Sharon Cairns Mann: award-winning author - A Blog about Conservation Easements in Colorado

The Honor Belongs to You

4/3/2017

I’m pleased to announce that this blog, “Swindled,” was a finalist in the Colorado Authors League 2017 Awards contest for work published in 2016. This is an unexpected honor, because I wrote “Swindled, “ the story of the conservation easement fiasco in Colorado, to simply tell the story, in a simple and straightforward manner, of what happened to hundreds of landowners in Colorado who have been swindled. If this publicity will help them in any way, it will be enormously satisfying and I share the honor of this award with you, the victims of this "swindle" and you, the readers who supported me during this process.

As you may have discovered, “Swindled” is a serialized blog, so you have to read backwards, starting from the bottom up. Some readers have complained that this is difficult, so I’ve made a .pdf of the whole story from start to finish, starting with #1 through #36.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE THIS .pdf DOCUMENT, please use the contact form and send me your email so I can send it to you. Please understand that I will also add your email to my database, but fear not – I do not sell the data and I rarely send emails. (I will not provide the .pdf in any other way except by email.).

Another "Pro" Conservation Easement Voice

1/30/2017

Rob Bleiberg wrote an opinion piece published in The Denver Post on January 28, 2017, entitled "Conservation easement tax credit program too critical not to fix." Although Bleiberg does not promote any retroactive fixes for the hundreds of landowners burnt by the C.E. fiasco, at least he honors the value of the program and suggests changes going forward. Unlike the state auditor who recently reported seeing no value in C.E.'s to the State, Bleiberg quotes a study that is more realistic: "A Trust for Public Land study, peer reviewed by a Colorado State University economist, found that conservation easements delivered $6 of value for every $1 invested by Colorado."

Update on LUAF Case

1/16/2017

If you are trying to follow the case I mentioned in Blog Post #2 and again in Blog Post #36, here is a timeline of the lawsuit filed by Western Agriculture Resource and Business Advocates (WARBA) on behalf of Landowners United Advocacty Foundation (LUAF).

3/14/16: WARBA filed on behalf of LUAF in the Federal District Court a Complaint for Injunctive Relief, Declaratory Relief for Violations of Civil Rights and State Constitutional Rights.

4/?/16: State filed Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss Complaint.

6/10/16: WARBA filed a Second Amended Complaint for Injunctive Relief, Declaratory Relief for Violations of Civil Rights and State Constitutional Rights.

6/23/16: State filed Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss Second Amended Complaint.

8/10/16: WARBA filed Plaintiff’s Response to Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss Second Amended Complaint.

9/6/16: State filed a Reply in Support of Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss Second Amended Complaint.

The Case now is awaiting the decision of the Judge. WARBA is expecting a decision within 6 months -- hopefully March or April. Stay tuned!

Bottom Up!

1/12/2017

I finished the long personal narrative of Stan and Sharon's experience with conservation easements with Blog Post #36 (below). If you are just coming to the blog for the first time, please read from the "bottom up." This is a serialized blog, and starts with #1 on June 28, so you'll need to go to the June archives on the right and start there. Happy reading!

Don't forget, Landowners, I'm waiting for your stories, too!

Blog Post #36: The End is Not the End

12/28/2016

At last we were finished with all the legal wrangling. We could be proud of ourselves and our partners for hanging in there and garnering settlements against all odds. Stan and I spent the rest of 2013 working on spreadsheets and methods for helping the partners who owed the most money to get out of the partnership by redistributing their shares among partners who would buy them. We went from 24 partners to 10 partners by the end of the year, and we personally owed so much money that our percentage in the remaining partnership dropped by about half. But, thanks be to God, we were finally finished.

We gradually learned that landowners who followed us in negotiations with the state did not fare as well as we did. This broke our hearts. We hoped that as the state and/or the courts continued to hear the stories of these folks that they would ease up. We hoped our unrelenting bulldog methods would make the state back off. I’m very sorry to report that doesn’t seem to be the case, and I can only say that I don’t have anything good to say about the people who initiated this horror on the citizens of Colorado, those who perpetuated it, or those who lacked the courage to fix it.

