DoctorK

Can't come up with who this reminds me of (maybe burned out surfer dude?) but I was really waiting for him to start saying things like "Really Dude?" and "like you know, Dude, I was" or maybe "you're harshing my mellow". Ah, cheers for the 60s and 70s.

I think this is the first time I have agreed with Corriero against the other judges. The plaintiff sounded reasonable and open to me while the defendant struck me as a glib fast talking hustler. He was great at stating “facts” firmly as if he obviously has plenty of proof, but many of them seemed dubious to me, and even factually wrong (e.g. the claim that the plaintiff called him a deadbeat in a meeting that the plaintiff was not even at). If the water bill situation is as bad as it sounds, I think the plaintiff (and other tenants) should look into moving because this development could go down the drain. I really would love to know if the defendant and many other tenants were seriously (thousands of dollars) behind on their water bill, that would give me a pretty good idea which litigant is a dishonest bad person.

Another fence case (at least not a dog attack case). Plaintiff was so clueless that it was painful to watch. As soon as the basic facts were presented, it was open and shut, following the law in most of the country (as JM pointed out clearly to the plaintiff who either didn’t listen or was too dense to understand), cut everything that intrudes onto your own property. The plaintiff was constantly defending her lazy landscaping guys who as JM pointed out repeatedly are not doing their job, some of the intruding plant trunks were around two inches in diameter so nobody has been doing the trimming for a very long time, The defendant could have handled things better but I have a feeling that he figured out that the plaintiff was impossible to deal with. (I think I know exactly how the heroic defender of dim women (Corriero) would have handled this case.) Second case was sort of amusing in a pathetic way. The plaintiff doesn’t understand the basic concept of “facts”, and wouldn’t know the Truth if it bit her in the ass. She is also pretty nuts, claiming that her neighbor comes into her apartment and damages her floor, cracks a plastic container and even put bird seed in one of her drawers. But … but … but … she had all of the proof on her phone but she left it out on her front porch and someone sneaked up to it and deleted just the pictures (and left the phone) of the evil defendant poisoning her dog, damaging her apartment and even the pictures of her cute (only according to her) dog. She is a horrible neighbor to live close to.

Today’s first case (wedding dress loan) bothered me. Something felt really off about the defendant and her situation. After knowing each other for many years and finally getting married, three months later she is divorcing him. This happens but I also put that with the $1400 wedding dress that she and hubby couldn’t afford so together they came up with a plan to get a credit card to charge it and cover it with a loan from hubby’s parents. A key point was that the plaintiff said that the loan discussion was with both hubby (plaintiff’s son) and the bride to be, making it a joint debt as explained by JM (this will come up later). Lots of back and forth with defendant sounding (at least to me) rehearsed and scripted. Two issues stuck in my mind. First, JM asked why the defendant was so eager to get her wedding gown back. Defendant looked (again to me, YMMV) blank then JM gave her the answer that of course she wanted to sell it to get the money back and defendant immediately said that yes, of course that’s it and looked relieved. Given how her first brief marriage went down, I wondered if she has the next hubby lined up so may need the dress soon. The second thing that bothered me (and this is on JM more than the defendant), JM saw a text message from the defendant (quite late in the whole saga) that JM considers proof that the defendant was not in on the original discussion with hubby and plaintiff. If the defendant is as scheming as my cynical side suspects, the defendant sent this text to detach herself after the fact from a joint debt. I may well be completely wrong about all of this, but her cutesy innocent smiley presentation grated on my nerves. I really would have liked to hear something from the erstwhile hubby.

I was also surprised that JM didn't say something about this but I think he really rocked the overall look for an old guy who looks to be in fairly good shape. I also liked the wooden beads on his braids, and thought he did a good job of explaining the special aspects of his truck insurance coverage, and that he explained that his truck was not running or moving, he was unloading a spare wheel (which he showed a picture of how the wheel rides on the truck w/o a trailer attached. I think he showed that the plaintiff lied about how the damage occurred, plaintiff saying that the defendant backed his truck into the plaintiff's car. I am sorry that I didn't notice but I hope the defendant was wearing a big-ass belt buckle to go along with his spiffy leather suspenders (I want to get a set like that). Second case, plaintiff was looking for a bonanza, didn't get one. As for the defendant, I will only say that some people obviously don't own a mirror. Please tell me that was a halloween wig, not her actual hair.

