On April 20, the city of Sedona filed suit in Coconino County Superior Court against residents Shelley Evans, Donna Joy Varney, Alissa and Charles Tyler, Gayle Baingo and Theresa Vos for recording what it called “bogus liens” against members of the previous City Council and three city officials.

The city entered the suit on behalf of Mayor Sandy Moriarty, Vice Mayor Scott Jablow, City Council members Kathy Kinsella, Tom Lamkin, Holli Ploog, Jon Thompson and Jessica Williamson, Magistrate Judge Paul Schlegel, City Attorney Kurt Christianson and senior code enforcement officer Brian Armstrong.

“These baseless filings demanded that these officials pay defendants millions of dollars based on nonexistent ‘Constitution and Bill of Rights violations,’” the city’s complaint stated. “These filings were nothing more than an attempt to bully, harass and intimidate these public officials. The purpose of this action is to publicly expose defendants’ paper terrorism, to obtain redress for defendants’ unlawful acts and to expunge these baseless filings from the public record.”

Christianson is a party to the suit, so the city is being represented by the law firm of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith, although it has three attorneys on staff who are looking for cases.

Moriarty, Thompson and Lamkin left council after the November election.

The First Notice

The city’s complaint alleged that on June 3, 2022, Evans entered a notice of distress of bond with the Coconino County Recorder’s Office on behalf of Varney, the Tylers, Baingo and Vos against the members of the City Council and the city attorney, and that on July 15, 2022, she filed a similar notice on her own behalf against Schlegel and Armstrong.

Both notices began with identical language claiming that federal, state and municipal law require public officials to provide contact information for their public hazard bonding company and that failure to provide this information constitutes insurance fraud, which is grounds to impose a lien on these officials.

Neither document explicitly stated that public officials are required to be bonded. The city’s complaint stated that the city insures its officials through the Arizona Municipal Risk Retention Pool rather than requiring them to post performance bonds.

The June 3 notice of distress listed 18 allegations that the members of the City Council and the city attorney had “unlawfully distressed the property rights” of the filers by:

• Denying the true facts associated with home rule and using fear tactics to manipulate the public into maintaining home rule
• Funding the Sedona Chamber of Commerce, entering into a no-bid contract with the chamber and embedding it within the city “as a quasi-government”
• Presenting a false narrative of profit and loss for wastewater management
• Falsely representing the Sedona Public Library “as a city library rather than a county library.” The Sedona Public Library is a private nonprofit organization and is neither a city nor a county library.
• Building a transit hub too close to a grade school
• Manipulating the city’s zoning plan and violating the city’s policies for rezoning
• Denying property owners proper notice of the condemnation of property
• Holding office or interest in organizations or businesses that could benefit from City Council decisions

The proof of these allegations offered by the notice was “the Sedona City Council’s minutes, videos, actions, deeds, contracts, financials and factual documentation throughout their term of office,” without specifics.

Next, the notice listed 141 alleged violations of the U.S. Constitution grouped under each of the 18 broader allegations. The notice did not attempt to establish a chain of causation between any specific action of the members of the City Council and any specific constitutional violation.

The notice concluded by claiming “there are one hundred forty-one [280] listed Constitution and Bill of Rights violations valued at $5,000 per violation times eight [8] lien debtors for a total value of this bill” and demanded $11,200,000 from council and the city attorney. The surety “utilized to guarantee the payment of this commercial lien” was to be the bonds of the council members, which the city stated do not exist. One hundred forty-one multiplied by eight multiplied by $5,000 is $5.64 million, not $11.2 million.

The Second Notice

The second notice of distress filed by Evans in her name only on July 15 followed the format of the first notice, with its references to the bonding of officials, alleged constitutional violations and the creation of a commercial lien. It differed in that it was directed solely to Schlegel and Armstrong, and in the nature of the 12 included allegations, in which Evans accused Schlegel and Armstrong of:

• Disregarding jurisdictional boundaries, denying a challenge to jurisdiction and failing to prove in personam jurisdiction
• Failing to distinguish between the “live human being” Shelley Evans and the “fictional entity created by the state of Oklahoma” also called Shelley Evans, a registered trademark, and infringing the latter
• Attempting to force Evans to contract with the city of Sedona
• Disregarding paperwork provided to them by Evans
• Invalidating the mission statement of Evans’ business
• Disregarding the precedent set by the business that previously occupied Evans’ premises

The July 15 notice offered case file LC-202200019 at the Sedona Municipal Court as the sole evidence of Evans’ allegations, enumerated “one hundred forty-one [111]” alleged Constitutional violations and demanded $1.11 million in payment on behalf of two lien debtors at $5,000 per violation; however, 141 multiplied by two multiplied by $5,000 is $1.41 million, not $1.11 million.

According to the city, Evans refused to obtain a certificate of occupancy for her business and was cited for failure to do so, which was upheld in both city and superior court, and refused to acknowledge the court’s ruling, for which she is expected to receive another citation.

