The Town of Boynton was forced to sell a lake to satisfy a six-figure civil lawsuit judgment, and the community spent years paying off a long-standing invoice arising from its water purchases.
The town; Willie Gary Hopkins, Boynton’s former water system operator; and Candace Renita Lang, Boynton’s former town clerk, were sued in Muskogee County District Court by Dennis Ray Allen, who alleged he was the victim of a “ruthless beating” in Boynton’s Town Hall.
Allen, then 61, claimed that then-72-year-old Mayor Clara Kay Lang called him on March 14, 2016, and “lured him to Town Hall” after regular business hours on the pretext of giving him public records he had requested. Clara Lang was married to Leonard Lang, father of Candace Lang, court records reflect.
Allen said he “suspected someone was embezzling Town assets” and he requested municipal records pursuant to the state’s Open Records Act “to expose” Candace Lang’s and Willie Hopkins’s “theft of Town funds.”
Testimony showed that when Allen entered Town Hall after 6 p.m. that evening, Clara Lang “tried to charge him an excessive amount for an envelope of papers which were not the records he wanted.” Allen described the papers the mayor gave him as “trash.”
Subsequently, Allen said, he was physically assaulted by Willie Hopkins and Candace Lang. Allen claimed Hopkins hit him in the face, knocking him unconscious, and he awoke on the floor. The punch injured one of his eye sockets and he temporarily lost vision in that eye, Allen said.
Evidence presented in court showed that Candace Lang and Willie Hopkins “were in a romantic relationship” at the time, a state Court of Civil Appeals document relates. In addition, Willie Hopkins and Leonard Lang “had a 20-year business relationship,” court records show.
Allen claimed that Candace Lang; her stepmother, Clara Lang; and Hopkins “staged the attack to … intimidate Allen from seeking” the municipal records.
Allen filed his lawsuit in August 2018, and in February 2019 a judge granted him a default judgment against all three defendants because they failed to respond to the lawsuit petition. However, the default judgment was set aside in May 2019.
During a subsequent trial held in October 2020, a Muskogee County jury awarded Allen $125,000 from the Town of Boynton and $250,000 from Candace Lang and Willie Hopkins.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court affirmed the judgment on Nov. 14, 2022, and the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals denied Candace Lang’s motion for a rehearing on Dec. 12, 2022.
Boynton owned a 78acre lake north of town that had an appraised value of $360,000. The town sold the lake to pay off Allen’s $125,000 judgment, which climbed to $147,103 with interest.
The Town of Boynton deeded the lake to the Ross Family Trust on Jan. 1, 2024, in exchange for a payment of $360,000, records on file with the Muskogee County Assessor’s Office show. Allen’s claim against the Town of Boynton was “released in full” on Feb. 5, 2024, district court records show.
The lake is bounded by South 174th Street West (also known as South Highway 62) on its east side; South 184th Street West on the west; and West 63rd Street South on the property’s south side. The Ross Revocable Trust owns 40 acres immediately north of the lake, the assessor’s records show.
Efforts by Southwest Ledger to contact members of the Ross family and Allen’s two attorneys were unsuccessful.
The $250,000 lawsuit judgment against Willie Hopkins, 65, and Candace Lang Hopkins, 45 – the couple were married in Muskogee on Oct. 4, 2021 – is still active, records indicate.
Water bill was unpaid Boynton’s water supplier, Haskell Public Works Authority, sued in Muskogee County District Court in 2014 when the town failed to make approximately $59,141 in payments. The balance due on the account in 2018 was $33,176.
“That debt has been paid off” and Boynton still buys its water from neighboring Haskell, a Town of Boynton spokesperson told the Ledger on July 29.
In a related matter, the Boynton Public Works Authority will receive a loan and grant totaling almost $1.2 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development division to replace a water storage tank. The announcement was issued July 31 by former state legislator and former Anadarko city manager Kenneth Corn, the USDA’s Rural Development state director.