But, as more people related their stories, we learned that others shared our suspicions about a “good old boys’ network” instigating this mess. In an article entitled “Conservation Easements: Colorado’s ‘Legalized’ Theft,’” The US Observer reported “To coincide with their destructive strategy, in 2003, the tax credit brokers reportedly developed a union with well-known appraiser, Mark Weston, who in turn enlisted appraisers, Peter Sartucci, Tim Walter, and Kevin McCarty, for the alleged, explicit purpose to invalidate appraisals and to allegedly slander appraisers John Stroh and Bill Millenski (among other appraisers outside of their group). In fact, a public records request revealed an email, dated July 29, 2004, from Janish Wishman, attorney for Great Outdoors Colorado (GOCO), where Tim Walter responded, ‘I doubt we can overcome the Caldwell and Brown and Stroh water value report but will try.’” Remember, Tim Walter and Peter Sartucci were the appraisers that the IRS “hired” to review our land.

An article in The Journal-Advocate by Jeff Rice on 1/19/2016 describes how the Gentzes pursued their own legal action against Mark Weston. “Gentzes launch second legal acion.”

“Last week the Gentzes filed a lawsuit in the 13th Judicial District Court against Mark Weston, a land appraiser and one-time member of the state's Conservation Easement Oversight Commission. The Gentzes claim that Weston essentially double-crossed them, charging them for advice on how to file for conservation easements on some of their land at the northwest edge of Sterling, and later voting to reject the appraisals and retroactively deny the tax credits they'd claimed for those easements.

The Gentzes are already fighting with the Colorado Department of Revenue over more than $700,000 in denied tax credits, penalties, and interest the state says the couple owes. The state rejected an appraisal of the Gentzes' land after the couple had claimed tax credits in 2006 and 2007 for enrolling some of their land in Colorado's Conservation Easement program. Now the Gentzes are also saying Weston is partly responsible for that.”

Stan continue to assist Land Owner’s United, which formed Landowner’s United Advocacy Foundation as the group that sued the state in March of 2016, as described in Blog #2, and the case is still pending in federal court. (See Colorado Landowners Sue State Over Conservation Easement Program, in the Denver Post, 3/28/2016.) Please, dear reader, keep these landowners in your prayers as this case creeps forward at glacial speed.

If you want to look up the case, it is Case 1:16-cv-00603 in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. It’s an ambitious case and you will see that the LUAF, as plaintiff, names the following as defendants:

State of Colorado;
Barbara Brohl, individually and in her official capacity as Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Revenue;
Marcia Waters, individually and in her official capacity as the Director of the Colorado Department of Real Estate;
Mark Weston, individually and in his official capacity as Commissioner (appraiser) of the Colorado Conservation Easement Oversight Commission;
Colorado Department of Revenue;
Division of Real Estate of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies;
Board of Real Estate Appraisers;
Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies; and the
Colorado Conservation Easement Oversignt Commission of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies.

Articles for Your Perusal

The press, for the most part, seems to have finally come around to understand that this wasn’t a “Rich get Richer” scheme as originally reported, rather illegal persecution, legalized theft, fraudulent fleecing, and a violation of our constitutional rights. A series of scathing articles have ensued, although some, like Migoya’s below, still get things wrong.

“Conservation Easements: Colorado’s Legalized Theft -- Governor Hickenlooper’s Administration Fraudulently Fleecing Landowners” by Lorne Dey & Ron Lee,
Investigative Reporters, The US Observer. (Mentioned above.)

“Easement program failure penalize taxpayers, landowners” by David Migoya, in The Denver Post, 12/19/2014. While Migoya rightly underscores the failures of the program, he incorrectly says, “Not every credit buyer had to pay. Some wealthy landowners and developers, like Mann’s group, covered the tab because tax credits are sold with a promise of indemnity. If something goes wrong, the seller agrees to pay up.” Of course, if you’ve been following this blog carefully, you’ll realize that we were not a wealthy group, and we did not “cover the tab” or “pay up.” We negotiated a settlement with the state in which we insisted that the state leave the tax credits of the transferees [tax credit buyers] intact, so it was stipulated in our settlement – we didn’t whip out our check books to cover it. Additionally, our settlement with the state was mostly paid by the malpractice proceeds, not by wealthy partners.

