Dear Cyndy,

About the question, unswered from your letter of July 22, I apologize.
The date of the hearing has not yet been set. Are there any other
unanswered questions? If so, please repeat them.

The appellate process in Massachusetts, and I suspect everywhere
else, is very Byzantine. A notice of appeal must be filed within
30 days of the judgment in the lower court. The clerk of the lower
court then assembles its record, and notifies the Appeals Court
and the parties of the completion of its task. This has not
yet been done. They received my notice of appeal on June 4;
as of today, July 29, and I've heard nothing more.
I have no idea how much time they might ultimately take. Arguably
this inordinate delay might be blamed on harrassment, revenge as
it were for challenging the lower court ruling. I don't think so.
Rather I suspect it reflects under-funding, general incompetence
and affirmative action. But I'm not fretting. There's much to do
for this house, and then there's Konnarock to escape to.
Once I receive notice that the record has been assembled,
I have 10 days to pay the $300 docketing fee. Only then is the
appeal docketed, I presume immediately upon payment, but who knows?
After docketing of the appeal I have forty days to file my Brief
and the Record Appendix. As I've mentioned, the Brief comprises
fifty pages, the Law Appendix, another thirty, the Record Appendix,
170 pages, a total of about 250 pages, which I will bind in 4 volumes,
of which the Appeals Court requires 7 copies, each of the two defendants
2 copies, and 2 copies for myself, making 13 copies of 250 pages,
3250 pages in all, or 6 1/2 reams, not counting faulty printout.
What a waste of trees! Once I have filed the documents required of me,
the defendants have 30 days to file their reply briefs, I have
another two weeks to counter their arguments, and only then will
the hearing be scheduled. I anticipate a hearing date before the
end of the year. The decision, such as it may be, won't be handed
down for several months. It then takes the better part of a year
for the Supreme Court in Washington to deny a writ of certiorari.

There are two interesting complications, the first being that in
Massachusetts the Supreme Judicial Court has concurrent jurisdiction
with the Appeals Court. It's my suspicion, but I don't know, that
the Appeals Court does the scut work, and churns out "appeal denied"
without much thought in the majority of cases, while the Supreme
Judicial Court takes its cue from Moses and bestows supposedly
superior wisdom on the Commonwealth. One applies to have ones case
transferred to the Supreme Judicial Court much in the same spirit
as one applies to Harvard. If you can convince them that you're
etwas Besonderes they'll let you in. I haven't yet decided whether
I want to apply. If the case is transferred to the Supreme Judicial
Court, I am required to present another 11 copies of all the documents,
making it a total of 6000 pages or 12 reams of paper.  If they required
me to pay Nantucket's legal fees, what a catastrophe!  But if, as seems
likely, Nantucket will have to pay its own legal fees, they will lose
even if they win. I can imagine that the Building Commissioner
might forfeit his job over the expenses he is causing the Town,
but I don't wish it on him.  

A second complication arises from the circumstance that my case might
appear very different, if the Appellate tribunal were to consider it
in the light of my previous legal encounter with Nantucket, about which
I may have written you. Then the Historic District Commission withheld
the certificate of appropriateness for 15 months on the pretext of
evidence that they had fabricated. The icing on the cake, so to speak,
was a forgery of the video-recording of the Board of Selectmen's meeting
at which they provoked a scene with Margaret so embarrassing to them
that the Town and its lawyers refused to provide us with a true copy
of the DVD disc. All this is arguably highly relevant to the current
controversy where the Town refuses to recognize the Attorney General's
concession, damanding to be recognized as the "real party in interest"
to assert claims in the plumbing permit controversy.
We'll see what happens.

Yesterday afternoon, when it occurred to me that I had finished
composing my brief, I felt unexpectedly exhilarated suddenly to
find myself free, at least for a little while, to stop thinking
about the lawsuit, to turn my attention to other matters, most
immediately to start putting the house in order, a necessity which
has been weighing on my mind ever since we came back from Virginia.
And as I write, I think I want to start right now: so I'll stop,
and leave what else this letter might have, or should have said,
to your imagination.

Jochen