Today’s first case made my brain hurt. The plaintiff wanted to relocate her office and wanted to rent a new space. She (apparently at random) located the defendant who had space available for sublet. The defendant told her exactly how many square feet and provided pictures of the space. Plaintiff loved it, paid $200 deposit and asked to defendant to paint the space for her. Then the plaintiff decided that the space “looked big” but it was going to be too small so defendant offered another larger space which the plaintiff also required the defendant to paint for her. Plaintiff shows up and starts to move her stuff in (and buys a new large bed – apparently a hospital type) and decides that this space is also too small for all of her stuff. JM seems exasperated that the plaintiff was unable or too lazy to measure her old office space and doesn’t have any clue what 150 square feet means and calls her out for poor planning which prompts the plaintiff proclaim that she is a very good planner (see why the brain hurts?). She is hopelessly inept and has a classic wide eyed look of blank stupidity as she spouts complete nonsense. Sadly, because the defendant didn’t have written permission from the management company (as required by her lease) to sublet, the lease and whole agreement is unenforceable. The idiot plaintiff won and thinks that she did everything correctly and will go to her grave convinced that she is a wonderful planner. The fence case was boring. The plaintiff was foolish and the defendant was not up to doing an elegant fence. Plaintiff showed a lot of pictures, one of which showed horrible looking 2x4s reinforcing the top pf the fence – later we found out this was temp fixes for the old fence, not done by the defendant. Also, her old fence was in terrible condition. She expected the new fence would have “kick boards” all along the bottom, a nice feature to have but not common around where I live. To prove her point she showed a picture of the new gate and pointed to bottom 2x4 of the gate frame and said that was what should have been done all along the fence; sorry, that was not a “kick board” - it was the bottom part of the gate frame. I think the plaintiff took it for granted that the new fence would be just as fancy as her old one, fence guy did a low end job, the bottoms of the slats on the slope should have been trimmed to match the slope (not hard, I’ve done for some fencing) or just screw on a “kick board” for cosmetic purposes. I really didn’t like either litigant.

You forgot to mention that he is world class talker, very much in love with the sound of his own voice. He talked over (and actually stifled) the judge and got away with it. Other than that, a boring case. Rerun case (Plummer the Plumber), I couldn't stand the weepy passive-aggresive defendant. Of course, Corriero jumped in to try to save the poor little woman who was just so confused about just about everything. The Better Business Bureau complaint that the defendant sent complaining about overcharging (when the plaintiff quoted and charged about 1/2 of her other proposals) was nasty and I am glad that the judges called her out on that. I wonder if the defendant was really that pathetic or if it is her standard technique win a arguments.

Everybody has covered this bizarre case pretty well, but I am still stuck on the phrase I quoted. WTF does that mean? Did anyone count how many time Miss Boobs wanted to take her clothes off to show the judges her boobs? I think it was at least three times. I was happy that her case fell apart (mostly from the Doctor's medical records), I admit that before the defendant said a word, I wanted to strangle the plaintiff myself. I loved it when the defendant didn't beat around the bush, saying that she went straight for the throat. Just heard the verdict, yippee! Miss Boobs the dummy lost. She wrapped up with her nutty hallterview, I think the defendant in her hallterview hit the nail on the head, the plaintiff needs some psychological help. Just had a thought about light in a mirror, maybe she is acknowledging that she is shiny and two dimensional?

Thanks for those links, it really brings that litigant into sharp focus, i.e., garbage.

I think the landlord got royally screwed, but he really didn't have his act together, wasn't well prepared, and apparently hasn't watched any of these court shows. However, he should breathe a sigh of relief that he has gotten rid of a tenant who I think is a pig and really shitted up the place he rented and did the rotten eggs and other sabotage out of spite. With his face jutting forward and eyes bulging in indignation (and neck tats added on), he looked like an actor (a possibility) reading for a role as a psycho nut. As usual, YMMV.

I tuned in and heard the tenant defiantly bragging that she couldn't have caused the plumbing problem because she doesn't even use toilet paper because it is bad for the earth. I immediately bailed out to watch an old rerun of CHiPs. One more litigant that I hope to never be around, especially not downwind.

In the first few minutes, the defendant seemed to be a bit of an airhead and didn't understand anything about composting. However as the case progressed, the plaintiff started to creep me out. Some of his text messages were bizarre and really offensive, and his whole head injury/brain surgery/button my shirt for me saga seemed very strange. I agree the whole hour was too long but if it had been cut, we might have missed out on his 6 years in prison and multi-million dollar restitution for a ponzi scheme scam which affected my opinion of him. If he wants to do composting somewhere, why didn't he use his mother's home, where he sometimes lives instead of some random stranger's place? If I was the defendant I would be cautious, I think the plaintiff may be unstable and may not be very well connected to reality, he certainly doesn't understand basic person to person interactions.

