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City attorney interfered,
lied in Tammie Arend case
December 1, 2022
In her public comments at the November 14 Lansing
City Council meeting, Tammie Arend blasted the city attorney.
The video
of the meeting is
here on
Youtube. Her 3-minute presentation starts at 1:17:04. She packed a
lot into those 3 minutes, so it may not be clear what she was getting
at. I'll break it down into 3 parts and add a bit of explanation. Here
is the first part:
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Good evening, council. My name is Tamara Arend from Ward One.
I'm here to speak on matters that are pertaining to the city
attorney. We need changes so this doesn't happen to anyone else
with my experiences. The city attorney has no obligation trying
to continually be involved in private litigations when they’re
not a party to, but continue to do so. City Attorney shouldn't
be asking, acting on behalf of a citizen or non citizen of
Lansing, which they have done. City attorney involved themselves
in private requests for mediation between two people. Only three
knew of this. That was myself, the attorney that wrote it and
the person that received it. It was never filed with the courts.
City Attorney continued contacting attorney who wrote mediation
letter who informed them he was not representing me. Some excuse
they used: they could not contact me. I've had the same mailing
address, email address and phone number since I moved to
Lansing. |
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Although the City offered Tammie no help when Scott
Frederickson, their favorite contractor, ruined her home by botching a
roof replacement in 2018, the city attorney's office went out of its way
to interfere with her attempts to seek justice. She had talked to
an attorney, but did not engage him. He
offered to write Frederickson and suggest mediation. Soon after,
according to what the attorney told her, the city attorney contacted him and
asked about Tammie. Although he said he was not representing
her, the city attorney asked how much money she wanted to take care of the
matter. When Tammie heard this, she wrote to Smiertka:
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Mr. James D. Smiertka, City Attorney
I need to address a few things with you,
I want to make this very clear with the City of Lansing
I have not retained an attorney and I do not have one at
this time representing me. I'm aware that if I was to
pursue legal actions against the city, the City of
Lansing would have to have received a letter of intent
which you have not.
Since the issue with my home that began
the end of 2018
I
have been directed to contact your office not only
through your letters you have sent to me but also by
City Departments and staff which I have done and you
have not ONCE reached back out to me to discuss
anything.
Now I find out you contact [the attorney] in
regards to me and my home, i'm sure you're aware that he
is not my attorney and I am requesting that if you have
any question you call me directly. I'm not even sure
why or how you reached out to him in the first place as
I have never once spoken to you or anyone from the city
to give you any information about my connection with [the
attorney]
Would it be accurate to say that this
contact information was obtained through Scott
Fredrickson who is suppose to be an independent
contractor and who is not a resident of Lansing, MI, and
that you're working with him directly. If i'm wrong on
these points then please clarify things with me.
Maybe it was your way to lurk around to
see where I'm at with obtaining legal council which
could be very concerning, I will also clarify this, My
case with Scott Fredrickson is separate from the city
since again he is suppose to be an only an independent
contractor
Again if you have any questions you
should direct those to me and not anyone else you have
my name, number and address but I will once again
provide that to you. I will more than likely be sending
this letter to you via postal delivery to ensure you get
it.
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This was the response from Deputy City Attorney
Heather Sumner:
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Ms. Arend,
The Office of the City
Attorney has reached out and has discussed this matter with
you on multiple occasions, both over the phone and in
writing. [This was a lie, as you will see below.]
The City of Lansing was
informed that you may be represented by [the lawyer].
As there is an obligation to communicate through attorneys
that are representing a party, [the lawyer] was contacted.
However, [the lawyer] indicated that he was not representing you,
and thus no further discussion was had.
As you have indicated that you
are representing yourself, the Office of the City Attorney
will communicate with you directly. Please provide us with
what you are requesting, if anything, from the City with
respect to this matter.
Kind Regards,
Heather Sumner
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Tammie's reply:
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Ms Summer,
I want to clear something
up, I have not discussed this matter with your office on
multiple occasions, in fact the only communication has
been in the form of a couple letters from your office
the first one was after the meeting with Mark Lawrence
Feb 13th 2020 that was received on March 5, 2020 in
which I emailed you about the letter. The next letter
was after I talked with the Mayor on June 14, 2020 after
the ribbon cutting ceremony. There was one more which I
do not have the date at hand.
