Our Legal System is Rotten to the Core.

Our government has three branches: executive, legislative, and legal.

We could arguably survive just fine without the first two, but even among my dearest friends with anarchical persuasions,  there is consensus that for society to function there must be adherence to a common law. The story I'm going to tell you in this entry is about our current legal system, and how it is a cancer of corruption and cronyism, which permeates our system from small town America, throughout the entire criminal and civil systems, and all the way to the White House.

The legal system favors criminals...

because it is predominantly composed of criminals.

There's plenty of incriminating  documentation and video out there from Wikileaks and Project Veritas that clearly shows (to those that are willing to look at things objectively) the appalling corruption that's running rampant at the highest levels of our government, and that is supported by the modern day Pravda that we refer to as the mainstream media. But my story is from small town America, a small town of less around 10,000, nestled in the California wine country. My story is about a family. Two parents, and three children ages 3, 4 and 7, that got sucked into a year long legal battle with a crazy, criminal neighbor, and her adopted wannabe gangster teenage son.

If you'd like a little more background on how we ended up living next door to these cretins, and more specific details on what has taken place over the last year you can find it in the post below this one.

But for the sake of keeping this concise I'll just share this video with you.




And for a little more background, here's a list of things that these two have done to many of the families that live close by in the last decade or so.

• Countless threats, using gross profanity, to parents and children passing in front of her house that may have stepped a foot on her lawn, or just gotten too close.
• Swerving her car toward children and their parents riding their bikes on the street.
• Personal verbal attacks and threats.
• Threatening numerous neighbors stating that "I have a gun and I know how to use it!"
• Making countless false claims against several neighbors with the police department (she has over 100 calls for service going back to 2010, and presumably another 100 going back to 2004 which is around the time her reign of terror began) and with other city government offices.
• Suspected theft and vandalism.

The accounts listed above came from people that have previously lived in the house in which we currently reside, several other immediate neighbors, other people from the greater neighborhood, and others in town.

My neighbors have been dealing with these criminals for over a decade, and do you know what they've been told when they call to report actual crimes that have been committed?

We're sorry, there's nothing we can do. Your best "legal remedy" is dealing with this in civil court. This is straight from the mouth of the city prosecutor. More on that later.

The tenants that lived in the place where we currently reside actually got together with a few of the neighbors and attempted to get a restraining order against her about a year before we moved in, but they barely got through the front door before the corrupt, bureaucratic system slammed the door in their faces. They gave up, and moved out.

My interactions with these two started about six weeks after we moved in, which was in mid September 2015. Again, more detail is available in the post below. But here's a quick chronological summary of the most significant events:

• October 25th 2015- She calls police and demands that I'm arrested for assault & battery. Result :No action taken.
• October 26th 2015- the little thug son is arrested for Assault and Battery against me. 
• October 27th through late December 2015- multiple false allegations against me called in to the police. Result: No action taken.
• January 4th 2016- I was served with a restraining order protecting her and the son from me. That restraining order was dissolved immediately upon receipt of my response at a hearing several days later.
• February 2nd 2016- A restraining order that I filed against her was granted for the period of 1 year.
• March and April 2016- I sued her and her son in Small Claims Court for Assault and Battery, Defamation of Character, and Malicious Prosecution. All three cases were decided in my favor in front of three different judges. I was awarded almost $13,000 in damages. Less than the limit of $30,000 that I sued for, but still okay.
• June 2016- I obtained an abstract of judgement from the county clerk's office and filed a lien against her house. This action can only be taken 30 days after the judgment is granted, which is the appeal period in the state for small claims cases.
• Late June 2016- I was notified that the cases had been appealed to the Superior Court. I don't understand how this was possible because they weren't supposed to grant me an Abstract of Judgment or let me file the lien against her property if an appeal was filed within 30 days. Nonetheless the appeal was granted, and the three cases were scheduled for a final hearing in Superior Court on 10/26/2016.
• October 26th 2016- I had to argue my cases in front of a new judge, her, and two sleazy hit man lawyers that she hired. Although I still won the cases, my monetary damages were reduced to $2500.

This was my justice? After an entire year of kicking her butt within the only legal avenue available to me- that was it?

$2500.