“Local Couple Joins Statewide Group in Tax Credit Fight.” “LAMAR — A Sterling couple is considering expanding their quest for justice in the Colorado Conservation Easement Program debacle. Alan and Julie Gentz met Saturday with members of the newly-formed Landowners United Advocacy Foundation to hear about a plan to sue Colorado in federal court to recover damages suffered from what they see as unfair prosecution for alleged misdeeds they never committed.” By Jeff Rice, Journal-Advocate, 11/9/2015.

“LUAF offers salvation for embattled landowners” an Op Ed by Jeff Rice, Journal-Advocate columnist, posted 11/9/2015. (The link to this article is no longer available. Download .pdf below.)

“Lawmakers lacked courage to do right.” By Jeff Rice, Journal Advocate, 3/28/2016. “The hypocrisy in the Colorado Statehouse reached epic proportions this session when lawmakers made it clear they want nothing to do with making whole the land owners who have been swindled and persecuted by the state in the conservation easement debacle.”

Rice doesn’t mince words in this article – of all the links I have provided in 36 blog posts, I think the comment above is the most quintessential “wrap up” of where we are right now, along with all the landowners in Colorado who have not yet received justice.

Sidenote: Scammer and Abusers

We sure got tired of hearing law-abiding landowners being called scammers, and accused of “abusing” the C.E. program. We kept asking someone – anyone – to actually point to anyone who had really scammed the system. Where are the names? Where are the convictions? Who are they? And there were no names, no convictions.
Unfortunately, one scam (and resulting conviction) did turn up, and I wouldn’t be a good reporter if I didn’t include this. To my knowledge, it’s the only actual case of fraud and abuse. Conservation-easement scammer gets 83 years in Colorado prison, by David Migoya, The Denver Post, 4/7/2016.

The End of the Story

So, thus ends my narrative, although I will continue to post about the progress of the LUAF case and anything else that comes up related to this bruised conservation easement program in Colorado. I don’t think it’s the end of the “story.” I believe in the “butterfly effect,” and that all these things that have been set in motion will continue to play out in individual stories – I hope we all get to hear more about what happens, and I hope it is good.
Please continue to check in, and by all means let me know if there is something you want to share or want me to investigate. If you have any questions about anything I’ve written, please let me know. And may you receive some kind of extra special blessing for hanging in there and reading every last word! ©Sharon Cairns Mann

jouirnaladvocateoped.pdf
File Size:	180 kb
File Type:	pdf

Blog Post #35: Grumpy Progress

12/27/2016

Photo credit gumpycats.com.

In the previous post, I wrote that we had settled our 14 cases with the IRS and14 with the State. The only thing unresolved after January 2013 was the malpractice case.

I’m not allowed to say anything about our malpractice case except we reached a “mutually satisfactory settlement, the terms of which are confidential.” We were scheduled for a jury trial in April of 2013. Many of our partners were gearing up for trips to Colorado to be in attendance. In March – only about two to three weeks before the trial -- we settled the case against Todd and Wishful Thinking.

We settled. But I think I can also say I was bitterly disappointed by the settlement (contrary to the “mutually satisfactory” language in the settlement agreement) and the attorneys at RWO had to take turns talking me into signing it. They assured me that the other side was also bitterly disappointed, thus making a perfect settlement. But, after a lot of prayer, I came to a place of peace. Here’s what I posted on FB at the time: Thank you to all who prayed for us as we wrestled with difficult decisions about the legal quagmire we were in. I have an abundance of gratitude and peace about the decision we reached, which was to settle the case and not go to trial. I’m very confident that the decision we made and the resulting peace would not have happened without your prayers. All I’m allowed to say about the case is that we reached a “mutually satisfactory settlement, the terms of which are confidential.” The issues will not go away immediately and it is not the end of the road for the business – we have a lot to sort out and it may take years. Nonetheless, I’m confident the worst is behind us and I am so grateful to you for your prayers and those who have supported us through this long saga. May you be blessed in return for standing with us in solidarity and support! Thanks be to God.

The High Price

My disappointment stemmed from the fact that the settlement didn’t cover any of our emotional suffering, and precious little of our financial losses. Our financial losses stemmed from three major areas:

While we were glad to be done with the IRS, and to have settled our cases regarding their “disallowances,” we still had to pay money that, to this day, we believe we should not have had to pay.
While we were glad to be done with the State, and to have settled our cases regarding their “disallowances,” we still had to pay money that, to this day, we believe we should not have had to pay.
We also had to pay for all these years of legal wrangling I’ve been describing.

