DoctorK

To me this was another uncomfortable case to watch. I understand that the defendant had major injuries from the accident that totaled the car, but some of her testimony sounded sort of off. She claimed that the car she bought was a salvage title but she wasn't told, but I don't see that that has anything to do with the case. The plaintiff found out the defendant's insurance paid off the car to the defendant for $5500 but the defendant "doesn't remember" getting it. I understand that she had a lot on her mind after the accident but $5500 is pretty memorable. Her story about losing her nursing license by not getting a $50 renewal fee in on time so she has to go back to college and start training all over doesn't sound right. I don't disbelieve her but she mentioned several other things gone wrong in her life (such as no medical payment from the insurance company because the accident was caused by weather conditions (?), and nurse with no medical insurance (not even subsidized ACA coverage (since she sound like she is living hand to mouth)) is surprising for a medical professional. I would have liked to know more about her professional status because "nurse" can mean many different things, and the income can range from fairly well paid for RNs (which comes along with high stress and horrible hours) to nursing assistants who tend to get meager pay and few or no benefits. Actually, the judges came up with exactly the verdict I would have given, plaintiff is due the unpaid balance on the car sale (based on sale price, not the $5500 the insurance and taking into account the $1200 already paid): Sorry for all the bad things that the defendant suffered (through no fault of the plaintiff) but that doesn't wipe out the debt she owed on the car. The plaintiff gets what she was owed and the defendant keeps the $5500 from the insurance company.

I noticed that, but it looked to me like he had a lot of makeup applied over the left side of his dace and around the eye. I think it looks like he has a major black eye that has been sort of covered up. He could have fallen or walked into a door. However, I would like to think that one of the other judges got so sick of his bleeding heart babbling that she let him have it with a good right hook.

Likewise, she should not do accident recreations when she obviously knows nothing about the subject and is woefully ignorant of inertia, momentum, angular momentum, basic intro geometry, etc. She really believes that she is so smart that she can reach conclusions based on her (ignorant) "common sense".

Oh well, good bye Tad, you seem like a nice enough kid but you aren't up to this level of competition. I noticed that when GR sent him home he didn't give him any of the "don't give up" pep talk he often gives. Both teams sucked badly and both teams got sent out of the kitchen before finishing, so I wonder if the diners went home without getting complete dinners. I recorded this show and forgot to turn on closed captioning so I still have no idea what Ryan was saying, but he seems competent. The promo for next week shows GR having his life "put in danger" apparently because somebody's pan flared up. GR saves everybody's life by carrying the flaming pan across the kitchen then dumping it (still flaming) into a sink. I thought that correct procedure to deal with this is to immediately slap a cover on the pan to suffocate the fire, not go walking or running with a pan of flaming oil. I am also concerned about the sink. Flaming oil and water are a very bad combination. Whether there was water in the sink or he planned to run water into the pan, this is really dangerous; even if his plan was to let the oil burn off in the sink, there is not a hood over the sink to pull out the smoke and CO2 from the fire. Actually, if people were really in danger, shouldn't he have pulled the fire suppression over the fire belching pan? Okay, I am being unreasonable, expecting reasonable and appropriate measures (which every chef should know) to control a fire in a pan. Silly me.

Actually, I thought I coined the eyeball part of this a couple of years ago. Psycho, I apologize for plagiarizing your rule without a proper citation.

Well, to be honest on this show GR is a complete asshole, but the pathetic Mr. Baskinger is a spineless wuss. I expect Bask46 is going down the drain in the near future, which happens often with restaurants "saved" by GR.

Mr. Culinary Gangster was a complete arrogant asshole and he was lucky to even get the probation. If the owners had spines. he would have been out on his sorry ass on day one.