There is no justice in our system!

I must say that most of the officers and police department staff in our small town understand the situation and sympathize with our plight. They've seen this going on up close and personal for over a decade. But they have no power. Remember the city prosecutor I mentioned earlier? He's the first flunky in the lower echelon of the corrupt county legal system that could have easily put an end to this years ago. But he didn't. Why? 

Two explanations that I can come up with:

1. He's the type of lawyer, and pathetic human being, that is a scourge to humanity. His main objective is to perversely complicate the law to the point where law enforcement is so ineffective that it justifies his existence. It's apparent to me that if his work doesn't involve expropriating revenue from his subjects then it's not worth his time.
2. He has a personal connection to these two, and he goes out of his way to protect them, at the expense of everyone else. This is a speculation on my part, but I've seen too many things happen over the last year that just plain don't add up, and therefore I cannot dismiss the notion. I'll elaborate on this point as more things come to light in the future,

Think of the impact that two people like this can have on an entire neighborhood of families. I know that it's hard to imagine unless you've seen it first hand, but please let me tell you that just two bad apples can take a tremendous toll on the quality of life of the people that surround them. Several families throughout the neighborhood have been terrorized by these two for over a decade!

Many of them thank me for all the effort I've put in to deal with her, but it's not a long term fix. Yes, she's been holed up in her house for the last several months and almost never even goes into her front yard. The neighborhood loves that. But it won't last! She has not learned her lesson, and as soon as we're gone, which won't be long, I'm pretty sure that she'll resume her reign of  terror.

The problem is that the legal system, like much of the rest of government, has lost its way. It's far to big and complicated to function properly.

The only fix is a return to a simpler system. But before that happens the current system has to be blown to pieces.

I don't think that Trump can pull that off, but I'm willing to watch with amusement to see if he can.

Instead of sitting out this election out like I have the last few cycles, I may very well go down to a local voting station and contribute one more great big X to the TRUMP movement.




My X will represent a big F U to the two criminals that plague our neighborhood, the city prosecutor who's inaction has enabled their actions, the two hitmen attorneys she hired that were able to transfer my due restitution from my account to theirs, to the  Obamas, to the Clintons, and to every other parasitical crooked lawyer, and others of their ilk, that has taken part in degrading the fabric of  what America once was into the banana republic which it is on its way to becoming.


One can only imagine how much better the world would be if the amount of lawyers in this world was cut by about 99%. And we just returned to a system where there were only two common laws.

The Two Laws

Do all you have agreed to do.

Do not encroach on other people or their property.

Here's a quote from a book, What Happened to Justice, written by a man that is a champion of truth through simplicity, Richard Maybury.

        "Suppose one person harmed another. The judge would instruct the offender to make restitution to the victim. If the offender refused, the judge could then use a procedure called outlawry. 
         Under outlawry the judge was saying to the perpetrator, "We will not force the law on to you. You have decided to be outside the law, so be it. And since you do not accept the responsibilities of the law, neither shall you have its protections. From now on your legal status shall be no different from that of a rat or any other wild animal outside the law."             The description of this person who had decided to be an outlaw would be publicized. Then anyone, let me emphasize, anyone- could hunt him (or her :-)) down and enslave him, kill him, or perhaps cook and eat him like a rabbit (we won't be taking that route). It was none of the court's business, the outlaw had made his choice. The victim may even might even hire a bounty hunter to track the criminal down and sell him as a beast of burden (this option sounds just fine).
          It's difficult to believe there were many cases in which judges found it necessary to use outlawry."

In a just world the people I referenced above would all be subject to this kind of justice.

       

Rotten... details

Here's a little prologue before I get into my dealings with " The Law."

We left our long time home in the southern part of the San francisco bay area to experience the lifestyle of a smaller, more rural, town. I have roots in this town going back to my childhood when I attended first through third grade here, and I still have family here including my mom, my aunt and uncle, and my closest cousin. We're not sure if this is going to be home for us so we decided to rent a place very close to the center of town, walking distance to the three schools that our children attend, and from my mom's house.

