– News about Quincy from Quincy Quarry News.

We’re in the money!
A danieldervartanian.com image

The City of Quincy has been ordered by Norfolk County Probate Court Judge James V. Menno to pay forthwith $723,974.00 to the Woodward School for Girls in damages awarded to the school over long past and perhaps some still-living City Fathers variously mismanaging – if not also arguably long grifting from – the Adams Temple and School Fund over at least 57 years.

This payment is only but a modest portion of a roughly $3,000,000.00 damages award payout ordered several years ago by the probate court and which was largely affirmed subsequently by the State Supreme Judicial Court last summer.

An expected to likely be but a relatively modest revision of the residual roughly $2,250,000.00 in damages awarded to Woodward is pending review and a revised determination by Judge Menno early next year.

Also expected is yet another delaying effort afterwards by the Koch Administration while the delayed payment interest award meter is running at 12% simple interest per annum.

Hysterical Society & Old Boys Network Clubhouse
A Quincy Quarry News file photo

In the meanwhile, Woodward’s trustee has further filed another lawsuit against both the City of Quincy and the Quincy Historical Society over City Fathers leasing for 50 years the Adams Academy Building, the sole remaining land asset of the Adams Temple & School Fund, to the now clearly hysterical society for $100 a month.

The key point in this latest complaint is that this sweetheart lease was done in spite of a direct and near concurrent ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court that the Adams Academy building must be rented out at a fair market rate.

Quincy Quarry’s expert advisers expect that this lawsuit will likely result in a further at least 7 figure damages award ordered to be paid to Woodward.

Given the Supreme Judicial Court’s very clear instructions roughly 40 years ago, about all that is uncertain is the final damages award amount.  Key reasons include that the court could award treble punitive damages given such a willful disregard of its instructions by City Fathers’ in their leasing out the Adams Academy Building at a such an obscenely below market rate as well as for literally generations.

To date, as well as surely per the instructions of the Koch Maladministration, the City Consiglieri has dragged things out playing The Delay Game with often late filled countering briefs, failures to produce documents in a timely manner during both discovery and the original trial, doomed appeals, and other such usual nonsense when one is on the losing end of litigation.

Adding further insult to almost 60 years of egregious injuries, the mayor’s Consiglieri has most disingenuously complained that “Mayor [Thomas P.] Koch doesn’t think the city should be in the trust business. We can’t keep responding to complaints from Woodward School.”

So what, apparently, for the fact that the court stripped the City of Quincy of its thoroughly self-besmirched role as Trustee of the Adams Temple & School Fund almost four years ago as well as that Woodward’s legal counsel keeps enjoying great success with its complaints against the City.

This, in turn, has left the Consigilieri to do what lawyers do when they have neither the facts nor the law on their side and thus but – well – resort to little other than pouting and pounding on the table.

Koch frowning
A Facebook photo

While City Hall can mistakenly think what it may, such childish behavior all but invariably only makes judges cranky as well as – again – typically only further runs up the damages awarded, interest penalties and legal bills.

Just the total cost of merely but the legal bills and related miscellaneous court-related expenses incurred by the City to date as well as those of Woodward – all of which local taxpayers will eventually have to fund – have already blown past a million dollars.

Additionally, as well as again, a simple interest of 12% per annum surcharge since the original probate court ruling was handed down on February 18, 2014 is further due Wooward.

As such, roughly $350,000.00 in interest penalties – and counting at the rate of $7,239.74 per month – is thus due and payable to Woodward on just the $723,974.00.00 at this point and  will continue to metastasize until such time as the Koch Maladministration finally cuts a check and then soaks local taxpayers to cover the bill for the past and often egregious misdeeds of City Fathers.

At the same time, surely the ongoing delay has nothing to do with the fact that past egregious misdeeds were found to have carried forward into at least the era of Mayor Koch’s arguable mentor, former Quincy Mayor Jim Sheets.

In any event, the mind boggles as to the final cost total cost as regards the $2,250,000.00 in residual damages awarded to Woodward that are still under review as well as that the Supreme Judicial Court will likely not be hearing the more recently filed Hysterical Society sweetheart lease lawsuit until sometime in 2015.

As noted previously, the court could award treble punitive damages given such a willful disregard of its instructions by the City Fathers’ leasing out the Adams Academy Building at such a grossly far below market rate.

While an award of treble damages is as yet uncertain, Quincy Quarry’s experts feel that the sweetheart lease should easily result in a further 7 figure damages award awarded to Woodward even if treble damages are not awarded.

At this point, the only thing uncertain is will it be a low 7, a mid-7 or a high-7 figure damages award, inclusive of all legal costs for both sides as both the City of Quincy and the Hysterical Society will also surely be ordered to pay for Woodward’s legal and other related expenses in this latest round of litigation.

In turn, as the Hysterical Society has precious little in the way an endowment, such means that Quincy taxpayers are looking to eventually be stuck with covering ALL of this additional bill.

In the meanwhile, a key reason that the court ordered immediate payment of the $723,974.00 – plus interest – is that any further delay is just as much a (further, ed.) financial hardship to Quincy taxpayers who will have to pay it as it is to Woodward.

For the relief of local taxpayers, Woodward kindly argued both the former point as well as the latter one.
In turn, the court only properly agreed with both and so ordered payment forthwith by the City of Quincy.

Unfortunately, there is little else possible to stop the Consiglieri from continuing to play The Delay Game and so further run up the final total cost to a figure likely to be in excess, if not great excess, of any possible offsetting benefit that he and/or his all but self-delusional boss believe(s) might be derived from any all but surely insignificant modification might perhaps be derived from continuing to pound the table at local taxpayers’ expense.

While one can appreciate the Koch Maladministration’s obligation to vigorously defend the City in this matter, there clearly comes a point when not only does doing so become at least financially counterproductive, but also that the Koch Maladministration thus takes ownership for a portion of responsibility for its so arguably all but aiding and abetting the abuses of past administrations by its needlessly further running up the final total cost.

Finally, as original trial court Judge Robert Langlois wrote in his opinion almost four years ago,

“President John Adams created the Adams Temple and School Fund to benefit the religious and educational interests of the inhabitants of Quincy – the trust was not created to benefit the municipal needs of the City of Quincy. Were he to be with us today, President Adams would, most assuredly, not be pleased with the events of the past fifty-seven years.”

Unfortunately, the nonsense has continued for another four years as well as is likely to run for even more years yet to come as well as at local taxpayers’ needless further expense over the sins of generations of City Fathers both past and present.

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