Well, Kitchen Nightmares is back with the same old script. This week’s restaurant is hard to take seriously, too much of the scripted drama and lots of crap (probably made up for the show) like the “Culinary Gangster” nonsense (complete with a real professionally printed Culinary Gangster T-shirt probably provided by the producers) to provide the designated bad guy. The owner is the stereotyped foolish owner who sort of knows what is wrong but is too wimpy to do anything about. Maybe he is afraid of the Culinary Gangster? Even a lousy chef would know that the food coming out of the kitchen is bad, and not have the nerve to claim that it is great food. I did love the Culinary Gangster (to be called CG form now on because I am tired of typing it) defending his “sort of” homemade cheese sauce, which is bottled generic cheese (or cheese like) sauce but it is fine because he adds Cheez Whiz to it. I can’t believe any real chef would brag about Cheez Whiz. Now, at the forty minute mark, owner and CG are hugging each other and going to go forward together and make everything great. Yeah, right. This inevitable step is coming a bit early, usually Ramsey and the blowhard clown on phony baloney Bar Rescue wait until the last eight or ten minutes for everybody to hug and get all teary as they move onto the wonderful new path to success. Naturally, we had to see a last minute kitchen collapse (amazing how this happens in all of these shows) for drama, but never fear. Gordon saves the day with a pep talk with the CG and the night finishes on an up note. The follow up has the CG gone and owner wife has some free time for herself and husband owner is looking into the bright future. I am not sure I will watch any more of this show, it just reruns the same script with different faces and some minor unimportant bits to look slightly new.

Crazy, you missed a moderately interesting case. The case was about a collision between an electric bike (plaintiff) and an electric scooter. Defendant lost control for several reasons and he swerved in front of the approaching plaintiff. Defendant admits to being at fault but believes that the defendant ran into his down on the ground scooter and over his own body, and if the plaintiff was paying attention, she had enough time to avoid the collision. Plaintiff has several (conflicting) versions of what happened, some of which made no sense or sounded hard to believe, as pointed out by two of the three judges (guess who was the odd man out). Plaintiff's husband gave a dramatic performance with big histrionic gestures even though he didn't see the accident. He also insisted on calling the defendant's scooter a "motorcycle" and adding that the defendant was wearing a leather jacket (Heaven forbid!). Plaintiff claimed that the defendant ran into her from the side which threw her over her handle bars. The judges start trying to do some accident reconstruction, Tewolde making sense and Corriero showing he never took a high school physics class (shades of JJ?). Two of the judges believed that the defendant's story was consistent and made sense while the plaintiff's story seemed unlikely while Corriero thinks the plaintiff's story makes perfect sense. For me, looking at the plaintiff, I don't believe she would be thrown over the handle bars by anything less than hitting a brick wall at high speed. The plaintiff clearly had significant injuries but I think a lot of the post accident treatment and pain & suffering was either puffing or hypochondria. Plaintiff gets $5K which seems reasonable and defendant was OK with that,

Today was a collection of ridiculous plaintiffs. 1. Young woman wants to change her rather plump body into totally fit and trim with a trainer. She doesn’t know anything about fitness, exercise or training. She gets sore after a workout (poor little thing, she was all crippled up and couldn’t work) so wants her money back from the trainer, a really major amount, all of $100. She gets nothing because she defaulted on her contract. 2. Sloppy painter doing a $600 paint job left paint where it shouldn’t have been, plaintiff pays him with a check as he leaves (apparently expecting to come back next day), tries to stop payment on the check but wasn’t fast enough. Meanwhile her husband yells at her (seems like he told her at the beginning that a $600 painting job is not a good idea), and she tells the painter to not come back (I would bet this was with her husband leaning over her shoulder). For this tragedy, plaintiff wants more than $3,000 back from painter. JM looks at the cleanup required and gives the plaintiff $200. Plaintiff is disappointed that she didn’t get $3,000+. 3. Plaintiff brings in an aging Audi with leaky radiator. If it had come in for me to repair, I would have looked at the age, multiple leaks and aftermarket turbo charger and refused the job, but that’s just me. Defendant replaces the radiator. Plaintiff complains that there are still leaks (this car has a small secondary radiator (probably right behind the large coolant radiator) for the transmission fluid, and the leaks are from the transmission cooling lines, not the new radiator. Plaintiff insists that the defendant replace the new radiator and do other stuff, for coincidentally $3,000+ (see #2 above). Plaintiff tries to prove that the defendant damaged the transmission with a plain sheet of paper with no letterhead or any other info about who it is from. That fails and JM tells the plaintiff that he has not proved that anything the defendant did caused the problems he is claiming so he gets nothing. High point of the day: In the third case hallterview, Doug talks to the defendant and snugs up the defendant’s loose tie, saying that it was driving him nuts which I completely understand. The defendant explains that this was the first time in his life that he wore a tie. For some reason, the recent reruns are entertaining me, that may be just my memory failing me.

