By Steve Plunkett
Gulf Stream and litigious resident Martin O’Boyle have settled three lawsuits — over a dock he built without permission, a conduit buried in his front yard during the utilities undergrounding project and his demand for $30,000 in legal fees on another case.
“Basically, they’re walk-away settlement agreements,” with the lawsuits dismissed and each side paying its own legal bills, said Hudson Gill, the town’s outside attorney. “The cases are dismissed with prejudice,” meaning O’Boyle cannot refile his claims later.
The town’s insurance will cover Gulf Stream attorney’s fees and costs in the first two cases, but the town will pay its fees and costs in the third, Hudson said. O’Boyle is liable for the legal bills on his side.
Attorney Jonathan O’Boyle, who handled the negotiations for his father, declined to discuss the outcome.
Mayor Scott Morgan said the settlements “appear to be in our favor,” and Assistant Town Attorney Trey Nazzaro, who worked on the cases, said, “Correct.”
The legal expenses the town will pay come from a lawsuit Martin O’Boyle filed in 2020 that said Gulf Stream, by filing a federal racketeering claim and other state actions against him in 2015, had reneged on an earlier settlement in which both sides promised not to sue.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, action came after town officials said they fielded more than 1,700 public records requests from O’Boyle and former resident Chris O’Hare in the two years after the 2013 settlement, and said the two men filed dozens of suits against Gulf Stream in state and federal courts. The town spent more than $1 million to handle the records requests and pay legal bills during that time.
The RICO lawsuit was later dismissed in federal court.
In the dock case, O’Boyle began applying “informally and formally” for a permit to build over the water in April 2017. In 2019, town commissioners rejected an appeal by O’Boyle to let him build a “promenade” 30 to 36 inches higher than his sea wall and extending 12 feet into the canal behind his yard, unanimously agreeing that the structure should comply with the building code for docks.
Town code prohibits docks wider than 5 feet.
The dispute hit a flashpoint in November 2019 when O’Boyle, lacking a building permit, had 20 concrete piles installed behind his house, at 23 Hidden Harbour Drive. Gulf Stream obtained an emergency order that Thanksgiving from a circuit court judge enjoining O’Boyle “from any further construction activity on the proposed water structure without approval.”
O’Boyle later got a permit for a 5-foot-wide dock and removed the piles for the extended structure.
In the settlement, he agreed to install no more than two lights on the dock, and they may not project light more than 4 feet above the dock’s surface.
The lawsuit over the utility conduit involved empty piping that was left in an easement 6 feet underground after O’Boyle in 2014 complained that it was on his property. The town relocated the planned conduit to an easement off O’Boyle’s property.
The offending conduit broke when contractors tried to pull it out and town officials decided to leave it buried rather than dig a costly trench to reach it, according to court docu-
ments.
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