peter DeLeo
3 is not an employee, but has been a long-time business
4 associate.
5 Q. Okay. And I have your permission to use this
6 statement for any any purpose, any proceedings
7 A. It's the truth. Knock yourself out.
8 Q. All right. And is there anything that you want
9 to correct in your statement? Do you want --is there
10 anything that you want to clarify? I know we've been
11 here for some time. Anything you want to add?
12 A. No, I think that pretty much covers it. I
13 guess if --you know, at some point I think my
14 motivation for being willing to reach out to what I
15 affectionately refer to as the dark side, the other side
16 of the public records community --you know, I --I will
17 stand by the facts of every case that I signed off on.
18 Having said that, you know, my ambition is not to milk
19 defendants out of money. And my ambition is not to beat
20 defendants. I I hope that I I'm sure I'm not
21 consistent in this, but I would my ambition is to
22 approach this civil rights issue, and for me this is
23 very much a civil rights issue, with the same
24 graciousness that Martin Luther King did. And what
25 mean by that is, you know, he repeatedly made the
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1 observation that this is --when he was talking about
2 the civil rights movement in the 1950's and 60's, this
3 is not --this a not about beating our adversaries.
4 This is about reconciliation. This is about getting on
5 the same side. I think I'm on the right side. My goal
6 is not to beat up people. My goal is not to win. My
7 goal is to make sure that the public has virtually
s unfettered access to public records without needing -
9 and if litigation is a part of that, that's fine. If
10 having conversations is a part of that, that's fine. If
11 stopping the Citizens Awareness Foundation and the
12 O'Boyle Law Firm is part of that, fine. And I feel very
13 much like that's the case. I think that what they're
14 doing is counter-productive. I think that it's --it
15 persmirches those of us who are involved in legitimate,
16 sincere advocacy and I think that what they're going to
17 do --if they --if they continue to do what they're
18 doing unchecked, I think it will severely injure the
19 public's right to access, so that's the reason I'm doing
20 this.
21 SPEAKERl: All right. All right, thank you
22 very much.
23 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
24 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: We're off the video record
25 at 3:51 p.m.
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1 (Statement concluded at 3:56 p.m.)
2
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12 STIPULATIONS
13 IT WAS STIPULATED by counsel for the respective
14 party, with the consent of the witness, that reading and
15 signing of the foregoing statement by the witness be
16 waived.
17
18 THEREUPON, the statement of JOEL CHANDLER, taken
19 at the instance of the Town of Gulf Stream, was
20 concluded at 3:56 p.m.
21
22 NOTE: The original and one copy of the foregoing
23 statement will be held by Mr. Sweetapple.
24
25
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1 CERTIFICATE OF REPORTER OATH
2
3 STATE OF FLORIDA
4 COUNTY OF OSCEOLA
5
6 I, the undersigned authority, hereby certify that
7 the witness named herein personally appeared before me
s and was duly sworn on the 23rd day of July, 2014.
9
10 WITNESS my hand and official seal this 4th day of
11 August, 2014.
12
13
14
15
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20
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25
JULIE KELLEY, FPR
NOTARY PUBLIC -STATE OF FLORIDA
MY COMMISSION NO. EE874232
EXPIRES: MARCH 23, 2017
SCLAFANI WILLIAMS COURT REPORTERS, INC.
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1 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE
2
3 STATE OF FLORIDA
4 COUNTY OF OSCEOLA
5
6 I, Julie Kelley, Florida Professional Reporter
7 and Notary Public in and for the State of Florida at
s large, hereby certify that the witness appeared before
9 me for the taking of the foregoing deposition, and that
10 I was authorized to and did stenographically and
11 electronically report the deposition, and that the
12 transcript is a true and complete record of my
13 stenographic notes and recordings thereof.
14 I FURTHER CERTIFY that I am neither an attorney,
15 nor counsel for the parties to this cause, nor a
16 relative or employee of any attorney or party connected
17 with this litigation, nor am I financially interested in
18 the outcome of this action.
19 DATED THIS 4th day of August, 2014, at Kissimmee,
20 Osceola County, Florida.
21
22
23
24
25
JULIE KELLEY, FLORIDA PROFESSIONAL REPORTER
SCLAFANI WILLIAMS COURT REPORTERS, INC.
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