The Arianna Solare/Golden River quiet trial suit finally went to trial yesterday. I was physically present for the first part of the trial in the morning and viewed the rest of it on the Google Meets Taos district court feed. The trial is to establish if she’s has acquired title through adverse possession and, if so, how many of the 60 lots she’s claiming she’s actually used and has a valid claim to. The trial started with a description of the property in question and used both a Google earth image and subdivision plot map to describe and map out Solare’s house and surrounding Great Southwestern lots she’s used for her animal sanctuary. Things didn’t get interesting until Solare herself was called as a witness. She appeared remotely via Google Meets. She was first interrogated by her own attorney and described in glowing terms the improvements she made on the land and they went through a series of photos of her house and surrounding land with lots of dogs in the photos. They next briefly presented tax records as proof of taxes paid. When Solare was cross examined, things changed. Attorney Carol Neelly immediately brought up the two deeds she is using as “color of title” and pointed out that the handwriting on both was identical and very similar to another deed she filed in her own name transferring title from herself to Golden River. She was asked about the deeds and gave vague and evasive answers. It was pointed out that the deeds were signed and notarized after she had filed her initial quiet title suit and the motion to intervene had been filed. At one point, she was asked point blank if she wrote those deeds herself. Her lawyer objected and she ended up giving another vague answer. Her body language was very tense. It was equally tense when she was interrogated about the tax payments. Basically, it came down to the fact that she really didn’t start paying the taxes until 2021 and paid the back taxes to 2011 in a lump sum payment. This was clear in the tax records. This contradicts the statement that taxes have been paid on the land since 2004. All in all, this part of the trial didn’t go well for Solare and she was not a good witness in her own defense. It prompted an obvious shift in strategy from her legal team who brought up a previous quiet title suit in which green lots had been granted by the same judge. Carol Neelly objected but the objection was overruled. The court next called a break for lunch and I returned home to view the afternoon part remotely.

The next witness called was Emi Wall who currently resides in Solare’s house. She gave a description of the improvements on the property and mapped them out on an overlay of the Google earth image. The actual improvements mapped out including dog runs and kennels didn’t look like anything near to the 60 lots Solare is claiming. She was also asked if she knew of any other case of people squatting on Great Southwestern lots and she responded yes, there were several she could think of but was vague and didn’t give details. The next witness was the one remaining plaintiff in intervention. True to their nature, Solare’s attorneys went low on this one and first asked about the two properties she’s owned in the area over the years and then brought up a discrepancy in her recent divorce settlement where she claimed no real property in the divorce settlement in an obvious attempt to discredit her. It looked bad for a moment but Carol Neelly did a quick cross examination which clarified the discrepancy as they were not including the property in the divorce settlement and, from my perspective, pretty much nullified any effect it had on disparaging her character. The trial then concluded for the day and both attorneys will file closing briefs by November 24th. I don’t know when a verdict will be delivered.

And some side notes and observations. Solare stated at one point that there was no community in Tres Orejas. I previously attributed that statement to her attorney but it’s obvious he got it from her. As previously stated, if it wasn’t for the community here, she wouldn’t have known about the green land situation and had the opportunity to exploit it. What there wasn’t was a community that supported her. The court had quite a few people in attendance, all of them against the land grab. So, in spite of the best efforts of Solare and her attorney, community did enter into the trial and the issue of squatting on Great Southwestern lots did come up along with previous quiet title suits involving these lots. As far as I know, there have only been three of them, all by homeowners claiming lots bordering their properties, two of them prior to 2004 and one filed several years ago. Solare is the only case involving someone squatting on green land with no ownership of adjacent property. Solare’s attorneys were quite nice in person outside of the court context, the whole trial was very civil all in all.