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August 4, 2022:

FAILED PROPOGANDA FELLED BY THE FACTS

This CL-Update is in response to propaganda being circulated by Diane Green and her followers concerning a court case from a long time ago wherein she and they make libelous statements about what did and did not happen at that time.

I want to thank the people who took the time to look this up and see that what was reported by them was and is false, misleading, distorted, manipulative, and pure propaganda.

Regarding this latest fraudulent hit piece, I have read the various statements and comments, each one falser or more confused than the next. 

Therefore, while I didn’t really want to respond to such venomous propaganda, it appears that some people can’t read, don’t understand what they do read, and/or just want to pass on propaganda. 

I am responding because these venomous individuals dredged up a matter from 23 years ago and decided to rewrite history.

Here we have a prior furniture salesman, who’s not an owner, and a retired dental hygienist, giving you their legal opinion of what the court case was about, and of course that legal opinion is pure manipulation and propaganda. 

These propogandists dredged up a case whose underlying facts date back to almost a quarter of a century ago; they don’t know the case, they don’t know the history, they don’t understand what the court ruled and what it didn’t rule, and they intentionally distributed false information for the sole purpose of further character assassination.

Therefore, in random order, here are some of the false statements made, followed by the actual facts, and then some concluding comments.  I am not addressing every single false or misleading statement because I just want to hit the main points.  I am deliberately not commenting on the drama written by some because in my opinion it’s just drama.

First, here’s the background:  this concerns an old court case which I filed about anonymous defamation statements made against me back in 1999, 23 years ago, when I ran for judge in Los Angeles. 

The case was in the trial court for a short while.  The defendant, the local bar association (not the official State Bar), just a voluntary membership of local attorneys, made a motion to dismiss the case on procedural grounds.  The trial court denied their motion to dismiss.

Incidentally, I didn’t even belong to that local bar association by choice (I belonged to the West Los Angeles Bar Association, which was a different local bar association).

The defendant local bar association then filed an appeal of the trial court’s decision.  The court of appeal reversed the trial court’s decision and dismissed the case, again on procedural grounds. 

Neither the court of appeal nor the trial court ever made any determination or findings as to the underlying anonymous defamatory statements.  There was no trial.  Neither certainly ever ruled that any of those anonymous statements were true. 

The court of appeal made no findings whatsoever as to the truth or falsity of those statements because it dismissed the case on procedural grounds without there ever having been a trial and without reaching the merits of the underlying case. 

The underlying defamation was made by anonymous sources who were never subject to cross-examination.  They hid behind the cloak of anonymity, just like some people are doing here and now.

Now let’s review a sampling of the false statements made by some people in this HOA and state the true facts thereafter.

False statement #1:  that the court over twenty years ago found that I behaved in various disgusting ways.  False.  The court made no such finding at all, as stated above.  Here are additional facts on this specific point:

I sued for defamation based on false and anonymous underlying statements made.  Those statements were in fact false and defamatory, and I presented dozens of affidavits refuting all of them.  There was no trial on the merits, however, because of the procedural dismissal by the court of appeal. 

The trial court was prepared to set a trial date because it ruled in my favor on the procedural motion, but that became moot when the court of appeal handed down its decision.  There was never any cross-examination of the anonymous sources, nor was there discovery allowed to unmask them.

So now we have people in this HOA re-defaming me with the same original defamation and assigning value to it based on the false premise that it was in a court finding.  No it wasn’t.

I sued because those claims made by others were false.  They were false back in the year 1999 when they were first made, and they are still false.  The court dismissed the case on a procedural ground and never made any determination on the merits.

It is noteworthy that when the local bar association’s rating committee made their rating recommendations for the candidates who were running for judge, they rated all the prosecutors well qualified, and every single defense attorney who was running for judge was rated not qualified.  I was the only one who challenged them in court. 

Now why did they do this?  The local bar association committee was stacked with prosecutors, and they liked their little cozy club down at the courthouse and throughout the halls of justice.  And truly, everybody knew this. 

I took them on because I wanted to root out what I believed was a cozy corruption, and it was because they wanted to make sure that someone from the prosecutor’s ranks was on the bench. 

The last thing they wanted was a defense attorney making rulings on the cases they brought to the courthouse, so they wanted to ensure that a prosecutor got elected. 

The best way to do this was to rate all the prosecutors well qualified and all the defense attorneys not qualified and then publish their ratings with the hope that the public would buy into what they were selling, and that’s exactly what they did. 

So I ran on a campaign to root out this type of corruption in the court system, because I felt it was unfairly rigged against the accused and in favor of the prosecution, and what made it worse was that most judges in fact came from the prosecutor’s office, and everybody knew they had a pro-prosecution slant. 

