Homeowner asks judge to step aside

LACONIA — Charging that a string of adverse rulings shows prejudice, a local property owner asked a Superior Court judge Friday to step down from presiding over a civil case being brought by the Governors Island Club homeowners association.

“Up to now you’ve been one-sided,” Richard Homsi said during a hearing in front of Judge James D. O’Neill III.

O’Neill has been presiding over the case since 2015, when he ordered Homsi to remove a foundation on top of which he planned to place a cottage in violation of restrictions on the deed to his property.

Homsi owns lakefront property on Lake Winnipesaukee at 84 Summit Avenue, Laconia, adjacent to the Governors Island Bridge. Although the island is in Gilford, Homsi’s property has been part of the island’s neighborhood association since 1992, when a prior owner became a member of the Governors Island Club, thereby subjecting the property to the club’s covenants and restrictions, which were attached to the deed.

In Belknap Superior Court, Homsi accused the club of selectively enforcing its bylaws and restrictions. He cited what he said were examples of property owners on the island who have been allowed to build imposing detached garages with living quarters, while he was denied permission to do the same thing, though on a smaller scale.

He accused O’Neill of not treating him fairly, and Wescott Law, the firm representing the Governors Island Club, with being ruthless.

At one point, Homsi, who is acting as his own lawyer, said that attorneys he had hired in the past “told me all kinds of things about this court and this law firm.” Those lawyers no longer represent him. “They bailed out,” he said.

At the outset of the hearing, Homsi said he was willing to withdraw his recusal motion if O’Neill would allow him to introduce evidence which he said shows the club has been breaking or selectively enforcing its own covenants.

Attorney Paul Fitzgerald, who is representing the club, said Homsi’s conditional offer to drop the recusal motion was the latest delaying tactic employed by Homsi since the club sued him in 2012.

Homsi, he said, has continually done things to “delay or prolong the proceedings.”

In separate rulings in 2013 and 2015, Superior Court Judge Kenneth McHugh and O’Neill ordered Homsi to pay more than $77,000 to the club. In an email, Fitzgerald said Homsi still owes about $66,000.

Characterizing the case as “a crock of crap,” and being “out of control,” Homsi at one point said, “This case has been nothing but one-sided,” and asked the judge if he was going to “let them continue to do what they are doing [and] go on and on and break my back.”

Fitzgerald said Homsi offered no evidence to show grounds for O’Neill to recuse himself.

O’Neill said he would take the request that he step down under advisement, but gave no indication when he would issue a ruling.