How did we manage to come with all this money? It wasn’t easy. We did it through a combination of three money sources.

Fortunately, Stan and I are fiscal conservatives. As the money from the conservation easements came in, we held back reserves before distributing funds to our partners, so the partnership had some reserves to start with. Of course, we quickly drained those funds in paying for the early legal wrangling, but thank goodness they were there..
Second, we called for funds from our partners. We did several “calls for funds,” but we had to be careful, because most of our partners did not have cash sitting around for these unexpected requests, and many of them lived in terror of losing their houses or worse in this situation.
Third, the partnership took out loans.
Fourth, the malpractice settlement covered some of the outstanding debt, but not all, by a long shot.

The donating partners had to pay the IRS in the summer of 2012. Now we had to pay off the State, and pay off the loans. No matter what the outcome of the malpractice case, it could never pay back our partners for all the terror they had lived through. It could never pay me back for losing my marriage, years of my life, my job, my health, and all the sleepless nights. We had done nothing illegal or immoral. We followed the rules. We got screwed.

I’m not whining – I’m just stating the facts. We were making progress in dispensing with the mess, but I sure was grumpy about it. Any peace I felt did not stem from having an outstanding settlement, because it wasn’t. It was based on the fact that it was the “safest” decision for our partners, pure relief at not having to go to trial, and liberation from the case. We had made grumpy progress.©Sharon Cairns Mann

Blog Post #34: Who's at Bat?

12/26/2016

It helps to have truth on your side!

I can’t say that 2012 sped by, but it was an intense blur.

Robinson, Waters & O’Dorisio (RWO) had taken on the malpractice case, and provided sympathetic, eager and competent counsel. Mike Callahan was able to ease out of the malpractice, and leave us in capable (and larger) hands, while still leading the charge in our cases against the Colorado Department of Revenue.

Moye & White pressed forward in negotiations with the State and the IRS, and we filed suit against the state (as outlined in their procedures) in District Court, Huerfano County (Conservation Easement District 2). Mike Callahan joined as Co-Counsel on July 7, 2012, and eventually we eased Moye & White out of representing us on the State cases.

So, the batting lineup now looked like this:

Malpractice: Robinson, Waters & O’Dorisio (RWO)
IRS: Moye & White
State: Michael Callahan, PC.

IRS
By the summer of 2012, we had the final settlement agreements with the IRS for all 14 cases, which were considerably more favorable than what A&J had negotiated. We submitted the agreements to the court, and the judge’s final decision claimed that we had “deficiencies” in income tax due, but these deficiencies were greatly reduced from the IRS’s original claim of a total disallowance of the charitable contributions we and our partners had claimed for the land donations, and the IRS also waived penalties and interest (which was a considerable amount of money). While no settlement is ever happy for either side, and we still believed this never should have happened in the first place, we were done. We were unhappy at the vast sums of money we had lost, disappointed that we had been caught in this “perfect storm” through no fault of our own, but relieved to have it over.

State
After some tough and prolonged negotiations with the Colorado Department of Revenue, we finally came to a settlement with them in January of 2013. Stan, Marsh, and I bit into their legs and harried them like relentless bulldogs. Our settlement, like any settlement, was discouraging, but it was over and it appeared to be the best we were going to get: we (meaning all our partners) owed the state $2.1 million dollars, but that was greatly reduced from the State’s original claim and they released us from those prior claims, penalties, and interest as well as future claims. They also allowed the transferees (those who had purchased the tax credits) to keep their previous tax credits and continue to use any unused portion (in other words, transferees were not damaged in any way).

Malpractice

Simultaneously, the malpractice case was ramping up. Stan and I, along with quite a few of our partners, had been through grueling depositions. He went first, and his quick mind and legal experience kept him from being snared by those crazy-wicked lawyer questions. I was next, and for some reason, Major Law Firm decided they wanted to videotape my deposition – maybe it was just to tighten the screws and intimidate me.

Among just a few of the insults that were heaped on injury, we were accused of deliberately losing documents in our house fire and chastised for not having an inventory of the documents that we lost in the fire. How can you inventory ashes?