I was in that system as a defense counsel for decades.  We all knew it.  It was more than an open secret – it was talked about frequently, and suggestions made to new lawyers included the fact that if you want to be a judge, first go work in the District Attorney’s office, because it’s a steppingstone to that end.

So now fast-forward 23 years, and here we have a striking comparison:  here I am trying to root out what I perceive as the same type of elitism, favoritism, and corrupted behavior that existed back then, only this time, in the context of an HOA.  It’s déjà vu, only the players are different, and the venue has changed.

The same tactics used back then to falsely discredit me (and my fellow defense counsel) are the tactics being used here in the HOA by certain individuals who are churning this false narrative. 

The defamers are not the solution they claim to be; they’re actually part of the problem.  They like the elitism because it suits them and their need for power and control.

One writer outed Diane Green as the one who “let the genie out of the bottle.”  That sounds like affirmation that the main propogandist is, in fact, Diane Green, and that she is behind the curtain of the propaganda website. 

And it is cowardly to go to lengths to hide the identity of the owner(s) of the propaganda website.  Why haven’t they shown their names?  What are they ashamed of?  Our website is transparent:  its ownership is not hidden. 

Yet this community is getting emails from an anonymous email address because those senders are ashamed to identify themselves, even though one writer appears to have exposed Ms. Green.

This is the same Diane Green who:

-Rigged the pickleball club elections, and then resigned in disgrace.

-Was about to be terminated by the Board as Entertainment Chairperson for insubordination, and instead resigned in disgrace in 2020.

-Traipsed around the state of Florida during the height of Covid during lockdowns and wrote on Facebook at the time in June 2020:

“And that is why the plan is to be outside the gates as much as possible!”

She earned the moniker “Covid Cavorter” because she was acting like a super-spreader and trying to encourage others to do so.

-Allegedly got in the face of two election volunteers on election day in 2020 because they supported Biden while her husband, Jeff F. Green (not the HOA president) allegedly kicked a Biden sign that was on the swale.

-Fraudulently peddled the failed petition to remove Arthur from the board by making at least four false claims about him, including the false claims that he committed two felonies by breaking into the property manager’s office and hacking her computer.

Those claims were refuted in writing by the property manager, and HOA member Carol Cohen at the June 15, 2022 board meeting stated publicly that Diane told her those four lies to her face to get her to sign the fraudulent petition.

For those keeping track, the third false claim was that Arthur cost the HOA money (the opposite is true; he actually saved the HOA a lot of money – we just sent a list of specific examples to a curious resident; it’s too long for this report but certainly may be mentioned in a future report).

The fourth false claim was that Arthur called the HOA attorney three times.  The true facts are as follows: 

To date, Arthur has never spoken to the attorney at all, ever, except a month and a half after the petition failed when on July 20, 2022, during the open Board meeting, Arthur asked him why he was there and challenged him on an issue related to vendor FSR which employs the office staff.

The lawyer replied that he was there because the president and the property manager invited him.  Neither Arthur nor Sue were told in advance that he would be there, and his presence was, in a number of people’s opinions, a total waste of money.

The above undisputed truths have never been challenged and that’s because those are the true facts. 

Carol Cohen confirmed that Diane Green lied to her face and told her those four false claims to fraudulently induce her to sign the petition Diane was fiercely peddling to remove Arthur from the Board. 

When Carol discovered she had been lied to, she immediately revoked her signature.  So did many others.

There is a famous jury instruction that essentially states, “false in one area of testimony, false in all,” meaning that the jury can disregard all statements made if they find that one statement made by the witness is false. 

So here we have a proven liar circulating this propaganda.  Circulating it over and over again doesn’t morph it into the truth.  And doesn’t it disturb you who are reading this that you are constantly being lied to by this propagandist? 

Unfortunately, this community has a number of individuals who clearly lack any moral compass.  Those who wish to follow this false leader will never be swayed by the truth even after this false leader is exposed for the liar she is. 

And these same individuals coddle her henchman who is a known aggressive harasser who is not even an owner or member of the HOA. 

His self-esteem is so low that he feels the need to hand out candy and other treats to unsuspecting residents to try and gain favor with them.  He believes that doing Diane’s bidding will secure his likability, something he cannot seem to muster on his own and which is otherwise elusive to him.

False statement #2:  the [local] bar association rejected my application to be a judge.  False.  The local bar association only gave ratings to judicial candidates.  That’s it.

Here are the actual facts:  This was an open election on the ballot in Los Angeles in the year 2000.  Six people ran for this open judicial slot and the primary election took place on March 7, 2000.  I was one of the two March primary winners! 

