Does the Town have unclean hands?

Nobody said this was a glamorous undertaking.   An answer was filed with the Court on the counterclaim. The next step will be for the Judge to issue an “order to show cause hearing.”  We will wait and update as we can.

The Answer is below in .pdf.  For the most part, the Answer is a series of:

• (S)tates a legal conclusion to which no response is required…
• Plaintiffs admit the allegations in…
• Plaintiffs deny the allegations…

One item of note is:

• • Plaintiffs admit the allegations in Paragraph 12, but alleges that the text of Proposition 401 was slightly different than the Town Code provision quoted in Paragraph 12.

The same observation was made in answering paragraph 16.

We would be curious to learn why the TOP did not fully adopt the propositions when they were incorporated into the code.  We are uncertain under what or whose authority this was done.  The actual text of the propositions, as voted on, passed, and adopted, is found below in .pdf.

Here is where it gets a bit more fun.  The affirmative defense(s) include:

• Plaintiffs allege that Defendants counterclaim is barred by unclean hands, laches, judicial estoppel, collateral estoppel, estoppel, waiver, res judicata, issue and claim preclusion, and by the doctrine of judicial admissions made in separate legal proceedings.
• Plaintiffs allege that under Section 7 of Propositions 401 and 402, the Town has an affirmative obligation to defend the Propositions against legal attack, or to pay for such legal defense.

There are others listed as well.  You can review them all below.

The first affirmative defense seemed worth exploring a bit to learn more. Don’t worry; we researched it for you.  We all benefit from learning more, whether it is legal doctrines or a daily vocabulary builder, education is never a bad thing.

unclean hands

1. a legal doctrine which is a defense to a complaint, which states that a party who is asking for a judgment cannot have the help of the Court if he/she has done anything unethical in relation to the subject of the lawsuit. Thus, if a defendant can show the plaintiff had “unclean hands,” the plaintiff’s complaint will be dismissed or the plaintiff will be denied judgment.

laches

1. the legal doctrine that a legal right or claim will not be enforced or allowed if a long delay in asserting the right or claim has prejudiced the adverse party (hurt the opponent) as a sort of “legal ambush.”

estoppel

1. a bar or impediment (obstruction) which precludes a person from asserting a fact or a right or prevents one from denying a fact.

judicial admissions

1. A judicial admission is a party’s unequivocal concession of the truth of a matter, which effectively removes the fact as an issue from the litigation

The link above goes to an article via Advocate magazine with a more detailed explanation of the concept.  This will take you to the full article.  Their conclusion:

The effect of judicial admissions, especially at the time when a summary judgment is brought, cannot be underestimated. A judicial admission may (1) prove a fact that could not otherwise be proven by competent evidence; (2) prevent the introduction of damaging evidence; and (3) even create a fact that is otherwise nonexistent.

Free knowledge via the web.  Life is good.  The judicial admissions may go back to the issue of the pending Varxitty suit outlined here.  Time, and the courts, will tell on all of the issues.  Again, the .pdf documents are below.

Just a hunch, something tells us we will need to look up some of the terms throughout this process.  Here you go.  If the form below does not work, you can Search Legal Terms and Definitions via the Dictionary of Law.com.

Verified Answer to Counterclaim.

The full text of the Propositions.

Now we wait.