Although the place isn't an ideal place for us for the long term it couldn't be any better for us geographically for the time being. And since the town we live in is among the most desirable places to live in this part of the state (and arguably the entire country) the inventory is often very slim. That's especially prevalent now in an era when the wealth effect from the fed's QE and ZIRP policies is driving a boom of epic proportions. Let's just say that though not ideal, we were very happy to find something that checked most of our boxes.

As I said, we live in a townhouse, but these are the homes directly across the street from us in either direction. It's a pretty nice neighborhood. Not what one would suspect from what I'll describe and show below.

                                                                           

Back to the neighbors. We were warned by the agent listing the rental that the immediate neighbor, with whom we share a common wall (it's like a large townhouse in the middle of a neighborhood of mostly single family homes. She owns one side of the townhouse, and the people that we're renting from own the other), had a history with most of the prior tenants as being problematic. After disclosing some of the details we figured it couldn't be too bad if we just stayed clear, plus we were looking into an opportunity that could have taken us out of the country at the time, and didn't really have any intentions of staying too long. We moved in with a moth to month rental agreement, which is pretty much unheard of in this area. Especially now.

Although the old witch (she's about 60, and if you died her hair black and handed her a broom she could serve as the image of the quintessential wicked witch) did introduce herself with feigned welcomeness, during the days while we were moving in in mid September of 2015, it was abundantly evident,  after a brief introduction, to STEER CLEAR. Which we did.

Within days of moving in we were meeting a lot of our other neighbors at the local park, which is a half a block from our house. We were very familiar with the park, as we had been to it several times in the past, but we knew very few people from the neighborhood. These people are great! All of them. And many have become good friends over the last year.

Our kids play at the park with all of the other kids on almost a daily basis, they ride their bikes all over the place, swing on swings, and, to the dismay of all of the parents- play in the sand. We often have meals in the park all together  on warm evenings, and several times during the summer and early fall we st up a large screen and projector in the middle of the lawn and watch a kid's movie. One of the times earlier this summer, on a beautiful warm night, I counted over forty parents and kids out on the lawn, eating popcorn and cookies and sipping their beverage of choice. The only concerning thought in the back of all of the parent's mind probably was: how painlessly can we get the kids to bed when this is over? It's truly a special little place.

Back to the witch. When we initially met most of our new friends at the park and told them which place we moved into, their collective jaws literally dropped in many cases. You moved in next to them? Weren't you warned? How could they possibly have rented that place out after what happened to the last tenants!!

What? Please tell us more. Or do we want to know?

Yes, were warned, but they didn't tell us THAT! And that, and that, and the other story!!!

I'm not going to elaborate on all of that in this article because I want to get to summarize my legal battles, its conclusion, and how I believe it's so relative to the current state of our country, and the upcoming election.

But just for a little background, I will say that among the documented offenses, which include countless police reports (at least 30) and incidents recorded from many of the surrounding neighbors going back over ten years, committed  by the witch and her adopted criminal, include the following:

• Countless threats, using gross profanity, to parents and children passing in front of her house that may have stepped a foot on her lawn, or just gotten too close.
• Swerving her car toward children and their parents riding their bikes on the street.
• Personal verbal attacks and threats.
• Threatening numerous neighbors stating that "I have a gun and I know how to use it!"
• Making countless false claims against several neighbors with the police department (she has over 100 calls for service going back to 2010, and presumably another 100 going back to 2004 which is around the time her reign of terror began) and with other city government offices. All but one of her claims that I'm aware of have never been acted upon. The one instance I know that was enforced was when she complained that a resident down the street was operating a home business without a permit from the city, which probably had little to no impact on her whatsoever.
• Suspected theft and vandalism
• There's more, I'm just drawing a blank at the moment. But watch the video below and see what you think.

The accounts listed above came from people that have previously lived in the house in which we currently reside, several other immediate neighbors, other people from the greater neighborhood, and others in town.

Although, I'd since heard many of the stories bulleted above, I had only experienced one brief instance of the witch's antisocial behavior. And although it was offensive, it was something I was able to quickly shrug off , and I did not feel the need to address it with her directly.

That is until that day, October 25th 2015, that put an unwarranted damper on our lives for most of the past year. It would take dozens of pages (or perhaps a short book) to document and explain all that we've been through in the last year, and that's not the point of what I'm writing about today, so I'm going to briefly summarize the major events of the last year.

