What has been amazing to me throughout the legal pursuits of the plaintiffs and their neighborhood allies pursuing Dana Martin is the ongoing blame game of cause and effect.
What comes first, the ridiculous lawsuits or the legal fees that the neighborhood corporation and its volunteer board directors had to spend to defend against the ridiculous lawsuits?
The neighborhood ConMan loves to cite the ‘civil conviction’ of Dana in Burnet County court in 2022, for breach of fiduciary duty by paying $70,000 less than their Monday-morning-quarterbacking of the $225,000 she did pay to the water company for four acres of airport land in 2015. But was the juice worth the squeeze?
To him it was, because he is able to forever point to that as “victory,” his glorious crown of accusing everyone of everything, of which only one count was determined by jury. See his NextDoor post below.
But to the neighborhood water company, that “victory” secured only $35,000.
That’s it.
Another $35,000 was awarded to the ConMan’s marks, Bruce Sorgen, Rene Ffrench and Dick Dial who paid approximately $400,000+ in legal fees to achieve their ‘victory’ against Dana. That $400,000 is only what we know of from court testimony by their lawyer, but that bill was likely much higher to them because the case carried past that moment in time.
Along the way, the ConMan and his marks caused the corporation to pay about $500,000 to defend its interests, and it cost the corporation’s insurance company another $700,000+ to defend its volunteer directors.
I could go on and on about the costs to this neighborhood, but that seems to be where the ConMan wants to divide and conquer, over his account of the ‘civil conviction.’
But let’s examine these costs from another perspective.
Why was it that the corporation’s defense, and the cost of protecting innocent volunteers, was so expensive? I think few people really grasp the legal frivolity of the plaintiffs’ attorney. Meaning that every bit of her legal maneuvering (or “motion practice”) cost them money to defend the corporation and its volunteer board.
So, to help everyone get their mind’s attention on this issue, I ask you to look at the ConMan’s proud display of my deposition by the plaintiff’s attorney Kappy Allen. Enjoy the hate-rage of his edits and commentary. Watch the video that he posts so proudly on his website. Watch other deposition videos there. I encourage you to do so.
But at the same time, please also consider how their attorney, Kappy Allen, drove up the costs in my deposition, but also all the others, because of the way that she pursued her questioning. She is off camera, the voice of your cost.
My deposition video could serve as a sample of the 10 or so she conducted in her particular “style.”
How Deposition Questions Are Supposed to Work
Lawyers are supposed to abide by the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, Federal Rule 30, and the American Bar Association’s Civil Discovery Standards which describe how deposition questions should be structured. Depositions are intended to gather facts. In general:
- Questions should be clear and single‑issue
- Questions should not be argumentative
- Questions should not assume facts not in evidence
- Questions should not call for speculation
- Lay witnesses should not be asked for legal conclusions
- Attorneys should not badger or shame the witness
- Editorializing (“this is simple,” “really?”) is discouraged
These standards exist to ensure that depositions gather facts rather than force opinions. But instead of conducting her business in a manner prescribed by those constraints, Ms. Allen’s questioning demonstrates patterns that differ from those norms.
Don’t take my word for it. Throughout the deposition, you will hear attorneys for the water company say “Object to form” because Ms. Allen was violating those rules throughout the deposition. Here are the ways that she did that:
1. Argumentative Framing embed her commentary:
- “Wouldn’t that be the diligent thing to do?”
- “You might get better educated if you did that.”
- “Really? Really?”
2. Compound Questions. Several questions contained multiple assertions and conclusions at once, making them difficult to answer accurately.
3. Assumptions Not in Evidence. Some questions included statements about motives or future findings (“I promise we will find…”) that were not established facts.
4. Calls for Speculation. Questions repeatedly asked me to guess about:
- What other board members thought
- What attorneys did or did not do
- Whether anyone had reasons to doubt an appraisal
How would I have knowledge of those matters? I could not assert fact toward any of those but there she was asking the ridiculous costly questions throughout.
5. Legal Conclusions. When the attorney asks for legal determinations, not factual observations. For instance, Ms. Allen asked whether the transaction was: “Fair,” “Reasonable,” “In the best interest of the water supply company”
6. Repetitive Pressure. The transcript shows multiple instances of the same question being asked again after the witness answered.
Joe Gimenez Transcript (3 downloads )You can read the entire transcript of my deposition here, and fact-check the questions Ms. Allen asked against the transcript.
To save you the time of analyzing those questions against the State and Federal Rules, as well as the Bar Association rules, you can check out the AI generated analysis below, sampling some of Ms. Allen’s questions and weighing them against the rules.