Those days of depositions are permanently etched in my mind. I remember walking from RWO’s offices to MLF’s offices for my deposition saying, “Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together.” Eight straight hours of being grilled and videotaped ensued while I tried to remain calm, optimistic, and unflappable. My deep academic experience with language did the same for me as Stan’s legal experience had done for him – I could spot the false proposition embedded in the question, and asked them to rephrase it. By noon on my deposition day, one of our lead lawyers said he was leaving (we had more than one lawyer there). I panicked a bit and asked him why he was leaving. He said, “You’re a natural. Some people are just born for this. I have no worries. You don’t need me.” Nice work, team. Of course, it helps to have truth on your side. ©Sharon Cairns Mann.

Blog Post #33: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

12/23/2016

H.B. 1300 had passed and was now law in Colorado. This bill was introduced to help the State handle the backlog of cases that it created for itself and to provide some remedy for landowners. It shifted the hearing of the cases from the Department of Revenue to District Courts (which we hoped would be less biased).

IRS
Moye & White continued to press forward with our cases against the IRS in 2011. By July they had negotiated and we had received a general settlement offer from the IRS, but it ended up having to be negotiated on a case-by-case basis. As you may recall, we originally had 15 cases against the IRS. Then the State had, for reasons unknown to us, absolved us and reinstated one of our Conservation Easements. With that re-instatement, we only had 14 outstanding cases with the IRS. But, the settlement agreements could only be reached by treating each one as separate and distinct, so it was painstakingly slow. We hoped to have it done by the end of 2011.

State

The conservation easement scandal had blossomed into such a disaster in Colorado the State could not handle the mess they had created. With so many cases looming, legislation was passed to help the state slog its way out of the mire. Here is an excerpt from a letter we wrote to our partners on July 28, 2011, describing the situation:

H.B. 1300 passed and is now law in Colorado. This bill was introduced to help the State handle the backlog of cases that it created for itself and to provide some remedy for landowners. It shifted the hearing of the cases from the Department of Revenue to District Courts (which we hope will be less biased) and all landowners who want to use this remedy must file their notice by October 1. [We had already taken care of this for our partners -- Moye & White filed the cases.] The litigators at Moye/White really like the legal points that Stan and Marsh have outlined for them. We will keep you posted on those developments. We still have tremendous exposure if we must pay back the tax credit purchasers, but there is no other course of action available except to let this work its way through district court.

Here are the Pros and Cons of the going through the District Court: While we firmly believe the Department of Revenue erroneously denied our tax credits, and have very strong evidence to support our various claims against the State, there are only a few cases supporting such actions. If we win we could be entitled to have our tax credits honored and even recover some damages from the State--perhaps even enough to pay the IRS settlement. But, the decision will be made by a judge who must appreciate fully the arguments and the equity of the matter, and if made negatively, the only recourse would be a full-fledged appeal to the Colorado Court of Appeals.

It is possible that the filing of our District Court actions will trigger settlement discussions with the State. The Attorney General might hope to resolve our cases in order to avoid having the other 600+ donors take the same approach.

And, it is also possible that many of the 600 will take the same approach and the judges will be more reluctant to summarily dismiss the claims against the State.

Or, the claims could be rejected from the onset and encourage the State to go for all it can get in every case.

The District Court cases are our best hope of reducing our losses. If we do not protest and fight these cases in the District Court, we will most certainly be assessed the full loss. So, these cases are not optional.

The Department of Revenue valued them (the donations) at nothing, and our lawyers are confident we will get a value at close to what our expert has determined. We have well-stated claims, counterclaims and damages against the State, but there is no assurance we will be able to assert them, let alone win them. After all, sovereign immunity is a tough hurdle to get over in litigation.

So, in the fall of 2011, we filled our 14 cases against the Colorado Department of Revenue in District court as specified in HB1300. We now officially had 30 cases going on: 14 against the iRS, 14 against the state, 1 malpractice case, and Stan and I personally had a case against the company who installed our solar arrays on the retreat center – we discovered their errors after the fire.

Post-Fire Mitigation and Reconstruction

Our post-fire mitigation and reconstruction continued. It was grim, hard work, but thank God (a million times over) our insurance company honored the claim without batting an eye. The bad news was that we had had a “builder’s risk” policy, not homeowner’s insurance, so they did not cover the “stuff” that we lost (our clothing and personal things). But, their engineers examined structural components of the house and agreed it was a huge, expensive task to rebuild, and the reconstruction was covered fairly by insurance.

