Meeting with Lawyers

At the request of some Committee members, Pepe arranged a meeting with the Mi Sol Lawyers at their office in Torrevieja. Pepe indicated that he would not attend the meeting in order for us to be able to discuss freely anything we wanted. The meeting was held at 10.30 am this morning, in attendance were Rosario and Maria (the Lawyers), Alberto the Administrator, Shelagh Shaw, Pat Olive, Emilia Estrada who very kindly translated for us, and myself.

The meeting started by Pat and Shelagh asking several questions regarding legal matters concerning the Park. I will deal with these in another post, this post concerns the Court proceedings in Elche yesterday and matters surrounding that.

The case held yesterday concerns a General meeting of the owners in 2004, which both sides of the present dispute attended. It was agreed at that meeting to hold a vote for President between Pepe and Antonio Escudero, the winner to become President of Mi Sol Park. After three recounts, called for, and scrutinised by one of Antonios supporters, Pepe was declared the winner. The other side are now saying that this meeting was illegal. If they were to win this case, it would mean all subsequent meetings that have been called by Pepe since then would be illegal. Yesterday was for presenting the case by the Lawyers of both sides, the verdict will be given in February 2008.

We put it to the Lawyers this morning that originally I was going to stand for election as President at the AGM held in September 2006, but in light of the advice to the Community by them, I changed that to standing for Vice President, and if elected, Pepe would resign after the Court hearing yesterday, and I would take over until the AGM in September. This was agreed by unanimous vote at the Committee meeting prior to the AGM of September 2006, and voted for by a majority of Owners attending that AGM. Maria said this was not the case, however the Administrator Alberto told her she was wrong, and what we were saying was in fact true.

We then told the Lawyers that we felt they had mislead the Community by advising that Pepe should stay as President until the Court hearing yesterday, and that the date of February 2008 was not mentioned before. We asked them why they gave this advice to the Community, their answer was that it would make it easier for them!! When questioned further they admitted that there is no legal reason for Pepe to remain as President, any Court hearings could be attended by a new President, and Pepe would be called as a witness. They said that if Pepe refused to attend any of these Court hearings as a witness it would cause problems. It was pointed out to them, that anyone who had lived on Mi Sol for more than four years and elected President would be just as capable as Pepe of explaining the situation and defending the interests of the majority of the Community. It was also pointed out to them that this was not about any individual being President, but was about the best interests and wishes of the Community as a whole. At this they shrugged their shoulders and said it was for the Community to decide.