You will see below examples from my deposition. Ms. Allen applied her (costly) ‘style’ not just to my deposition, mind you, but to all the other depositions which Ms. Allen and her clients demanded. At this point, six years after the depositions, I recall that they deposed me, Mike Nelson, Dorothy Taylor, Pat Mulligan, Bob Mebane, Mike Nelson again as corporate spokesperson, Bill Earnest, and Mike Madigan, and Dana Martin, twice if I recall correctly. That’s 11 depositions. Undoubtedly, $250,000 or more in total hourly costs to all parties.
Now, please understand that you paid for those, in my opinion, ridiculous sets of questions because Windermere corporate attorneys had to be present during the depositions. You paid for them. And until the Federal Court stepped in to force the insurance company to pay for the directors’ attorneys, you were paying for those as well.
The questions below were just from my deposition but they demonstrate the frivolity deployed by the plaintiffs through Ms. Allen.
| Ms. Allen’s Questions | Why it was Improper | Rules Violated |
| “Wouldn’t that be the diligent thing to do?” | Argumentative; implies negligence | TRCP 199.5(d): No argumentative questions |
| “You might get better educated if you did that, wouldn’t you?” | Insulting, editorializing, badgering | TRCP 199.5(d); ABA Standard 13 |
| “Really? Really?” | Badgering; pressuring witness | TRCP 199.5(d) |
| “This is so simple.” / “This is very simple.” | Editorializing; shaming witness | TRCP 199.5(d) |
| “Just say it. Are you or are you not?” | Coercive; demands a conclusion | TRCP 199.5(d) |
| “You either know or you don’t know. It’s yes or no.” | Improperly forces binary answers | FRCP 30(c)(2) |
| “Who went back to Bolton with the Hornsby appraisal and said, ‘Bolton, what the heck?’” | Argumentative phrasing | TRCP 199.5(d) |
| “Hornsby was furnished by the title company that’s paying for the defense for Friendship in this lawsuit, right? | Assumes facts not in evidence | TRCP 199.5(c) |
| “I promise we will find your lawyer participated in selecting Bolton.” (paraphrasing) | Assumes future facts; editorializing | TRCP 199.5(d) |
| “Dana Martin and Friendship Homes walked away from the closing table with almost $500,000 of value that belonged to the members of the water supply company… do you remember that?” | Embeds disputed facts inside question | TRCP 199.5(c) |
| “You would expect he communicated with the appraiser, wouldn’t you?” (paraphrase) | Calls for speculation | TRCP 199.5(d); ABA Standard 13 |
| “Do you know of any reason anyone would think the Bolton appraisable is not reliable?” | Calls for speculation about others’ beliefs | TRCP 199.5(d) |
| “If you’re going to discount it, then don’t you think you should have a reason?” | Argumentative; demands legal reasoning | TRCP 199.5(d) |
| “Was it reasonable and in good faith to place any reliance on the Hornsby appraisal… ?” | Asks lay witness for legal conclusions | TRCP 199.5(c); ABA Standard 14 |
| “…have you ever made a determination as to whether it is fair and in the best interest of the water supply company to allow Dana Martin to have $700,000 of water supply company property in exchange for $200,000?“ | Legal conclusion; argumentative | TRCP 199.5(c) |
| “Did you determine the transaction was in the best interest of the water supply company?” paraphrase | Legal conclusion | TRCP 199.5(c) |
| “Have you made a determination that the transaction was fair or in the best interest…?” paraphrase | Legal conclusion; compound question | TRCP 199.5(c); FRCP 30(c)(2) |
| “What do you want to argue about that?” | Argumentative; confrontational | TRCP 199.5(d) |
| “I will break it right down if you really make me.” | Editorializing; adversarial tone | TRCP 199.5(d) |
| “We will get to the bottom of that, I promise.” | Speaking question; advocacy | TRCP 199.5(d) |
| “I’m going to bet you we are going to find…” | Predictive; assumes facts not in evidence | TRCP 199.5(c) |
| “Look. This is so simple.” | Editorializing; shaming | TRCP 199.5(d) |
| “Do you want to stay with that?” | Badgering; pressuring witness | TRCP 199.5(d) |
So when an objective neighborhood observer wants to assess the video which the ConMan is so proud of, ask yourself whether it was worth the cost to you and the neighborhood to have Ms. Allen conduct herself in this manner. In my opinion, Ms. Allen knew better but was being performative for her gullible plaintiffs, Sorgen, Dial and Ffrench, the ones who were willing to shell out good money for the glee of pursuing someone they disliked.
Finally, I hope that the astute reader will understand that today is August 22, 2026. The deposition discussed here occurred in November 2019. All the directors named above were removed by the Judge from the trial in 2021 and only the $70,000 judgment was rendered in 2022. Yet, here we are discussing matters that the ConMan posts on NextDoor in 2026 because he has nothing better to do with his life.
NEXTDOOR POST FROM CONMAN, August 12
