Judge stands firm: No redo in Governor’s Island case

Richard Homsi of Laconia has lost another round in his decade-long legal dispute with the Governor’s Island Club just days before a court hearing on the case. Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Leonard will hear arguments Friday as to whether to allow the waterfront property to be sold to satisfy a hefty court judgment.

Leonard denied Homsi’s request to reconsider her ruling denying his motion to invalidate all previous decisions related to the case, including one in March that ordered Homsi to remove all unauthorized structures on his Summit Avenue property and to pay $130,000 in fees and fines. The March ruling, issued by then-Superior Court Judge James D. O’Neill III, further stated that if Homsi did not comply within 60 days, the GIC had the right to obtain a writ to initiate a process to sell his property at auction to satisfy the judgment.

A hearing is scheduled for Friday in Belknap Superior Court on the GIC’s request for permission to execute the writ.

If approved, the Belknap County sheriff would then have authority to schedule an auction to sell the property at 84 Summit Ave., with a portion of the proceeds of the sale going to satisfy the court judgment.

Homsi called the latest ruling unfair.

“She doesn’t say why she denied my motion,” Homsi said Tuesday. “I want a reason why she’s denying this.”

“The Court will NOT be addressing or reconsidering the Defendant’s Motion to Vacate or the arguments addressed therein at the Hearing on December 9,” Leonard wrote in her two-sentence ruling issued Monday.

Homsi had argued in his motion that the case should be relitigated because it had not been disclosed that GIC attorney Paul Fitzgerald and O’Neill, who presided over the case until his retirement at the end of March, had once lived across the street from each other. He stated in his motion that had he known, he would have asked that another judge hear the case.

Homsi said he intends to raise the issues mentioned in his motion to vacate at Friday’s hearing, regardless of Leonard’s ruling. He also said that he plans to appeal Leonard’s decision on the motion to vacate to the state Supreme Court.

The GIC asked the court to issue the writ in mid-October, prompting the hearing.

The case stretches back to 2012 when the GIC sued Homsi, alleging that he had put up outbuildings and other structures on his property in violation of GIC rules. It is the longest-running active civil case in Belknap Superior Court, with the accumulated documents taking up seven folders.