Robert E Scully Jr.

Robert Scully represented us in a lawsuit over a lease option and drafted the settlement agreement, advising me to sign it. Unknown to me at the time, a provision in the agreement released the tenant from his obligations under the lease to make repairs to the buildings, which amount to half a mill...ion dollars. When he vacated the property he left it in unmarketable condition due to the repairs and selling property he estimated to have a replacement value over one million dollars. I have been told, due to the settlement agreement, we cannot pursue collection of this and this puts the property at risk of a sale in poor condition. I contacted Scully, who has not responded.

Mr. Scully represented our partnership in two disputes with the tenant who is also a limited partner. In the first lawsuit, the limited partner purchased a parcel the partnership held a long term lease on and then tried to raise the rent. He lost this case in arbitration. The second lawsuit was a... derivative action brought on behalf of the partnership. This went all the way to the VA Supreme Court where it was ruled the limited partner is financially adversarial to the partnership and therefore an unfair representative. He also did not have adequate support of the other limited partners. In both of these cases Scully's representation was excellent. The third lawsuit was brought by the partnership against the tenant over an unenforceable second lease option. The tenant needed a three month extension of his lease and offered a deal that all but one of the general partners accepted. The additional rent the third partner demanded triggered the lawsuit. The tenant brought an unexpected counter claim, which doubled the estimated cost of the lawsuit. It was settled out of court but the partnership would have been better off to have taken the tenant's original offer. In the third partner's deposition, she acknowledged the tenant/limited partner expressed his intent to get control of the partnership assets many times. She said he would accomplish this by weakening the partners financially with such things as lawsuits. Unfortunately, the partnership was unable to retain a partnership attorney after the lawsuit over the second option, because of the actions of this partner. She tried to force the other partners to sign a lease contract with the wrong address and no legal description, three times. She also tried to force the other partners to sign a waiver/ agreement that allowed the tenant to remove fixtures at the end of his lease. He removed and sold the fixtures anyway admitting their value to be over one million dollars. She refused to allow the partnership to serve default notice to the tenant or to enforce notice to make repairs. The tenant stayed over 3 weeks and left the property in a mess. The third partner has threatened a lawsuit to dissolve four times, to force the property to be sold. It was recently discovered that the tenant corresponded with another land owner about consolidation that would allow the FAR of two parcels to be tripled. One of those parcels is the one the tenant purchased when he attempted to raise the rent to the partnership.