Time flies. Seems like just yesterday it was April Fool's Day and I was moving to Las Vegas with the Queen of Wink.Now it's May Day and I am still in Fort Worth and the Queen is still in Wink.
I've got a mystery I would like to solve.
Does anyone out there in the Eminent Domain Abuse Capital of the World, Tarrant County, Texas, know an attorney named Ed Fitzgerald?
If you Google for "Ed Fitzgerald Attorney" you find such a person in Massachusetts.
Why am I hunting for this mysterious lawyer? Well, this natural gas company named Chesapeake Energy has been abusing eminent domain in order to run a non-odorized, high pressure natural gas pipeline under homes in the east Fort Worth avenue named Carter.
One by one the people on Carter Avenue gave in to the pressure and signed away their property rights for a pittance.
Only one Carter Avenuer refused, he being Steve Doeung. Unbeknownst to Steve Doeung, court proceedings were initiated against him by Chesapeake Energy. Somehow an attorney, named Ed Fitzgerald, was representing Steve Doeung in these court proceedings.
To this day Steve Doeung has never spoken to Ed Fitzgerald. Steve Doeung has asked, repeatedly, for legal help and I'm sure he would love to have the help of the mysterious Ed Fitzgerald.
What I'd like to know is how it is that Ed Fitzgerald came to represent Steve Doeung?
Adding to the mystery, a few months ago FW Weekly had Steve Doeung on its cover and told the story of his battle against Chesapeake Energy. I think it was in that article I learned of the Gestapo-like intimidation tactics used by the City of Fort Worth against Steve Doeung, sending in goon squads to issue bogus citations.
I never saw any followup article in FW Weekly in which FW Weekly tried to find out who ordered the Gestapo raids on Steve Doeung. I think Woodward and Bernstein would have been all over that.
And then this morning one of my anonymous sources tells me that the FW Weekly reporter who wrote the article about Steve Doeung claims that someone who knows Ed Fitzgerald talked to the reporter and told him that Ed Fitzgerald had repeatedly tried to contact Steve Doeung, leaving messages, with no call back from Steve Doeung.
Now, this really sounds really hinky to me. First off, in my experience, Steve Doeung returns calls quickly. He would certainly be strongly motivated to return a call to the mysterious attorney he'd never met, never hired, never talked to.
I find it a bit surprising that the writer of the FW Weekly article somehow magically ran into someone who knew Ed Fitzgerald with somehow the conversation turning to this attorney's inablity to reach Steve Doeung.
Perhaps the writer of the FW Weekly article could put Steve Doeung in touch with the person who knows the mysterious Ed Fitzgerald, so that Steve Doeung might finally somehow meet the guy who has been representing him all this time.
I tell you, the way things operate in Texas really perplexes me at times.
Oh, and Happy May Day.
6 comments:
You can probably find Ed Fitzgerald at Oscar's Pub on Camp Bowie.
I believe his name is "Edmund Fitzgerald", and he is currently busy with some matters in offshore Louisiana:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22edmund+fitzgerald%22+&aq=f&aqi=g1g-c1g3g-c1g4&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=a86c207b1c79523e
Anonymouses #1 & 2, thank you for your valuable help in the Find Ed Fitzgerald Project.
There is an Edwin Felder Fitzgerald listed at the Texas Bar Association website who practices in Fort Worth.
Maybe check the CHK roster of lawyers that they've retained all over town---to control them at the very least so that there would be very few lawyers available to challenge their schemes in our adversarial legal system. City of FW does similar siege tactics, esp. after CHK had set up their shadow government under former mayor Ken Barr, who knew about the impending gas rush but did little to prepare and protect his community--except land a cushy job as CHK's main man inside City Hall. Now that's a public servant---using the public trust to serve his personal interests. he and Mikey must spend a lot of time together ruling over the many "citizens of the shale". In any event, this volunteer lawyer Ed Fitzgerald's role, however much or vice versa, is very intriguing and somehow hints of chicanery. But surely ethical paragons CHK and FW City (forget the slippery lawyers) would never even dream of messing with the rights of a poor citizen like ole Steve. After all they didn't tase him during the raid or even send goons to put him in the ICU like what happened at the Rainbow Lounge.
You can nearly always find Ed at the Pub. Tall man. Very charismatic. He is a legitimate attorney.
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