I recorded the show last night and just watched, bearing in mind all of the useful info from the posters above. The first ten minutes was pure useless fluff, promoting the show, as if GR shows don’t already have enough padding. There are too many contestants at this point for me to really get any strong feelings about any of the contestants, but I do have a few impressions that may stick in my mind. Tad: It isn’t a character fault but I hope at some point he can afford to get his teeth fixed up. I don’t like his half-assed pony tail while cooking that still leaves a lot of loose hair hanging over the food. Jonathan: He has a potty mouth and got a lot of bleeps (GR also got in a couple himself). That grates on my nerves; strong language when in pain, under stress or angry I understand but dropping it in casually in front of a general audience comes across as illiteracy (doesn’t know any actual adjectives) or lacking minimal class. Brad: Dancing around and singing in a falsetto voice while working in close quarters with others under stress is annoying. Towards the end of the show, he threatened to attack Jason who told him to shut up and cook. Honestly, I enjoyed that little exchange but I don’t think Brad should try to take on Jason in a fight. (Not that I found Jason looking good either, and he may piss people off as much as Brad). Ryan: I didn’t understand most of what he said; I will need to turn on closed captioning if I want to listen to him. I fast forwarded all the way through the winning team’s dinner with GR in some mansion. If I had listened to it, I would probably have heard a few things to annoy me, but I couldn’t stomach the great wonderful award. Nobody sent home was a disappointment, the faster they trim down the number of contestants, the more likely I am to follow the show. As always, YMMV.

(This is mostly redundant with Crazy's more detailed post above but since I typed all this, I might as well toss it in.) Today’s case was unpleasant to me. The plaintiff and defendant have been friends and fellow musicians for fifteen years. The plaintiff loaned his Cadillac to his friend, the defendant, to test drive and then purchase. Defendant signed an agreement that he would be responsible for any and all damages or problems while he had the car. (This may not have been wise. If he and the plaintiff had talked it through, maybe they would have set up insurance coverage better.) The defendant was in an accident (not his fault) that totaled the Cadillac and injured his wife. Defendant’s insurance apparently did not cover him while driving someone else’s car but the insurance of the driver who caused the accident settled with the defendant for $20,000+ for his wife’s injuries, nothing for the car. Defendant signed off on this which settled the case from the other driver’s insurance so that the plaintiff could not go after that insurance company for car damages. Plaintiff’s insurance wouldn’t cover the car damages because the defendant wasn’t a covered driver on this policy. This is bad all around. However, I hated the way the defendant did a lot of talking but it was all about weaseling out of his clearly defined responsibility, and shafted his friend without even trying to do anything about the plaintiff’s loss (market value of the car was $16,000). Plaintiff gets max, $5000, leaving him short $11,000 thanks to his friend.

Today’s scooter case was a complete mess. The plaintiff was wrong on a lot of what she claimed about being unable to register the scooter. Her witness (Charlie) was the person who was selling the scooter for the defendant; there is something wrong here because good old Charlie got about 2/3 of the money the plaintiff paid but the plaintiff wants to get all her money back from the defendant. The defendant’s defense was a complete mess, maybe because he has serious limitations? Although his lack of coherence reminded me of friends of mine in the old days who were daily heavy marijuana smokers, after ten years or so the effects really added up. Undoing the deal makes sense, neither side acted appropriately. Since the show pays the award, Charlie keeps his lion’s share of the money and the defendant gets to keep the small amount that Charlie (his friend?) passed on to him. In the hallterview, the defendant says he will let Charlie sell the scooter again, which tends to confirm my concerns about his limitations, what our grandparents would call “that boy aint right”.

