Mike Dixon’s email of July 28, 2025 – Presenting the case to Indian Hammock Members

Dear Fellow IH Member,

In the Hammock’s email last week, the Hammock cast blame on IH Members for enforcing their rights.  The Hammock Board complained about having to go to mediation stating, “[i]t is unfortunate that the Hammock has to expend legal fees for highly personalized requests such as this.”

The Hammock Board is once again consciously misleading the Hammock members in an attempt to cover up its violations of Florida law.

1. Hammock’s Prohibition of Guests Violate Florida HOA Law

There are numerous problems with the new Hunt regulations approved by the Hammock Board, most notably, that theHAMMOCK HUNT REGULATIONS VIOLATE FLORIDA HOA LAW!  

Florida Statute 720.304(1) states that a HOA cannot prohibit guests.  In particular, the statute states that “[a]ll common areas and recreational facilities service any homeowners’ association shall be available to parcel owners in the homeowners’ association served thereby and their invited guests for the use intended for such common areas and recreational facilities.”

It is crystal clear that the Hammock Board cannot prohibit guests, yet that is exactly what the Hammock Board did and has refused to even engage us to correct.  

Sadly, the Hammock Board refuses to abide by Florida Law and the IH governing documents to seek retribution at all costs against the IH quail hunters for restoring the IH quail fields in full compliance with the IH governing documents, oversight by the IH manager and a quail biologist.

2. Hammock Board has Failed to Comply with the IH Governing Documents

The Hammock governing documents provide a grievance procedure to resolve disputes.  The process is set up to save all of us money.   We proceeded according to the process and submitted a written Complaint, see attached, in accordance with the Hammock governing documents pointing out the violation of Florida law.  Nonetheless, in direct contradiction to the IH governing documents, neither the Hammock Board nor the Hammock’s attorney has provided us with a response within 30 days of submission of our Complaint.  In fact, we submitted the Complaint more than 60 days ago and have yet to receive a written response after multiple requests for such!

We had no choice but to proceed to the next step to demand mediation.  If the Hammock Board had done its job and complied with the IH Governing documents, we likely would have been able to resolve the matter without wasting Hammock money!

3. The Hammock Board Went Attorney Shopping

Evidently, the Hammock Board was not happy with the opinion it was provided by its counsel of nearly 18 years so it went shopping for another attorney.  The Hammock Board has hired counsel, Sarah E. Webner, who graduated from Florida Coastal Law School, which is unquestionably, the worst law school in the State of Florida, having lost its accreditation before closing its doors.  It was ranked in the bottom 25% of law schools nationally.  In stark contrast, the Hammock’s former counsel graduated from the UF Law School, which has consistently ranked in the top 20% nationally.  Sadly, the Hammock Board has chosen to walk away from a good attorney with more than 35 years of experience and 18 years of representing the Hammock and hire a much less experienced Orlando attorney who graduated from the worst law school in Florida.  Wow.  

There is no doubt that working with new counsel has cost more in legal fees than if the Hammock remained working with the Hammock’s longstanding counsel who knew the IH governing documents well.  

The current IH Board’s pattern of firing anyone who disagrees with the current IH Board – the IH Manager, IH’s longstanding counsel . . . is very troubling to say the least.

4. Failure to Timely Notify the Hammock Membership

The Hammock failed to notify the IH Membership at the IH June Board Meeting of the Complaint that it received a month earlier breaching its fiduciary duty to the IH members.  Why the delay?  What else is the Board not telling us?

Once again, the Hammock Board is not abiding by Florida law nor the IH governing documents. 

The Hammock Board is failing all of us.

Earlier email of 2025-05-15

Fellow Indian Hammock Members,

Thank you to the IH Board for pointing out the good work being done around Indian Hammock; however, there were a number of notable omissions.

Thank you to Bret Davis and John Kassing for securing the new furniture in The Lodge and the team of helpers to transport the furniture to The Lodge at The Hammock:  Tony Hemminger, Paul Houlihan, Steve Devine, Vince Bianco, and Chad Kendall.