In June I mysteriously lost my job, which troubled me for many different reasons. But, it suddenly opened up my schedule to assist more with the reconstruction. We were still displaced and not “allowed” to be at the construction site, but we started sneaking in, staying on cots. We rigged up one long electric cord from the outside power pole (where all the crews were getting electricity for their work) for a lamp, a mini-fridge, and a microwave. We lived on corn flakes, deli meats, and frozen dinners. We had a hose for water and eventually got one shower working (cold water only) in the guest room where we were staying. As the dry-wall crew moved through, we had to keep moving our little temporary bedroom. We had many different crews working on the house. Some wanted to arrive early, before we were up, and some wanted to stay until midnight, so there was almost round-the-clock noise and confusion.

On August 19th, after seven months of being displaced, we moved back into our master bedroom, and we had a new certificate of occupancy a couple months later.

Interrogatories (Malpractice)

Mike Callahan never missed a beat in moving our malpractice case forward against Goliath.

Meanwhile, in the midst of the our post-fire chaos, we were entering into the period of “discovery” in the malpractice case, which meant that we – and all our donating partners – had to answer interrogatories and dish up tens of thousands of documents. The problem with this particular document production was that certain documents are “privileged” and do not have to be turned over to opposing counsel. So, unlike our previous production of documents where we could just hand over boxes and boxes to our own attorneys without reviewing them, we now had to scrutinize every single piece of paper that we – and all our partners – possessed. This mind-boggling exercise brought our email system to a crashing halt and we had to start using Dropbox and larger email systems to store all the data.

At the same time, one of the worst food-borne-illness outbreaks in CDC’s records occurred, resulting in 30 deaths and 147 total confirmed cases between the first recorded case on July 31, 2011 and the last on December 8, 2011. The listeria that caused this was linked to Jensen Farms in Holly, CO, one of Mike Callahan’s clients. (Can you guess where this story is going?)

So, as we closed out 2011, up to our eyeballs in documents, Mike was up to his eyeballs working on the listeria case and it became even more urgent to find a larger firm to represent us in the malpractice case.

About the third week in January of 2012, two significant things happened simultaneously. First, Robinson, Water’s, & O’Dorisio (RWO) agreed to represent us in the malpractice case. We were thrilled. Second, Stan and I separated. We were devastated. ©Sharon Cairns Mann.

Blog Post #32: Unstoppable

12/22/2016

The new normal was the two of us, along with whatever paperwork we managed to salvage from the fire debris regarding the lawsuits, crammed into a tiny loft in Denver, trying hard not to miss a beat. We just couldn’t afford to let up, so we frantically set up a new “office” for Stan and got him back in business again, using a TV tray for a desk in our 700 sf space.

By January 24th, just four days after the fire, we continued corresponding with Jeff Springer and Scott McHenry at Springer at Steinberg, P.C. regarding the malpractice case, and pushing to get them to file the complaint against Todd and Wishful Thinking. We had come to believe that negligent advice from Todd and Wishful Thinking had resulted in our exposure to millions of dollars in losses, and we had the statute of limitations question breathing down our necks -- we felt it was urgent to file the complaint.

By January 31, Stan had also met with the new tax lawyers at Moye & White and began deciding the manner in which they would approach the IRS, most likely with a counter-offer to their horrible first offer. We were trying to maintain the case as a consolidated case, rather than 15 separate cases.

We wrote to our partners with an update with all this in it on January 31, saying, “Hang in there with us. We are still fighting the battle full force.”

Another Law Firm Bites the Dust

Springer and Steinberg, PC filed the malpractice case against Todd and Wishful Thinking for us in approximately March (one step forward), but then abruptly backed out of representing us in April. What!? We now had a case filed, but no legal representation (two steps back)!

Again we began our desperate search for a malpractice attorney. Again, we encountered a law firm willing to talk to us, but, after months of discussions they declined to take the case. (We believe that all these firms who declined to take our case were just too small and were unwilling to go up against the giants…more on that in a few more paragraphs.)

We were coming up against some deadline with the court in the malpractice case – I can’t remember what it was – but it was urgent and we needed to do something.

