Dear Mr. Garmel, 

Thank you, as always, for your interest and concern about my
litigation with Nantucket. When I told Judge Mcdonald at the
hearing that because of the delay, I, being 82 years old, had
already lost the case, that statement was true only with respect
to my ability personally to install the insulation, tile the
floors, hang the inside doors and cabinets, perform the
finish carpentry and do whatever else was necessary to make
the property rentable. Those tasks would have absorbed time
and energy which I have put to other uses. Instead of laboring
on Nantucket, I've spent the summers vacationing in the family
home in the Virginia mountains where I grew up, watching the
hummingbirds, cardinals, indigo buntings, chickadees ...
adding to a novel about, among other topics, life on an island,
and most important, getting old gracefully and serenely with my
mental faculties reasonably intact.

The Nantucket litigation has turned into one of the most
exhilarating experiences in my life, comparable to climbing
the Presidentials in New Hampshire or hiking in the back-
country of the Canadian Rockies. I am fascinated by the spiritual
contest with Judge Mcdonald who is torn between his desire to
rule in favor of established authority and his wish not to be
overruled a second time by the Appeals Court. He procrastinates
in the hope that something will turn up to support a judgment
against me, but instead Mr. Ciarmataro complicates matters with
the contradiction that my plumbing demonstrates such inferior
workmanship that there's no choice but to condemn it, but that
it also demonstrates such substance that I couldn't have installed
the plumbing without a plumber's help, and that when I claim to
have done it myself, I must be lying.

Perhaps I'm repeating myself with the anecdote from Leonard
Boudin, then a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, who
recounted arguing a case before the US Supreme Court and newly
appointed Justice Rehnquist who declined to recuse himself for
having worked on the case as Solicitor General. Boudin's
comment, made forty years ago, has never stopped ringing in
my ears, "The Government lies, the Government always lies."

And so it does. The seminal case is Olmstead v. U.S. 277 US 438,
where in an oft quoted dissent Justice Brandeis wrote piously:

"Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government
officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct
that are commands to the citizen.  In a government of laws,
existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to
observe the law scrupulously.  Our government is the potent,
the omnipresent teacher.  For good or for ill, it teaches
the whole people by its example.  Crime is contagious.  If
the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for
law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it
invites anarchy."

But Chief Justice Taft, joined by Justices McReynolds, Sanford,
Sutherland, and Van Devanter was realistic in rejecting Brandeis'
argument. Governance without lying is as impossible as being
elected to public office without lying. Ask Mitt Romney. The
Executive must lie in order to govern, the Legislature must lie
(obfuscate) in the unavoidable compromises entailed in enacting
laws, and the Judiciary must lie when as a matter of practicality
it must systematically ignore procedure to reach the merits. 
In its decision of my case the Appeals Court: a) validated a
sham hearing before the Board of State Examiners, b) endorsed a
false certification by the Attorney General, c) ignored the
circumstances that Nantucket was not properly a party for having
failed to intervene, d) that the Attorney General had defaulted
by failing to file an answer, e) that the Attorney General had
deceived the Court by concealing the fact that she deemed herself
only a "nominal" defendant, and therefore under no obligation to
file a reply. The Appeals Court ignored all these procedural
irregularities because it found itself obligated to adjudicate on
the merits, to wit: 1) because the justices wouldn't know how to
install a toilet, you and I shouldn't be permitted to do so either.
2) a person such as myself shouldn't be punished for being 
competent. - The pretence of adjudicating the merits of a
controversy entails the pretence of truthful evidence. The
pretence of adjudicating on the merits will be undermined by
openly tolerated fabrication of evidence.  That is why the
Brandeis illusion is indispensable for the administration of
justice.  The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will agree
with me that it cannot tolerate the systematic premeditated
fabrication of evidence by Nantucket, especially after I point
out that Nantucket's lawyer, Mr. Pucci, represents also 119 other
Massachusetts municipalities. If the Court allows Mr. Ciarmataro's
fabrication of evidence, Mr. Pucci will be duty bound to inform
those other clients that it's o.k. to make up a story if that's
what it takes to accomplish a politically desirable result.
After 85 years, the shadow of Sacco and Vanzetti continues to
loom over the Massachusetts courts.

Never mind absolute truth. The pole star by which the Court charts
its decisions is the preservation of its authority. On account of
the division of powers under the tripartite constitution, the Court
is powerless to punish the Executive or the Legislature. Its duties
however, include establishing "justice" between the executive and
legislature on the one hand, and corporate or private persons on the
other hand. As the courts are precluded from levying penalties on
the Attorney General for wrongful prosecutions, no matter how wicked,
so they are precluded from levying sanctions on Nantucket for its
premeditated fabrication of evidence. The courts' only recourse for
preserving their authority is to assess damages, substantial damages,
against Nantucket to compensate litigants such as myself for the
injuries that have been inflicted on them.

As to the amount of damages, I proceed from the truism that "justice
is blind," i.e. justice postulates the duties it imposes to be
symmetrical. To ascertain what is just, one blindfolds the goddess 
and switches plaintiff and defendant. The damages properly assessed
against Nantucket for having broken the law - and what more serious
breach of law could be conceivable than to use that law as an 
instrument of persecution by fabricating evidence and silencing
witnesses by threats of injury? - the damages properly assessed 
against Nantucket would be equal to the fine for which I would
have been liable had I made myself guilty of violating the law.
That fine is $1000 a day, each day being a separate offense.
Nantucket having persisted in its wrongdoing for 2450 days should
be ordered to pay damages of $2,450,000.- The longer the case 
drags on, the bigger the reward. It's a win-win proposition that
makes Candide in his best of all possible worlds look like a wretch.

Obviously a pipe dream fueled by endogenous fantasy. The probability
of success seems to me so low, that the gamble would not be
financially rational. I doubt that a "prestigious" law firm
would even be willing to consider the case and make an offer without
charging substantial fees. Given my unwillingness to incur any legal
charges at all, I lack the chutzpah to make an approach to any lawyer.
If you think that under the circumstances further discussion between
us would be of any use, please e-mail me the most convenient time to
telephone.  I thank you, as always, for your sympathy and concern,
and in the instance, for the effort of reading my wordy letter.

Sincerely,
Ernst Meyer