Thank you Hop Kennemer, Joe Coyle and Carole Devine for donating $1,000 to purchase and set up the POS (Point of Sale) system in the lodge.   After spending over 20 hours of work, The Lodge now has a system that manages amenity tickets, credit cards or cash and sends your food order directly to a screen in the kitchen.  It is quite an improvement from the $150 credit card reader from the IH Board that required significant additional financial investment from our food service folks, Lia and Fernado, to get up and running properly.

Big thanks again to Joe Coyle and Carole Devine for getting the new Hammock website up and running.

Challenges:

As concerning the workman comp audit, a first workman comp audit was completed.  A second response was in progress but unfortunately was not submitted because the response was due five days after Matt’s abrupt dismissal.  When unplanned changes in personnel are made, we leave ourselves open to the consequences such as missed deadlines.

Committee reports:

The bird hunting program last year went off without an issue.  There were 50+ hunts this past season with no issues or accidents whatsoever.  There were only about 20 guest hunters throughout the 5+ month bird hunting season, which is less than one guest per week.  All hunting and quail fees were paid, which resulted in a profit of about $12,500 to the IH Hunt Committee.  The bird hunting program did not cost Indian Hammock one dime.

In response to the misleading statements, guests have always been allowed in Indian Hammock for bird hunting since the inception of the Hammock more than 50 years ago.  There was never a limit of only two guests for birds hunters.  Please stop misleading the Indian Hammock members.

Of the 50+ hunts this past season, there were only 20 guests.  All guests were with Indian Hammock members throughout each bird hunt.  The insinuation that guests caused a problem is merely an attempt to create anxiety for members where no issue existed. Once again, please stop.  None of us appreciates the misleading information.

All work done in the Outback last year was done under the supervision of the Indian Hammock Manager.  Your statement that quail field pathways were created without supervision is yet another attempt to mislead the membership. 

All key cards were distributed to Indian Hammock guides per authorization from the Indian Hammock manager in accordance with the Indian Hammock governing documents and rules.  The key cards were activated by the Indian Hammock Office and given to the guides.  Simply put, there were no unauthorized actions. 

With the very vocal opposition to the bird hunting program last year, we knew the program would be under scrutiny.  Thus, we were very focused on complying with all requirements.  All hunters, guides and observers signed liability waivers before each hunt.  All required, signed liability waivers were submitted to the IH Office via email to the IH manager and Celina before each hunt with some hunters choosing to hand deliver such to Celina.  The IH Office has all signed liability waivers for all bird hunts last season.  A quick search of all emails to the IH Office from the email address of each IH bird hunter will provide you with those waivers with the remaining being in physical copies in the hunt files in the IH Office.

Similarly, all harvest records were submitted to the IH Office via email to the IH manager and Celina in compliance with IH Hunt SOP, with some hunters choosing to hand deliver such to Celina.  The contrary statements have no basis in fact and are, once again, simply meant to gin up unfounded opposition to the bird hunting program.

Last year, we created an LLC to own the quail hunting equipment and quail buggies for two reasons.  First, based on the misleading stories told last year about the quail barn project, we determined that we needed to protect our investment in the quail hunting equipment and buggies by eliminating the risk that the Hammock would sell the equipment to thwart the quail program.  Second, we created the LLC to eliminate the risk of liability to ourselves personally should anyone get hurt when hunting with the quail hunting equipment and buggies.  Simply as that.  Nothing more, nothing less.  To insinuate that we are trying to create a commercial hunting operation is comical.  Why would we want to add more hunters which would limit our ability to hunt when we like and create reservation conflicts?  It’s simply not the case and is a desperate attempt to detract from your discrimination against bird hunting in direct violation of the Indian Hammock governing documents.  To suggest that we are creating a commercial operation is ridiculous and just a scare tactic.

All these statements are readily proven.  Time and truth walk together.