Help Kathi Arleen & Patte Afford A Legal Defense

***Please visit our community's facebook group Oceanside Votes to participate in this discussion***

As disappointing as this is, it seems we now have to move forward without an attorney two weeks before our court date because we can no longer afford the legal fees. 

The three of us are named "real parties in interest" in a lawsuit captioned "North River Farms v City of Oceanside." We have had to hire our own defense and we are now out of money and out of options. We are getting ready to submit paperwork to the court that effective immediately we will represent ourselves. 

As some background for you, we have been sued twice by the NRF developer for daring to circulate the referendum petition in November 2019. We won the first suit which was called Hazlett v Navarro, and then when it was apparent NRF (The actual plaintiff) would lose that, he threw a fit and sued us again.

We've done absolutely nothing wrong at all, this is a free speech issue upon which we will prevail again, we just prefer to go into the hearing with an attorney representing us. 

This has been an unbelievably stressful year and a half for the three of us and we'd like to try to bring some closure to this issue with one more big push down the home stretch. 

We know that these are financially challenging times for many due to COVID, and we wouldn't be asking for money if we had any other choice available to us. We have exhausted all options.

All three of us are approaching friends and family members and adjusting our budgets anywhere we can. We've tried to negotiate these back legal fees with no success.

We're so far away on resolving this that as a last resort we are coming to you, the community we tried to represent as best as we could during these legal challenges, to ask you for your help. If we can pay "something" to our attorney, perhaps we will not have to go into court alone on April 28th. 

Anything you can give helps. 

Kathi, Arleen, and Patte