Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Any advice for dealing with someone angry about beingrejected?

[Michael Barrett (mbarrett]

I'm no lawyer, but if your group is a legal entity such as a LLC or LLP
then, as I understand it, the members of that corporation or partnership are
entirely free to choose who may become owners or partners in the legal
entity.
If you are not a legal entity, just meeting in someone's home, just close
the door.  If you are advertising open "public" gatherings - i.e. seeking
more members for your group, it may be more difficult to exclude their
presence and potential disruption of your meetings - until they get tired of
bothering you.  Of  course one cannot predict how long that might take and
in the meantime unfriendly letters to the local press (if published) could
be unhelpful.
It may be that an overt rejection was the trigger for the threats.  In my
experience folks who don't "fit" in a forming group eventually discover this
for themselves, find the meetings to be less than rewarding and, sooner or
later, "go away". But there are always exceptions.
Maybe others will have more direct experience and solutions.

Michael Barrett.
Shadowlake Village, Blacksburg, VA

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lyle Scheer" <wonko [at] monkeyhouse.org>
To: "Cohousing-L" <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 2:01 PM
Subject: [C-L]_ Any advice for dealing with someone angry about being
rejected?

> The subject pretty much covers it.  We have someone who was working on
> becoming a member of our cohousing group, but the group had enough
> concerns about that person to say no.  That person is currently
> threatening to send letters to newspapers, investigating getting a
> lawyer, thinking about bringing in various advocacy agencies over
> implied improprieties in the process, etc...

<cut>

> - - Lyle