Today’s hamster case was uncomfortable to watch. I felt sorry for the plaintiff losing her pet hamster, but I think her attachment was a little over the top – She looks to about my age (i.e., old) and according to petmd.com the average hamster lives 18 to 36 months (noting that some breeds are longer lived, and other sources say 2.5 years average or 1 to 3.5 years) so becoming deeply dependent on such short lived animals is going to lead to frequent emotionally painful experiences. The way her brother smiled throughout the case, her deadpan presentation and bizarre eye makeup (with a really bad wig), felt sort of out of kilter to me. My cynical side wondered if she (at her brother’s encouragement) is going to want to sue for $1500 every couple of years; I hope that is not the case.

Cox Cable strikes again, Schedule said 4PM new show, 4:30 rerun of poor door dash driver. Instead Cox simply gave us the door dash driver twice in a row. Guess I will have to wait for a rerun, which will probably be pretty soon. By the way, the defendant didn't come across any better the second (and third) time around.

Another pretty good one today, first case was entertaining because it is rare to see people as rancid as the defendant. She was a liar, deadbeat, an out and out crook and I think actually stupid also. She was a nasty little piece of work (I had several other words to use here but I try to avoid that type of language). She sure didn't help herself in the halterview, anyone seeing that little performance will never do business with her but she still acted as if she was in the right on everything and she repeated the flat out lie that the plaintiff was paid twice. Not only would I not do business with her, I wouldn't even want to around her. Second case, blah. Can't win them all.

Oh boy, the great web site war! This is the first time I have really enjoyed a case in a long time, it brought back a lot of memories. I built a few web sites in the old days (started writing raw HTML using Notepad, later Front Page (faster to code but lots of trash code would get built in) and I am nothing like up to date in this stuff) and I sympathized the plaintiff's problems dealing with updates, but honestly I think he was in over his head and sounded like he was OK with cut and pasting modules but not so hot on architecture. Then there was the defendant and I despise people like him in work environments (come to think of it, pretty much anywhere) who pick up a few techie buzzwords and then drop them around in ways that make it clear he has no clue what he is talking about. Clearly "store" and "secure" mean something different in his universe. I strongly suspect that if and when the defendant gets a better web designer, he is going to be told to restart from scratch, trying to work on somebody else's code is always a nightmare.

I didn't remember this case, and watched it, especially the judges deliberating the case. Oh boy! Corriero started with a long impassioned spiel that the poor suffering plaintiff deserved everything the plaintiff sued for, including stuff like time and gas to drive back and forth to the house in question, Acker didn't buy the whole package, but seemed sympathetic for some of the plaintiff's claims. Then Di Mango firmly (and I think correctly) dumped all of the plaintiff's claims. Nothing particularly notable about this so far, but when the judges came back in, Corriero delivered the verdict (without even blinking) giving the plaintiff nothing on her claims with no mention of his earlier opinion - fastest flip flop I have seen on a court case. Corriero rides again.

Another one who plans to provide health care. That person is immature, dishonest, irresponsible and some combination of stupid and/or ignorant. This is what the future of health care we can look forward to in the coming years?

Maybe we sometimes need people like the soup Nazi? I went to an all boys Jesuit High School and some of the Jesuits were harsh and rooted in the 17th century school of teaching, some were excellent teachers. Two of the faculty members in my physics department were youngsters in Germany during the war and (had no choice) were members of the Hitler Youth (not the same as being Nazi). They didn't talk about those times very often, but when they did one of them was extremely bitter about how hard life was (bathing in the river in subzero weather) at the end and after the war was over, the other (I am sure he also had some terrible memories) told about absurdities in the late years of the war when he was in his early teens and they put him on the crew of a 40 mm anti-aircraft gun on a rooftop - he said "40 mm? the American bombers were coming over at 20,000 Feet!". As people pass on I hope we don't lose all of the memories and experiences.

I don't know if every place is this tight (although most I have dealt with have some specific requirements) but given that the plaintiff was already a demonstrated deadbeat I suspect that her ex husband is also and that would show up when the utility company submitted either of them for transfer of the utility bill. The defendant was perfectly reasonable in refusing to rent to the plaintiff but I do think that refunding the deposit was appropriate just as if the plaintiff failed the background check. Sometimes MM increasingly comes across like JJ at her worst.

