Co-op receives $30,795 bill

Add another $30,000 to the cost of the lawsuit Socorro Electric Cooperative filed against its member-owners in 2010.

The Kennedy & Han law firm of Albuquerque, which was contracted to represent the co-op in its failed effort to block new bylaws that call for it to operate with greater transparency, submitted an invoice in the amount of $30,795.29 on Dec. 29. The breakdown listed $27,949.21 for services rendered, 889.64 for expenses and 1,956.44 in gross receipt taxes.

Socorro Electric did not provide an itemized list of hours billed and expenses under an Inspection of Public Records Act request — General Manager Joseph Herrera cited attorney-client privilege — but it would appear the charges were likely incurred over a 16-month period ending at the close of 2011.

Kennedy & Han first filed papers in the case on Aug. 26, 2010, two months after the co-op’s then-attorney Dennis Francish filed the lawsuit on June 29 of that year. In order to challenge the validity of bylaws that call for the co-op to follow the Open Meetings Act and Inspection of Public Records Act, the private, non-profit corporation filed suit against all of its approximately 10,000 member-owners.

Members of the democratically controlled cooperative overwhelmingly had passed nearly a dozen reform measures at the annual meeting in 2010 over the objection of the board of trustees, which proposed its own set of resolutions at the same meeting.

Attorneys Paul Kennedy and Darin Foster handled many of the motions in the case on behalf of the co-op and one or the other were present for all hearings in the case, decided last May. They’ve continued to represent the co-op as a judge now considers a counter suit, which requests class action certification.

The law firm hadn’t submitted a bill to the co-op since Jan. 5, 2010, for services it provided in 2009.

In a phone interview last August, Kennedy said there “was no particular reason” why the firm hadn’t submitted a bill for what was then almost a year’s worth of work. He said there would eventually be a bill and whatever it was would be “eminently reasonable.”

Kennedy, a former New Mexico Supreme Court Justice, said he charged at a rate of $450 per hour and that his associate, Foster, billed at $200 per hour.

Kennedy, who served on Gov. Susana Martinez’s transition team and is currently engaged in litigation involving state legislative redistricting, said last August that he expected his firm to continue to represent the co-op through the class action phase, as he has experience with such cases. He said that if this case received class action certification, it could carry on for years.

Kennedy & Han filed four motions to dismiss the case on Jan. 25.

The case is currently in the discovery stage. Dates for three status hearings have been set for this year: March 21, June 21 and Sept. 28.

The countersuit, filed by Socorro’s Deschamps & Kortemeier law firm and led by the Ikard Wynne law firm of Austin, Texas, targets members of the co-op’s board of trustees and four former co-op officials and charges breach of fiduciary duty and fraud.

 

-- Email the author at tslast@dchieftain.com.