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Settlement reached for one plaintiff in SMU lawsuit
9:38 AM Fri, Jul 24, 2009 | Permalink
Lori Stahl/Reporter Bio | E-mail | News tips



The lawsuit against SMU over who owns land near the site of the future Bush library appears to be settled for one former condo owner.

A hearing scheduled to start at 9 a.m. was instead replaced by reports that SMU and plaintiff Robert Tafel had gathered in judge's chambers and settled their dispute.

No dollar amount was immediately available, but an SMU attorney said earlier this year that plaintiffs were offered more than $1 million each in past settlement talks.

If true, the settlement between Tafel and SMU would leave Gary Vodicka as the only remaining plaintiff in this issue.

Tafel and Vodicka, two former condo owners, claim that SMU illegally got control of University Gardens Condominiums to expand the campus while bidding for the Bush library.

SMU maintains it did nothing wrong when acquiring the condo complex, which it has since torn down.

Meanwhile, officials with the George W. Bush Foundation have said that they do not plan to build on the former University Gardens property. They acknowledged that the site was once under consideration. The foundation is raising $300 million to build the library.

The long-running lawsuit has become increasingly hard fought in the six months since Bush left office and returned to Texas. At one point, Judge Martin Hoffman ruled that Bush would have to submit to a deposition in the case, but an appellate court reversed the decision. The condo owners maintained that they needed Bush's testimony to show that SMU was considering the site before it owned the land.

significant in that Tafel is represented by a highly respected Dallas attorney-Larry Friedman-probably a great time to bail. Maximum settlement pressure in a case that eventually will have to succeed in a lot of Republican dominated Courts to ultimately recover damages.

As Stallion knows, it seems that no one really gets serious in settlement negotiations until trial is eminent. When the possibility exists of getting nothing, and having all your legals fees go down the tubes, settlement begins to look pretty good.

The difference here is that Vodika is representing himself. from what i've read, he seems just stubborn enough to fight it out in court.

hope he does, and hope he loses.

Unless of course someone is funding Vodicka to do this to trash President Bush and his Library.

Vodicka is a lucky guy. His case was on a fast track to nowhere but two things happened that saved him. First, the election of 2006, and second, his co-plaintiff hiring Larry Friedman. Whatever he got, he owes largely to those two things.

I think the breach of fiduciary duty argument which in the article I saw was raised by Friedman has a lot more substance than some realize-but ultimately it was a longshot for Vodricka to recover a dime after appeals.

I agree. I do not know the law on this, but it would not surprise me if an HOA (which was defacto SMU after a while) stands in the position of a fiduciary with its homeowners. I thought that claim might have teeth too.

I've been monitoring a case and pleadings for a girl I know concerning a case in a Dallas District Court and US Bankruptcy Court Northern District involving the Casablanca Condominiums in North Dallas. Channel 4 I believe did a story on it.

http://www.myfoxdfw.com/dpp/news/Invest ... wners_Hell

Although I never read the judgment I've been told held that a principal of a condominium association had been found to have illegally high-jacked the Board of Directors, installed his own people as directors and breached his fiduciary duty to the condominum owners by illegally buying up units to take control of the association-which is quite similar to the SMU case. The attorney who actually represented the condominium residents or owners made a pretty compelling argument in his Brief that I read for breach of fiduciary duty and I've been told the argument was successful to this point. Of course, the facts of each case are different and I've never seen the actual evidence offered in the SMU case. But with the right evidence it might survive summary judgment(or at least cause for concern enough to result in a Million Dollar settlement).

The fiduciary duty claim asserted by Freedman was the one that had my interest as well. Vodicka's original pleadings spoke about technical violations of the Association Agreements, which I thought were pretty silly. I lost the ability to follow the matter when it left the federal courts for good, which was before Freedman's involvement.

Condominium law is still a developing area. Are there any Texas cases that have found a Condominium Association to be in a fiduciary relationship with the owners? If, not, then its a long shot that a Judge would make new law on the subject. Otherwise, its purely a contractual and real estate law matter. Common real estate law finds the association can't commit waste to the common areas, I suspect. So, if an association was letting the place go to seed a waste charge or nuisance charge might have some legs. There is also the prospect that for example unit owner A has a leaky pipe which leaks into unit owner B's condo, that might lead to a trespass cause of action.