Now for part five of Boobus Americanus and the legal system. As I mentioned in parts one through four, I have worked in the legal field in the State of California for a long time. And I have seen some things that would curdle your blood.
I am currently working on a case where two women met and began dating, then began a romantic relationship. They started buying real estate together. They bought quite a few properties together, sold a few and then bought more. They should have sold the properties back in 2006 or 2007 when the market was a lot higher, taken their profits and moved on. But no, they wanted to play landlord. They must have thought they were playing Monopoly®.
The one woman I will call Amy had convinced the other woman to take her name off the title to one of the properties claiming that would help her with her tax problems. She is now refusing to place her name back on the title. Another property was purchased and title only placed in the name of Amy. She told the other woman who I will call Judy that once the escrow finished that she would add her name to the title. She did not add her name to the title.
Then in early 2012 their relationship began falling apart. They own five (5) properties here in Southern California as joint tenants. Judy contacted the attorney that I do some work for to have him file a complaint to partition the five properties they own together, and to request that the Court order that Judy’s name be placed on the title to the other two properties.
I began preparing the complaint which took a long time as I had to include the entire legal description of the properties in the complaint. I work out of my own office for the attorney but his support staff who work at his office are so incompetent that I cannot trust them to attach any exhibits to anything! It is really hard to find decent help nowadays. I think the main reason is that most attorney’s want to pay as little as possible for the people who work for them. I can command a decent rate because I know what I am doing, at least most of the time.
The attorney wanted me to prepare a whole slew of causes of action. I had prepared the initial complaint with just 3 causes of action, including the cause of action that would allow him to file a lien against the two properties that are only in the name of Amy. This would prevent her from refinancing or selling the two properties. But Amy and especially the attorney wanted to load the complaint up with as much horse manure as they could. Unbelievable.
I swear some of these attorney’s are something else. They want to add everything that they can. It is like they think they are building the ultimate cheeseburger or something. Give me a break! Go to Jack in the Box® if you want the Ultimate Cheeseburger®.
I e-mailed him the complaint last week and he e-mailed back saying that he wanted more causes of action. Guess what? Amy went to an attorney and filed her own complaint last week and then contacted Judy and told her that he was placing a lien on ALL of the properties, including a property that Amy had bought before she even knew Judy. So now I had to turn the complaint into a cross-complaint, also known as a counter suit. And Judy gained the upper hand because Amy and the attorney took their sweet time getting me the correct information.
Now Amy has the upper hand as Judy cannot refinance or sell the property that she has owned for over ten (10) years. And Judy keeps changing the information. The details change and certain amounts of money allegedly put into the properties changes. Either Judy is a scatterbrain or she is trying to pull something.
It is amazing what people will do once their relationship goes bad. They want to use the legal system to get back at the other person. You would not believe the number of cases like that I have seen in my many years of working in the legal field here in California.
To me these two women are nothing but two lemon sucking ditzes. Hey if they want to have a relationship together that is their choice. But do not use the legal system to get back at each other. Because once you start throwing mud around it gets on everyone. And when you get into Court if both parties have mud on them it gets really hard for a Judge or Jury to figure out who is who. As the old saying goes, do not come into Court with “unclean hands.”
I am working on another case where this husband and wife bought a vacation cabin in the mountains of Southern California. They rent it out on a short term basis for holidays and that sort of thing. It is a two story property and the stairs leading down to the first floor are very steep, although there is a warning sign posted warning that the stairs are very steep and that someone can fall down the stairs.
However, they did not have liability insurance to cover them in the event that someone injured themself at the vacation cabin. They do have the renters acknowledge that they have agreed to the terms of their guest rental agreement which states that they release the owners from all liability. Guess what happened?
Someone rented the cabin and fell down the stairs. She was injured quite severely and has sued the couple. Normally I do not work on defending personal injury cases because virtually everyone has liability insurance. Their insurance company hires an attorney to defend them.
This couple must have smoked a lot of dope when they were younger because in my opinion anyone who does not have liability insurance in California is nuts. This is the most sue happy State in all of the United States. You have probably heard the joke about why New Jersey got all of the toxic waste dumps and California got all of the lawyers. Because New Jersey got first choice!!! Give me a break. I have a vision of this couple, particularly the guy, probably the type who has one of those pictures hanging on his wall with some trite platitude like “Teamwork” or someone climbing a mountain, something like that. In other words a total idiot. The type of idiot who tries to save money on his insurance premiums by using a release in the guest rental agreement which may or may not hold up in Court.
This guy is going to spend at least ten or twenty times what it would have cost him in insurance premiums to defend this lawsuit, and that is assuming that he wins!
Give me a break. I know California is like granola, full of fruits, nuts and flakes but that is unreal. Stay tuned. More to come on Boobus Americanus and the legal system.
No comments:
Post a Comment