Mission accomplished! Check accepted! Client delighted! CA humiliated!
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Posted by begoodorelse (66.207.255.28) on March 15, 2004 at 15:54:06:
In Reply to: Landlord to my latest client: 4-day old check means eviction!! posted by begoodorelse on March 14, 2004 at 00:49:48:
By 0130 this morning I was plenty steamed, having spent about 10 hours on this case on a weekend. I'm always happy to help out my friends, but there is no mercy for whoever bothers them. So I had my complaint and application for temporary injunction ORDERING the bad guys to take the check all drafted, and a proposed injunction order, and all the backup documents copied. Off to sleep briefly, and up again and into my battledress uniform--I mean, pinstripe suit for intimidation value and possible court appearance. I met my client in the courthouse parking lot and we got the complaint notarized at a nearby law office, then filed it and convoyed over to his place of residence. THEN we had to wait outside for 10 minutes and inside for 5 more while our target for today was off showing apartments or something. Finally we were ushered into the inner sanctum of the rental office and took our seats in front of the offending property manager's (yup, the same one from Saturday) desk, where she asked how she could be of service. Actually I did the service, dropping the complaint and summons on her desk, and said, "you are now sued." She asked, pray tell, whatever for? "Breach of contract, violation of the North Carolina Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act, and violation of the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. And--" handing over to her the same check she said she couldn't take--"you will now take this check." She did. "And you will write us a receipt for March rent paid in full." She did, while saying she really would have taken the check had we only asked. Whatever. "Hey, you said you were gonna sue us, so we sued YOU first." She GLARED at me, and I held her gaze, until she looked down in defeat and continued to write the receipt. Receipt done, we bade our vanquished opponent the best of goodbyes. My client (also a close personal friend of mine) was relieved that he wasn't going to be tossed out on the sidewalk, but still didn't like having had to sue. I said, actually that was a lot of fun! Enjoy the rest of your day, good sir. Then I moseyed over to the other defendant, the owner of the place, whose record office was about a 10-minute drive away. At least I hoped it was--the "lessor" on the lease turned out not to exist in North Carolina according to the Secretary of State's corporations website, but I found a similarly named outfit nearby and figured that was it. As usual, I was exactly right. At their world headquarters, I had a cordial discussion with the boss of the mean lady, and she explained the origin of the alleged policy. Seems the mean lady had totally misunderstood something. What the Big Boss meant was, once Mean Lady received a rent check, SHE had to DEPOSIT it within 72 hours. Somehow, it got misheard as "the check can't be older than 72 hours." Good Lord, SOMEbody has been off their meds altogether too long. Earlier that morining, Big Boss said, she had directed Mean Lady to accept the check AND write a letter of profound apology, but Big Boss hadn't expected yours truly to actually work on a weekend. I said that's what I do for my clients whenever I have to. She said the whole thing was all a big misunderstanding and we had her humblest apologies. That's all very nice, I indicated, but (1) you scared my client to death, and that's saying something because for a living he flies AH-64 attack helicopters and deals death with Hellfire missiles and 30mm cannon shells and doesn't scare easy, and (2) you made me squander about 13 hours drafting all this mess and driving over here and suing you because for all we knew, Mean Lady WAS going to try to evict him and he doesn't need that kind of harassment. Wherefore, we will both be needing serious compensation for our troubles. About that time, who should walk in but Mean Lady, looking rather the worse for wear. She was pretty surprised to see me already over there! I expressed my confidence to Big Boss that we could resolve the matter promptly with their counsel, and left them to a private, and doubtless interesting, after-action conference. I related this to the client and assured him there was really only ONE complete buffoon in the outfit and the rest of them didn't mean any harm, and that seemed to ease him quite a bit. So, I await their lawyer's call and subsequent big fat settlement check. Until then, it's time to serve The Riddler on the Camco case in another post, and I will consequently doubtless get to hear all the new swear words his associate has learned since last week. Cheerio, fellow warriors ... now, go thou and do likewise.
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