Today’s case had one of the worst defendants I have seen on any court show. I didn’t find the plaintiff particularly likeable but the defendant was a complete nut case. She blatantly broke just about every element of landlord/tenant law. She has no evidence except her memory which is clearly patently defective. Sorry crazy lady, being a “Christian” (dubious claim) lady and even better, a homeopathic doctor doesn’t relieve you of legal obligations or permission to blatantly lie in testimony. I am really glad that they hit her with punitive damages; I think the plaintiff deserved them for the plaintiff’s outrageous actions. It won’t change the defendant one damn bit because she is so far off her rocker that nothing will penetrate the bullet proof bubble of idiocy she lives in. I am surprised that the plaintiff didn’t pick up a really nutty vibe from the defendant before she rented. The icing on the fruitcake defendant was the hallterview where she still believes she is a good landlord. (delayed because I forgot to hit submit)

The Cox/Fox schedule now has two new episodes of this show followed by one hour of the real PC rerun immediately after Justice on the same channel. This doesn't seem to be a good way to build viewership for Justice. I wonder if someone really doesn't like Justice and did this deliberately so people can compare the two shows.

JJ shorted the plaintiff by once again demonstrating her lack of knowledge. She saw the picture of the damaged front end and concluded that the damage was something to do with the axle and fixated on that. Then when she reviewed the plaintiff's repair bill she disregarded most of it because none of it identified the axle as the damage. Well, from the picture of the badly misaligned front wheel, it looks like the defendant hit a curb really hard and damaged some combination of ball joints (listed on the damage bill). control arms, shocks and mounting, and a whole bunch of other expensive stuff that goes into the front suspension. I don't know if he really deserved $4700 (we didn't get a good look at the whole bill) but I do believe the defendant did much more than $1500 in damage. She was also snotty and manipulative and took advantage the Marine who didn't seem to particularly smart. I am glad he is free of her and understands how she jerked him around.

JJ demonstrated again that she can’t do accident reconstructions with any accuracy. The case involved two cars in a very tight circular driveway. Car1 had pulled into the driveway making a tight right turn around the driveway curve, then stopped, most likely leaving the steering cut to hard right. Car2 pulled up close to car1 with car2’s front fender very close to the passenger side of car1. Car1 driver got back into her car and pulled forward slowly (remember the steering wheel is still hard over to the right), possibly scraping the front of car2. JJ with her infinite wisdom says that it is impossible that the passenger side of car1 moved to the right while moving forward. This is simple geometry (middle school level I would say especially considering when she would have been in school before she took the law school classes in “How to Be God”); with the steering wheel hard right, starting off slowly, the car moves forward but also pivots around the right rear tire (with a very slight offset) which moves the car not just forward but also to the right, which could easily have scraped across unmoving car2. Oh well, she is old and cranky but it grates when she makes pronouncements from on high about things she clearly doesn’t understand. I have to admit that this is not unique to JJ. I watch some actual court cases on TV and I often grit my teeth at the "authoritative" statements of "fact" given by judges, lawyers and police witnesses that are just plain wrong (and in some cases physically impossible). Oh well, time to go out front and yell at the clouds.

Due Cox scheduling, I have the opportunity to watch Peoples Court and the second episode of Justice for etc. at the same time, flipping back and forth between the real JM and the new denatured product. The contrast between the shows is crystal clear: the new show sucks enough to make the real JM reruns look good.

The correct verdict. Crazy did a better job of following all the ins and outs than I could do; I just really disliked every one of the litigants and the witnesses, and even the guy who has to sweep up when the show is over. The plaintiff didn't seem to be very honest. Good for her to try to lose weight but boxing doesn't sound like a good way to start exercising. I also looked at her before and after pictures where she claimed she lost 100 pounds, not sure if I believe that, given that the before picture was set up to be the least flattering (head on facing the camera) while the after pic was posed more nicely with her turned slightly to one side reducing her apparent profile. (Just for the record I helped to pay my way through undergraduate school taking flattering pictures of not particularly attractive girlfriends, and only got paid if the girl and the boyfriend liked the pics.) Hundred pounds off or not, it looks like she is back to the before picture. I hope she finds a better gym and keeps up the effort. Then there was the obnoxious and dishonest and clueless defendant. It really sounded like he was running a crappy gym with people gossiping and slinging mud in all directions. His description of the plaintiff's witness as some combination of part owner but really just an employee makes no sense. I absolutely believe him that his gym has lost business but the root cause looks like it is a lousy gym. Fie upon all of them!

I felt the same way when I forgot that the new site was primetimer and I was still using the old link which forwarded to the new one but eventually stopped forwarding so to me it looked like the site was dead and gone. For about a week I felt lost and missed this interaction much more than I would have expected. Then I remembered something about the new name (and URL) and life was good again. In terms of litigants exaggerating, I think my favorite was a fool who complained that the AC in his apartment was out and it was so hot that the "the water in the toilet was boiling". I wanted to ask him if "212 degrees F" sounded familiar. No I am lying, I wanted to smack the crap out of his ignorant face.

