The first responses to the Socorro Electric Cooperative's lawsuit against its member-owners were filed in district court in Los Lunas last week.

One, submitted jointly by Socorro attorneys Polly Ann Tausch and Thomas G. Fitch, requests the judge to rule the lawsuit needs to be re-filed in the proper jurisdiction. The other, entered by San Antonio, N.M., resident Alvin B. Hickox, asks that the co-op's board of trustees personally pay the costs for bringing the lawsuit and be subject to criminal prosecution for alleged improprieties.

Socorro Electric's board of trustees filed a lawsuit in 13th Judicial District Court last month seeking declaratory judgment and injunctive relief from three bylaws adopted at the annual meeting of member-owners in April.

All three bylaws address transparency of governance and were among a slew of reform-related resolutions overwhelmingly passed by member-owners disgruntled by the manner in which the board conducts business and its spending habits.

The defendants in the lawsuit include approximately 13,000 "unnamed member-owners" of the private, non-profit corporation – or anyone who purchases electricity from the co-op.

The co-op board of trustees unanimously voted at its May meeting to challenge the new bylaws on the grounds they are unworkable, unreasonable and illegal.

The bylaws call for the board to follow open meetings rules, allow member-owners and the press to attend meetings and that a portion of each meeting be set aside for public comment and that the co-op open up financial records for review.

The lawsuit, filed June 29 by co-op attorney Dennis Francish, argues that the cooperative is only subject to corporate laws and the bylaws that were passed can't be applied. It claims that the board can't effectively conduct business with an audience or in the presence of the press.

The filing came less than a week after the board's June meeting was canceled when, in an act of civil disobedience, more than a dozen member-owners refused to leave the boardroom when trustees called for an executive session without stating a purpose.

The movement for reform came about in part due to the board's penchant for holding meetings behind closed doors. Another major factor is the amount of co-op money spent on the board. Expenses incurred by the 11-member board in 2009 totaled more than $482,000, or an average of nearly $45,000 per trustee for what are non-salaried positions. Trustees receive reimbursements for travel expenses, per diem, fees and life and health insurance.

Attorneys Tausch and Fitch request a change of venue for the lawsuit, arguing the complaint was improperly filed in Valencia County and should be dismissed and re-filed in the Seventh Judicial District Court in Socorro.

"Only a relatively small number of member-owners reside in Valencia County in the Thirteenth Judicial District where this suit was filed," reads the response, filed on Friday, July 23. "On the other hand, the majority of the 13,000 member-owners (including the named member-owners) reside with the Seventh Judicial District and the majority of those reside within Socorro County."

Also noted in the response is the fact that the actions that gave rise to the lawsuit all took place in Socorro and the co-op is headquartered there.

In addition, Fitch and Tausch state that the plaintiff's method of service of process — publishing the summons in the newspaper — is insufficient, in part because it doesn't list the names of each individual being served. The response notes that the co-op has the names and addresses of its member-owners readily available and didn't make a diligent effort to serve process.

"What the SEC is not saying is that service of process upon its member-owners would be expensive and time consuming, but that does not justify Plaintiff stating under oath that 'Plaintiff had been unable to serve process on the defendants...,'" the local attorneys' response reads.

In a phone interview on Monday, the attorneys said filing the lawsuit in a different county could leave people unaware that they are being sued.

"We think the appropriate venue is Socorro County and it needs to be held here," Tausch said. "People are not receiving service of process. We have a concern that people don't even know what's going on."

Now that the dispute between the co-op and its member-owners has wound up in court, Fitch said a legal process must be followed.

"If that's the only way they can resolve — by a court intervention — they need to address it properly in the correct county and use the correct process for people they are trying to sue," he said.

Tausch and Fitch also allege in their response that the co-op didn't give a good enough reason for filing the suit:

"The SEC's lawsuit was brought under the Declaratory Judgment Act, NMSA 1978 Sections 44-6-1 et seq. However, the SEC has failed to advise the Court of the nature of the controversy and with whom it has such a controversy."

Fitch and Tausch's legal eye also picked out what appears to be an error in the ex-parte order allowing service of process by publication. Rather than stating the order applies to "unnamed member-owners," as listed on the lawsuit, the order reads "named member-owners."

The only named defendants are Socorro County resident Charlene West, a leader of the movement for reform, and two newspapers based in Socorro, the Mountain Mail and El Defensor Chieftain.

The notice of the lawsuit was published in El Defensor Chieftain July 14, 21 and again in today's edition.

Hickox, who describes himself as a retired fraud investigator serving the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, filed his response pro se–on his own behalf and without legal representation.

His was the first answer to the complaint, submitting his response on Thursday, July 22.

"I wanted to get it out there," Hickox said in a phone interview three days after the filing. "I'm impatient. I think damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead."

Hickox answers the complaint by denying 21 assertions stated by the co-op in the original filing, claiming they are self serving. He adds a cross complaint "for writs of mandamus, order for expenses and a ruling that plaintiff and attorney take nothing."

Hickox calls for the trustees to literally pay for their decision to bring the lawsuit in his prayer for relief. He asks for a judgment "ordering those majority Plaintiff Trustees who voted to pursue this lawsuit be required to pay all costs and awards of same from their personal assets." He also asks that the trustees pay a fair wage to him for the time he took to prepare and present his defense.

Hickox said the trustees are the people responsible for bringing what he considers a frivolous lawsuit and they need to be held accountable.

"You can't really blame the attorney," he said. "He was hired by a group of people to wreak havoc and that's what he's done. They're paying him to do what they tell him to do and he's doing it."

In addition, Hickox asks the court for a judgment to appoint a team of audit investigators to examine all transactions of money or goods paid to trustees dating back to January of 1987, the month Hickox became a member-owner of the co-op. In the event that trustees were "unjustly enriched," Hickox asks that "criminal prosecution and recovery of funds improperly or illegally received or paid" be deemed an appropriate remedy.

Hickox said he received a phone call from Francish on Friday, telling him the board was considering calling off the lawsuit. But in order to do so, the attorney told Hickox that he would have to drop his counter claim.

That's not something Hickox said he's willing to do.

"What value would there be in doing that?" he asked. "I don't think anything good would come from quitting. We've come this far, why don't we proceed?"

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