(this is a quote, no idea why it isn't formatted as one: 1 hour ago, CrazyInAlabama said: (I guess Corriero doesn’t realize an oral agreement with the late sister who rented him the property, and plaintiff claims she told him he could Airbnb the extra bedrooms, can’t modify a written lease/contract) /end quote I didn't remember this case and enjoyed as a new one to me. Maybe I am wrong but I think it was Correrio who did raise the point of any oral agreement (reached before the lease was signed according to the plaintiff) was cancelled by the written lease. From the intro stuff, it looked to me that the plaintiff had a slam dunk case until some issues arose. The invalid oral agreement was an unforced error by the plaintiff who identified himself as "in real estate management" certainly should have known that the agreement was invalid. Then the defendant lost me when he claimed "extensive" damages (and got skewered by the judge on it) after we saw the plaintiff's video. Even worse, the defendant admitted that the repairs that he wanted to be paid for were done at no charge by a relative. When a judge pointed this out, the defendant said that it didn't matter that he had no costs, he still should get the money. The defendant and his wife were really overreaching, and were allowed to get away with failing to send the plaintiff an itemized list on time of damages claimed against the security deposit (and one of the judges held up his "itemized" list and pointed out that it had no detail and wouldn't pass as satisfying the requirement even if it had been on time). So I disliked the defendants because they were trying to get a whole bunch of money for repairs that cost them nothing, and also disliked the plaintiff for (in spite of being "in real estate management") trying to slide by on the alleged verbal agreement with the deceased owner. Yippee, no dog attacks, no tire slashing, no baby custody/support drama! P.S. next case, I wish the judges would take all of five minutes to figure out the OBDC use and scans since it is showing up pretty regularly. They wander from complete lack of understanding to believing that it can tell you how to fix problems (it just tells you what error the computer is seeing which may be caused by any one or more of a dozen causes).

This case was more interesting than I expected. Crazy's quote above really went to the core issue. Defendant said that the $800 vent system would not vent to the outside, just to above the drop ceiling. Plaintiff explicitly claimed that the $800 system would vent to the outside. This might have been a "he said - she said" situation except for the $800 quote. There is no way that anybody would go up into the drop ceiling and install an exhaust fan and duct work then penetrate the exterior wall and install a weather proof exterior vent for that price. (Just a stray thought, if the vent system is required to handle acetone fumes, wouldn't it need to used a sealed fan safe for volatile fumes, not a Home Depot bargain fan?). I also don't think I would go to some nail polish association for expert advice on acetone safety. Once again, I think the judges totally screwed the pooch on this one. JM (who constantly reminds us that she knows everything about construction work) would probably have handled this one better.

Today was a stimulating wad of painful cases. Mostly scum, vermin, thieves, liars, cheats etc., notably the out of control teen whose mother is in total denial about her daughter stealing, running the streets with professional thieves and rip off artists, and burglarizing her neighbor. I was actually yelling at the these people which of course is pointless even if they could hear me. It would be more useful to go outside and yell at the clouds (something I have heard is common with us old geezers). However, it is rude to scare the neighbors so I will refrain from yelling and just mutter under my breath.

Today's first rerun case, little Miss No License, No insurance with nothing but a scarily big smile and equally scary eyelashes, still entertaining after the years go by. I think we hashed it over pretty thoroughly first time around but the defendant was so outstanding (not in a good way) that I want to add some comments. Firstly, did she learn to do her eye makeup before or after her lobotomy? Secondly, has she really gone through her life using her smile and cuteness to avoid having to ever use her brain? She is going to hit a hard wall when she eventually learns that having a big smile, cute looks (and monstrous eye lashes) doesn't last very long.

This case intrigued me. I know very little bout crypto-currency as a business, but understand it is data and analysis intensive and requires a lot of computer skill and capability (and also apparently a lot of luck). When I saw his machine i caught my breath. If anyone recognized that equipment please let us know what it was. It didn't look like any computer equipment I have seen in real life (I have been involved in building out a few data centers and server farms. To me, it looked more like an early 20th century time machine or perpetual motion machine. I wonder how much of his crypto income is from his mining and how much from people he advises and teaches about it. I am more than ready to learn more if someone can identify that gear and its functionality. Come to think of it, I remember seeing some magnetic core memory units on computers from back in the ENIAC (1940s) era that looked vaguely like his, and they were energy pigs.