Starting off, I don’t need to hear her autobiography and history before every show. Today’s first (7:30 AM) episode was just boring with a touch of sleaze (maybe a bit more than a touch). I don’t even remember much of it now, seven hours later. Second episode, the autobiography again, then we start off with a man who loves the word “literally” the way some fools use the word “like”. First of all, his throat was not “literally” on fire, and he also used the word other times where it made no sense at all. He claims that the hospital diagnosed him with “thermal” injury from the wings; if the medical people actually said that, they need to look up “thermal”. Extreme spice ingested can cause medical problems but it is not from actual heat (i.e., thermal) but mostly chemical damage and/or reactions (e.g., spasms, impaired breathing, which can be dangerous) to the body sensing what seems to be dangerous burning heat. I am not impressed (which he apparently requires from everyone) that he competes in hot wings competitions and therefore deserves respect from his girlfriend’s brother and of course all of us. This is a stupid case, and all of the litigants lacked realism to me. In the same way that the courtroom set reminds me of the many low end third rate knock-offs of JJ, JM and even Mathis which display penny pinching budgets and litigants who often appear to be reading their lines off cue cards held up behind the person they are talking to. As always, YMMV.

I actually enjoyed today's new case, the Door Opened into Traffic fiasco. The plaintiff was a loudmouth jerk who from his own words, was sitting in a car with the door opened into a traffic lane. Meanwhile here comes the unlicensed driver (who has been driving since she was 11 years old, and tells us she is "experienced"). What a pair. I was slightly outraged by the plaintiff with his bogus claims of major injury (he repeated several times that his knee was "crushed"), which didn't keep him from jumping out of his car and running up to and confronting the defendant. Another tidbit: He also looked completely mobile in the video right after the accident. I liked the verdict, bogus plaintiff gets nothing, but the defendant gets money for her phone which the plaintiff destroyed so the phone is the only issue that the judges acted on. I hope the defendant gets a license but I doubt it, why bother when she hasn't needed one for years.

I had to search for the new show, it came on a sub prime channel (UTV44 on Cox) and premiered at 7:30 AM. I did a quick review over on the new thread. I am not impressed.

OK, I found the show on a non prime channel (UTV44 on Cox) premiering at 7:30 AM, not exactly prime viewing time. Also, UTV44 has been the home of many second (or third or fourth) tier court shows. JM seems about the same, but the set looks low budget and the litigants act like the scripted ones on low end court shows. The first case featured a plaintiff who is (or acts the part of) a crazy bitch who rented a room to a college student. She hams it up, makes wild gestures and totally disrespects the judge. She has crazy house rules (must plump up the cushions after sitting on a chair or sofa) and changes the security code for the house alarm and fails to tell the tenant the new codes, then complains when he sets off the alarms, disturbing the neighbors and resulting in city fines; naturally she thinks the tenant should pay for the fines. She babbles incoherently in explaining how changing the codes is somehow wrapped up in her trusting the tenant. Frankly I skimmed by the second case because it was really boring. Honestly, I wish Judge Milian had retired after her long and successful run with Peoples Court. This show feels low rent. The second episode is this afternoon. Maybe it will get better.

Today’s case with the damaged rental car had sort of interesting litigants. The plaintiff was pretty animated but did a decent job of presenting his case with no mudslinging. However, he really needs to pay more attention to details in the rental process. I liked the way that he didn’t treat the car damage as a major catastrophe and didn’t seem to be angry at the defendant, just a bit annoyed. He even provided another car to the defendant after the accident. The defendant intrigued me. He is either really stupid or he was playing that role to weasel out of his responsibilities. I didn’t believe him when he claimed he never got or saw the critical rental documents and conditions. I was watching to see if anyone was going to ask Mr. “I live in New York so I never drive” if he had a valid license at the time; there was a quick reference to him showing his license at one point but I wonder how closely his license was examined. I would like to have heard the defendant explain how the accident happened and why (since it is clear he ran into the back of the other car at a pretty good speed) it wasn’t his fault - that might have been entertaining.