The Proceedings

Christianson notified the Tylers, Baingo, Varney and Vos on June 15 that the June 3 lien was groundless and invalid per Arizona Revised Statutes §33-420 and demanded that they release the lien. All five parties responded on June 21 with letters in similar language refusing to withdraw the notice and claiming that, as the statute Christianson cited referred to liens rather than a notice of distress, it was not pertinent.

The authors of both the June 3 and July 15 notices of distress stated in the text of the notices themselves that the notices were commercial liens.

Christianson notified Evans on July 21 that her July 15 lien [mistakenly referred to as being dated June 3] was invalid per ARS §33-420. Evans replied in a letter dated July 27 in which she ignored the demand altogether and instead addressed the reference in Christianson’s letter to a “final notice,” claiming that it was the first correspondence she had received from him.

Coconino County Attorney William P. Ring informed the county recorder’s office on Sept. 22 that both liens were presumptively invalid as they were entered without being accompanied by a court order.

Evans responded on Oct. 5 by filing a pair of almost identical documents headed “notice of difficiency” [sic] with the county recorder in which she claimed that the statutes Christianson and Ring cited were not relevant to the bonds of public officials, that her notices were intended to arrest those bonds and that the attorneys were confusing liens against real property with a bonding issue.

She also alleged Ring was abusing his discretion, trying to intimidate her and hiding behind a statute.

In its April 20 complaint, the city charged that the defendants had recorded false and invalid documents in violation of ARS §33-420(A), ARS §33-420(C) and ARS §33-421, and that by filing baseless nonconsensual liens, the defendants had committed harassment of public officials per ARS §13-2921(B).

The city is seeking statutory damages; fees and costs; judicial declarations that the liens are invalid, nonconsensual and groundless; and an order directing Coconino County Recorder Patty Hansen, who was named in part of the suit in her official capacity for having accepted invalid documents for recording, to expunge the notices of distress.

The city’s complaint called the liens “paper terrorism” and claimed that “defendants are members of a so-called ‘sovereign citizen’ group.” The city quotes from a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center stating that sovereign citizen claimants often cite Section 107 of the Uniform Commercial Code to justify their claims and “use weird forms of punctuation between their middle and last names.”

Some — but not all — of the signatures on the notices and follow-up letters incorporate colons around the signers’ given names, the registered trademark symbol “®” and are followed by references to UCC 1-308 or UCC 3-402, but this usage is not consistent.

The Reactions

Evans did not respond to calls by press time.

Varney stated on April 28 that she had not yet been served and had not authorized the filing of the notice in her name.

“I never agreed to do what they did,” Varney said, adding that she thought Ring’s letters to the recorder’s office would “kick it out of the system” and stressing that she was not a terrorist or a member of a sovereign citizen group.

“I want to do what’s best for our community and that’s not included,” Varney said. “Whatever I need to do to make it right, I will.”

Varney’s notarized signature appears on the June 3 notice, and her signature also appears on the proof of posting of the notice [dated June 6] and the June 21 reply to Christianson, as well as on the July 27 letter from Evans to Christianson as a witness.

Baingo declined to comment.

In an email from the Tylers on May 2, they wrote, “Charles and Alissa Tyler have not been served with any official notice regarding this lawsuit and, as a show of good intentions, we have legally and officially rescinded our previously signed statements with the Coconino County Office of the Recorder, regarding the Notice of Distress filed by Shelley Evans last year.”

“Charles and Alissa Tyler have also ended all involvement and association with the so-called ‘sovereign citizen group’ as of July 6, 2022,” they added. “We have no intention of being involved with them in any way. This group does not speak for Charles and Alissa Tyler and any motivations or intentions of the group are not those of Charles and Alissa Tyler.”

“What we thought was a group to meet fellow locals and express public concerns seemed to snowball into focused efforts outside of our areas of interest,” Charles Tyler wrote. “Originally, as it was explained to us, the Notice of Distress was supposed to be a statement to the City Council and mayor designed to address the complaints we voiced to them in person in a previous City Council meeting.”

“If Alissa and I had understood what was really in that Notice of Distress, we never would have signed it,” he added.

“We learned about the group through people who we, since, haven’t spoken to in about a year,” Alissa Tyler wrote. “They told us the group was an opportunity to meet people who care about Sedona. But, in doing so, we wound up involving ourselves in something bigger, more damaging and ultimately much more polarizing than we intended.”

The Tylers filed a Notice of Rescission document with the Coconino County Recorder’s Office on May 1, stating they were not given an explanation of the notice by Evans, “signing it was a mistake” and they “hereby legally and officially rescind any and all signed statements regarding the aforementioned Notice of Distress, abrogating, nullifying and voiding their signed statements and their involvement in the aforementioned Notice of Distress filed with the Coconino County Recorder’s Office.”