Country Lawyer to the Rescue

On July 7, 2011, we attended a meeting in La Junta of Landowners United (LOU), the group of landowners in southeastern Colorado who had all been hurt by the conservation easement scandal (see Blog Post #26 for a fuller description of LOU). We met a “country lawyer” there named Michael Callahan. Mike’s office is in Pueblo, but he served southeastern Colorado, mostly on agricultural and land-related issues.

After the meeting, I insisted that Stan call Mike to see if he would take on the malpractice case, even if it was temporary.

To our amazement, Mike agreed to see us, so on July 25, 2001, we drove to Pueblo and told him our story. Maybe because he’s just a good guy, or maybe because he had already heard so much of the anguish from other landowners, but Mike did not have the same disdain for us that the other lawyers we had approached had had.

For him to take on the malpractice case against Todd, Todd’s huge law firm, and the other large law firm that represented them was more than a David and Goliath story. This little one-man law office just didn’t have the resources to tackle this. But he was willing to take it on with the understanding that 1) he was stepping in to save our butts in the short-term, 2) that Stan and our other lawyer partner (Marsh) would have to work like maniacs to support the endeavor, and 3) that we would need to continue to look for representation from a larger law firm with more resources.

Mike was our hero – we finally had someone who would really champion our cause, and not in the half-assed, half-hearted way that we had previously experienced with the other law firms and prospective law firms. Mike was on board and at last we had a ray of hope: maybe we would survive! ©Sharon Cairns Mann

A Benediction for the Unthinkable

12/21/2016

One sleepless, anxiety filled night, I cried out to God and asked that question: “How am I going to make it through this? I need your help! DO SOMETHING!” And the answer came, just as if God spoke: “I don’t need to do anything. Everything you need and everything you want is already inside of you.” What an interesting message, I thought. What is already inside me?

In the early morning hours of January 20, 2011, the unthinkable happened. My phone rang at 5:30 a.m. I was already up; nonetheless, an early morning phone call is not a good sign. I was in Denver, three hours away from our home in Walsenburg. Caller I.D. showed the call was from my husband. I answered and my heart caught in my throat: he was crying. He could hardly talk. He finally managed to say, “We’ve had a fire.” He provided sketchy details; nothing made sense. I could only grasp a few things: 1:00 a.m., explosion, flames inside, fire department, extensive damage. He was okay, just exhausted. I called my boss, canceled all plans for the day, jumped in the car, and drove into a murky new future.

“The Worst Day of our Lives,” I wrote in my journal. We had painstakingly designed and lovingly worked on this large facility – a combination dream home and conference/retreat center – for 13 years. It was completely custom, and, not having enough money to have it built, we eked out the cash for supplies from our meager monthly income and did everything ourselves, by hand. It had been back-breaking work, with real blood, sweat, and tears poured into it. Lost? Destroyed? How could this be? This was God’s project, we thought. We had committed the whole process and the outcome to God, believing and hoping we were creating a sanctuary for others, a place of peace, healing, and restoration.

A gas explosion? That’s something that happens to “other” people, not to you – not to me! It’s something freaky you see on T.V. How could such a thing happen? We learned later that a worker had pierced a gas line (propane) with a nail (which means the nail pierced the protective steel casing), but he didn’t know he had hit the line. No one did. And, so, the gas leaked, filling the interior walls until it finally reached a pilot light in a gas fireplace in the wall and blew up. Thankfully, the worker was long gone, Stan was asleep in the room farthest away from the explosion, and I was out of town. The good news was just that: no one was hurt. The bad news was that explosion tore open the wall and roof, the roof was caving in, and the fire had raced through most of the interior walls. We were going to have to gut the place and start over.

How could this happen when we were already maxed out emotionally – already up to our eyeballs in the paperwork and monumental stress of all the mess of the problems with the conservation easements?

The following days and weeks were a blur of unfamiliar activities. No one gives you a manual for what to do if your house blows up. Where do you start? What do you do? Immediately after the fire, we wandered through the ashes and debris staring. It was simply overwhelming. We couldn’t find essentials: car keys, check books, and worst of all, the documents pertinent to the lawsuits. We needed a place to stay. The questions and the anxiety were overwhelming. I started throwing up.

After the insurance company hired mitigation and construction crews, reality hit me: this wasn’t going to be fixed overnight. We had months and months, maybe years -- even with the insurance paying for crews – before anything would be back to “normal.” It was an unholy mess, chaos beyond imagination. The burning of the Icynene™ insulation resulted in a massively toxic cloud and residue everywhere, and we were not allowed in the falling-down building.