The emails I have received
from you this year was on Jul
8, 2020 10:59 am and your content was to say We
are truly sorry that you are experiencing frustration
related to damage that you believe was caused by an
independent Contractor. And the one I received today on
12/29/2020. However I do have all records of my
emailing the City Attorney's office and me getting no
replies back.
After I got your email
today I went through all my call logs through my phone
provider and there has been no calls from your office at
all, all there are multiple outgoing calls to your
office that were only less than one minute where I was
trying to reach the office, I also have records of
others who have also tried to reach out to the city
attorney's office in regards to this matter dating back
a few years ago which they got no return calls either.
I have kept files for all
types of communication with the city and even have them
dating back to 2013 if that gives you an idea of what I
keep.
The only person who would
have had any information in regards to [the lawyer]
would have been Scott Fredrickson as I never discussed
with anyone about any conversations etc I had with
him.
There was no obligation
for the City Attorney to reach out to [the lawyer] since my
connections with him had nothing to do with the City of
Lansing, I have records where I have expressed to the
city that I had no attorney and if I did I would send a
letter of intent if I was to take action against the
this. By the city attorneys office doing this says that
the city is involving themselves in what could
potentially be a legal matter between myself and the
contractor. There absolutely was more involved in the
conversation than asking if he was representing me, you
forgot to mention is when the City Attorney asked [the
lawyer] what the numbers were to take care of this
matter.
I have indicated that I am
at this time representing myself with the matters in
regard to the city.
Now could you be
more specific with your statement which was as follows: Please
provide us with what you are requesting, if anything,
from the City with respect to this matter. My
question should be what is the city going to do in
respect to this matter that has cost me EVERYTHING I
worked very hard for to secure my future.
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Here is the second part of Tammie's 3-minute
address to city council:
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City attorney should never contact anyone's private legal
counsel with false allegations trying to sway the legal team
from assisting clients. The city knew they were not a party to
litigation, but sent copies of what was said on social media to
the attorney to interfere as well as lying by stating that I
attended over 100 council meetings. And everybody here knows I
attended one through virtual in 2021 [The video of that meeting
is here.
She begins speaking at 1:21:10.] And before that was 2015.
They said that I was out of control. They told my attorney that
I was mentally unstable. |
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Tammie finally did retain attorney Jeff Ray in
November 2021. He told her about conversations he had with the city
attorney's office. He said they'd sent him copies of her postings to
social media and claimed that she'd spoken at multiple council meetings. He seemed ready
to believe them.
Here is the third part of Tammie's 3-minute address
to city council:
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I'm here to tell you all the
accusations the city has made about being unstable [they said
this to both attorneys] to the
letters they wrote to HUD was inaccurate. I'm not unstable. I
never lied. The email that you tried to use against me to send a
HUD to deem me incompetent was ridiculous, because those are
comments from our own citizens. I was not representing Mr. Mashon. Actually, it was Jody Washington that was assisting him,
not me. You twisted things to manipulate and gaslight me. This
comes from the mayor, the city attorney and the development
office. This has been turned over to DOJ. I’m not playing. I've
been traumatized by you guys enough. And you know what you
stated? The city attorney stated I met with Mr Schor, the mayor
several times. I've never met with this man. You guys have lied
several times. And if you think I'm incompetent because I'm
emotional, this was wrong. It
messed with my life because you
would never discuss or talk to me. You ostracized me in every
sense of the word and even sent out letters to all staff. They
could not communicate with me when you were not a party to
litigation. Thank you. |
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She refers to letters sent to HUD. That was the
November 17, 2020 email sent by Donald Kulhanek that I talked about in
these stories:
Tammie didn't mention it in
her address to the council, but the city attorney wanted very much to
shut her up. Although her lawsuit was against the contractor, they
considered giving her a few thousand dollars to help her find temporary
housing. However, they wanted her to stop posting to social media and
sign a non-disparagement agreement. Nothing ever came of it; no formal offer
was made. Maybe they decided that abridging the free speech of a citizen
would not look good.
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