An almost 40-year-old legal fight over the ownership of an abandoned residential development in Fajardo could reignite -- 25 years after the last legal brief on the matter was filed.

The land in question is more than 750 acres of oceanfront property between Fajardo and Ceiba -- composed of rolling hills overlooking Fajardo's Demajagua Bay.

Last year more than 200 families living in a residential project called Terrazas de Demajagua, which stands on part of the land, sued the banks that financed the project for property title fraud and construction defects. It was the lawyer representing the families of that lawsuit, Grace Monge-LaFosse, who while investigating the original ownership of the land, may have rung the bell on another round of one of the most unorthodox legal battles in the island's recent history.

Monge-LaFosse was not available for comment on Friday.

From 1964 to 1980, the land was known as Las Colinas Properties, a residential develop-

The legal war became fodder for the local papers when Schreibman decided to represent himself against the bank's battery of lawyers. Without a law degree, or even a college education, Schreibman won the case in 1972, and Banco Popular paid the developer $3.5 million and returned the title deeps for Las Colinas which the bank had foreclosed on.

After the trial, against his peer's advice, Schreibman decided to continue the development of his project. He lined up new financiers and started work again. But by 1977, his new financiers were recalling their loan, and the developer ended up in another drawn-out legal battle, which he lost.

For the past 25 years Schreibman has been in self-described exile in Washington, DC. That was until Monge-LaFosse called him in September 2002 to "request my assistance to discover the truth about the history of Las

While the outcome of the ensuing legal fight is uncertain, what seems certain is Schreibman's committment to fight it out once again.

In another missive sent from Washington, Schreibman announces "I'm going back to Puerto Rico ... The reasons are two fold: first, the need to rectify a great injustice, and second, the desire to reclaim Las Colinas Properties. The bank lawyers have been stalling, but the time for judgment on these matters has come."