We were displaced. We had no choice but to physically relocate to the tiny loft we owned in Denver. We didn’t take anything because any stuff that hadn’t burned up was toxic and had to be discarded.

Between the lawsuits and the construction project, there were too many details for my poor brain to handle. Even though the construction crew would take over the building task, I had to answer a million questions a day. There are no words to describe the depression, despair, and exhaustion I was experiencing.

My mental health was getting a little wobbly. I never cried after the fire. I was afraid if I started to cry, I would never stop and they might have to hospitalize me. I was afraid I would start to scream and never be able to stop, and so I kept quiet. To me it looked like I was facing a huge mountain of manure that had to be moved, and I only had a very tiny toy teaspoon. That’s what it felt like every day – a big mess and no way to even make a dent on it. My emotions were getting more and more fragile, more raggedy. How was I going to make it through?

One sleepless, anxiety filled night, I cried out to God and asked him that question: “How am I going to make it through this? I need your help! DO SOMETHING!” And the answer came, just as if God spoke: “I don’t need to do anything. Everything you need and everything you want is already inside of you.”

What an interesting message, I thought. What is already inside me? I remembered my favorite benediction that simply lists the graces we receive: “You, Child of a most loving and merciful God, Have been blessed by the Baptismal Font, This Community, The Bread and Wine, The Holy Scriptures, and The Grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” Well, what more could one ask for?

I realized that throughout my life I had accumulated a deep well of “good stuff” inside of me in addition to the graces listed above: a treasure trove of scripture that I had memorized; happy memories; good values; inspiring sermons; positive stories; and the love of family and friends. I began to imagine taking big buckets and dipping them deep into this abundance that I had been storing up in my heart, mind, and soul over my lifetime. In the midst of crisis, I dipped those buckets deep into all the “good stuff” that had accumulated in my well, and pulled up bucket loads of grace, peace, strength and courage. The only sane thing to do was to drink from the wealth of my well, face the problem courageously, be bigger than the problem, and soldier on.

Thus, the post-fire days were transformed from the worst days of my life to just-enough-grace days as I faced down the temptation to be angry and feel sorry for myself. I became keenly aware that there was no point in caving in: we still had to deal with the wreckage, whether we wanted to or not. And, our loss, no matter how huge, was small compared to what others go through.

Was I exhausted? Yes. Disappointed? Yes. But I was thrilled to discover the depth of the well inside of me, and the contents that sustained me. Encountering that abundance and plumbing the depths of that well changed the complexion of those days. Please don’t misunderstand. Those were neither fun nor pleasant days. They were exhausting and unpleasant, but they were filled to the brim with the surprise of the grace of “getting through.”

The murky new future I had driven into was just one more chapter in the story of my life -- the chapter in which my mettle was tested and God gave me what I needed. He didn’t rescue me from what I had to face, but he had stored “everything I wanted and everything I needed” inside of me. May you never have to dip into that well, but when you do, may you find it filled with God’s grace and peace, ready for you to guzzle in your time of need.©Sharon Cairns Mann

You, Child of a most loving and merciful God,
Have been blessed by the
Baptismal Font,
This Community,
The Bread and Wine,
The Holy Scriptures, and
The Grace of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

May the love you have heard about, participated in, and been freely given, shine in you and from you into the world. Go forth in peace my brothers and sisters. Go forth in Peace.

Amen

Author

Hi! Welcome to this blog! I'm a professional writer and award-winning author. I didn't really want to write this blog, but I also believe that the story of the huge conservation easement fiasco in Colorado has not yet been adequately told. So here it is!

It's so long, I've had to serialize it, so please note that you have to START with Blog Post #1 (June 28, 2016) for the story to make sense! So, if you're new to the blog, please go back to the beginning and start there.

New Post Notifications
The best way to hear about each my new blog posts on Swindled is to just go to my Public Facebook Page at
Sharon Cairns Mann Writer
and hit the "Like" button in the cover photo at the top. Every time I do a new blog post here, I'll announce it there, so it should keep you up-to-date.

But if you are interested in free writing tips and coaching, please subscribe to "Writerly News" by clicking the button below.

Subscribe to "Writerly News"

Archives

April 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016

Categories