Shareholder Meeting September, 2017
In September of 2017, NFBW went to the shareholder meeting with enough proxies to elect a new board. Board president Fidel Alas realized that he was going to lose, and so he refused to have an election for the entire board, and instead only allow a vote for 2 board members, even though the notice for the meeting included an election for the entire board. He shut down the meeting without having an election, and the old board continued to run the company though they were all past their term of office.
Special Shareholder Meeting May, 2018
NFBW then presented a demand from a moajority of the shareholders to hold an election, and the board refused. We then went to court and the court agreed with us and forced them to have another election. The problem was, the court left board president Alas in charge of that election. In May of 2018, after two days of vote counting, the inspectors of the election declared NFBW the winners. Mr. Alas the next day threw out the result, started the count completely over with his own personally appointed inspectors, who threw out most of NFBW proxies for illegal reasons and declared themselves the winners.
NFBW then filed another court case to have the court decide the election. Despite state law stating that courts must set a date for such matters within 5 days of filing, the court refused, citing a lack of resources due to the governor not appointing enough judges. They then scheduled a pretrial hearing 3 months later. That date was delayed, and delayed, and delayed again. In the mean time, the previous board tried to derail the court case.
Special Shareholder Meeting August, 2019
The illigitimate board held a special shareholder meeting to change the Articles of Incorporation, and later the Bylaws, ostensibly to improve the company. The real reason was to change the schedule of voting for elections so that they could hold all new elections and declare our lawsuit moot.
At this meeting, they claimed to rewrite the Articles, turning the company into what is known as a Mutual Benefit corporation (not to be confused with a Mutual Water Company, which is also what the company is). The problem was, that in order to change it to single votes, the company was required to get the approval of a majority of EVERY shareholder in the company.
The company used the fake vote count of the previous year to justify their claim that they had the majority needed. When the shareholders at the meeting asked to see the proxies and count them, board president Alas simply said "no".
Shareholder Meeting December, 2019
Since our lawsuit was still pending, we were forced to again gather proxies and challenge the family for control of the company. After counting of proxies for a week, we were declared the losers by a very slim amount. After reviewing the proxies ourselves, we realized that we had, in fact, won again, but again, we were ignored.
We then filed another lawsuit challenging these results. That lawsuit was joined with the previous one, and again, our request to have a 5-day hearing, as provided by law, was denied by the courts.
We were finally granted a trial date in May of 2020, but Covid hit, the San Mateo County court system shut down all civil trials, and we waited, and waited.
Trial June, 2021 - May, 2023
Testimony for the trial began in June of 2021. We had 3 days of testimony, then a 1 month break, then 3 days of testimony, then a 2 month break, and then 1 day of testimony. Testimony completed by October of 2021, and our lawyers asked for transcripts of the trial to make final arguments. One whole year later, the court reporters finally gave us the transcripts, we submitted final arguments, and court gave us its answer in May of 2023, five years after our first lawsuit. The court said we won the election of 2019 because the board purposefully cheated by arbitrarily disqualifying selected votes that had voted for us. The company appealed.
Appeal May, 2023 - February 2025
We then waited again for the court of San Mateo County to deliver the transcripts to the appeals court. After six months we finally had to complain to the appeals court that the court reporters were refusing to do their jobs, and the court allowed us to use their own transcripts. Almost two years later, the appeals court made their decision, that despite us winning the election, too much time has gone by, and now they can't put us on the board.
The case has been remanded back to San Mateo court for further processing, and our first hearing is scheduled for December 10, 2025.
New Lawsuit, November 2025
Meanwhile, we put forward challengers to the company election of 2024. At the election, the company declared that their candidates had won the election, even though the names of their candidates appeared on none of the company proxies. They are wrong. Our candidates won that election, and Shannon Pekary has personally filed a lawsuit to challenge that election. The San Mateo court so far has refused to allow us a quick hearing, despite the law stating it should be within 5 days.