Here is a photo of the framed official certificate I received from the Los Angeles Election Clerk attesting to my victory:


It was a sweet victory because it was a slap in the face to those anonymous defamers who tried to take me down because I was a threat to their elitism and power. 

In the general election which took place in November 2000, it was a very tight race and I lost to my prosecutor opponent by only a few percentage points. 

This was an incredible feat considering that I was the only candidate for the entire race who refused to accept any campaign contributions to use to purchase slate mailers and other advertisement (remember, this was before most people had email or even knew how to use a computer). 

A lot of people said that had I accepted money and been able to send out slate mailers like everyone else did, I would have probably won.  I did not want to compromise my core principals. 

I felt it was a conflict of interest to take money from attorneys and potential litigants who might come before me to adjudicate (determine) their clients’ claims or their claims.

Here’s another interesting fact: while I lost by only a few percentage points of the total vote, in fact I received approximately 360,000 votes.  So well over one third of a million voters were obviously unimpressed with the bogus rating.  So should you be.  

Bottom line: 23 years ago in 1999 some people made up some poop about me and it didn’t work.  Now here we are again: same poop, different toilet.

Another interesting fact is that prior to running for judge in the general election, I was a Judge Pro Tem for many, many years, having presided over traffic trials and misdemeanors in both Van Nuys and West Los Angeles, both in the Los Angeles County judicial system. 

The Judge Pro Tem program was very exclusive; at that time, it was only by appointment by the presiding judge, and I was heavily vetted for that position and was regarded as an esteemed judicial colleague for years.  

So what happened to me 23 years ago was a serious hit job, a complete character assassination, similar to what you are seeing here.

What’s amazing as I said above is that I was the only one who refused to accept money for my campaign because it was for a judicial slot, and I felt that it was a conflict of interest to accept money from attorneys and potential litigants who might have a case in my courtroom in the future. 

So I ran with no campaign funds and no mass mailings which those funds typically purchase, similar to what you’re seeing now in your mailboxes for upcoming local elections.  I was then targeted with this fraudulent rating by anonymous prosecutors who were afraid that they might lose their cozy connections. 

And nevertheless, I was victorious in the primary and barely missed winning in the run-off election that November.  So all things considered, I think I did quite well.

Some concluding thoughts:

We are getting messages from residents who sent in critical emails of the new hit pieces sent out by Diane and her crew and who wrote to them about this hit job.  Here’s a sampling of what they wrote to the new website pumping out this propaganda:

“Repetition makes a fact seem more true, regardless of whether it is or not.  Understanding tis effect can help you avoid falling for propaganda.”

And with regard to the website set up by these propagandists, this resident wrote to them:

“Interesting that your original paragraph condemns bad behavior and bullying and in the second paragraph you do exactly what you're telling people not to do.”

We received feedback from residents who are disgusted by this propaganda and this group promulgating it.  One resident wrote to us: “…It's obvious to me now that the sight is simply an anti Vicki/Arthur sight…” The rest of the feedback mirrors this sentiment and actually was a lot more critical of this propaganda site and the emails they are circulating.

If these individuals continue to circulate this defamation, I will be inclined to respond back and identify again the source(s) of the defamation and their misdeeds.  Alternatively, they can give their obsession a rest and focus on doing something productive instead of incessantly and obsessively engaging in baseless character assassination.

Ms. Green has been engaging in character assassination of me for the last three years ever since I moved in, when she called me, and she told me she and her friends were intending on running this place, and I should be quiet and follow her lead.  She was gunning for a take-over. 

I thought it was exceedingly odd for a retired dental hygienist (which is an honorable profession, by the way; my mother, an original owner here, was also a dental hygienist) to be telling a veteran, seasoned attorney to be quiet.  What grown woman tells another grown woman to be quiet and follow her lead? It was bizarre.

She then added Arthur to her hit list when he called her out about some things which he believed she was doing inappropriately when she initially ran the Entertainment Committee, and he was the Secretary to that Committee at the time.

Diane’s motto is, “you’re either for me, or against me.”  Both she and Chick have made it clear to residents that if they are friends with us, they cannot be friends with them.  What kind of friend makes such an ultimatum, and why would anyone put up with that kind of demand? 

Now if you still want to believe this group’s propaganda in spite of its falsity, frankly I would prefer you unsubscribe from my address book because you’re clearly not my audience and have no regard for the truth.  I would prefer that my audience be made up of strictly moral, ethical, and conscientious people. 

The Entertainment Committee works hard, and they do a great job.  Perhaps focusing her energies on that endeavor should be Diane’s main focus.  Giving the character assassination obsession a rest would be most prudent moving forward. 

Your faithful scribe,
Vicki Roberts