I'll preface this with a reminder that we have three children, who at the time were two, three, and six. They are admittedly loud at times, but no more than any other family with three young children that age. Our two year old was going through a stage where he was throwing fits where he'd scream pretty loudly, and sometimes for up to a few minutes at at time. These episodes weren't happening daily, but it did go on pretty frequently for several weeks. With that said, we have two other neighbors, who are much more in the trajectory of where the laughing, crying and screaming originates, that weren't bothered at all. In fact, although we didn't know them very well at the time, they told us that they really didn't even remember any instances of excessive noise coming from the house, or from the front or back yards.

On the morning of October 25th 2015, at about 8:30 a.m. I headed out for a walk with my then two year old youngest son, in his stroller. The witch confronted me in the sidewalk as soon as I rounded the corner out of our driveway and stepped into the sidewalk that's directly in front of her house. She verbally assaulted me very loudly and used expletives to describe her view (she didn't know us at all) of who we were. I really don't remember exactly what she said, but some of the words I recall were: spoiled, brats, unfit parents, no control of your little brats, child protective services, etc.

I don't respond well to these types of false claims, especially from people like her. My response was equally as loud and full of expletives that I'm not especially proud of using (especially in public and in front of my family). The gist of my words for her were very simple: "your reputation precedes you, and if you think that you're gonna get away with the things you've done in the past with me- you've got another thing coming. Watch your steps very closely from this point forward." that's paraphrasing, I don't remember exactly what I said.  We were very close to each other, but there was no physical contact.

When I turned away from her and started to proceed down the sidewalk toward the park she placed herself uncomfortably close to my son in his stroller. I then pushed ahead, and by her as she was standing on the edge of the sidewalk. There was incidental contact as my shoulder brushed against her as I passed; contact that she could have easily avoided by getting out of my way. Due to the contact she had to step off of the edge of the sidewalk and into the street. That's when she claimed that I had assaulted her. I didn't respond and proceeded to walk to the park. She followed me about half way down the street to the park calling me all kinds of names and telling me what a loser I was, as well as berating the person that I apparently was in her mind. She was making assumptions about our character and financial status that she had absolutely no idea about.

Basically, in her eyes I was a middle age white unemployed loser that couldn't afford a decent house for his snivelling, loud, spoiled brats and trailer trash foreigner wife.

When she finished her tirade she told me again that I assaulted her, and that she was going to call the police. I encouraged her to, and told her that I'd even call for her.

A sheriff deputy was out shortly after. He took her statement, and then came over to get mine. He told me that she wanted me arrested, but he wasn't inclined to do that because he had dealt with her in the past and didn't  necessarily believe her account. He did say that he had to conduct an investigation by looking for witnesses in several of the surrounding houses. He was thorough, and in the end only found one witness, from the house directly across the street from us. She saw and heard almost all of the confrontation, and pretty much completely  described the confrontation as I had in my account. After completing his investigation the deputy apologized for the inconvenience, encouraged me to submit a statement of what happened in the next few days so that my side of the story was documented in their records, and left. That was the beginning of what evolved into the following events over the course of one year.

Later that day her juvenile adopted son stormed out of the house as I approached the sidewalk in front of their house as I was returning from the park, again with my youngest son. He verbally assaulted me and a neighbor who came to my defense from his porch for a couple of minutes. Eventually he stormed out onto the sidewalk in front of his house and shoved me as hard as he could. We have a video of the event that my wife recorded from our driveway that she began recording  after hearing all of the yelling coming from next door. He had been drinking, and most likely smoking pot.

The event led to his arrest (they didn't actually arrest him, they just cited him. Nowadays they don't arrest people for most misdemeanors- too expensive). He was charged with assault and battery.

From that point forward taking revenge on me was her sole purpose in life. They had somehow

Over the following couple of months she made several calls to the police making false allegations against me ranging from threatening her, to vandalizing her property, and then to stalking her. All were investigated and dismissed. By this time I knew almost all of the officers in the local sheriff's department, and when she'd make an allegation against me they'd just call me on my cell and ask me what was up. I'd tell them, and then they just started blowing her off.

When she exhausted the avenues for exploiting the system in our small town she turned to the county and filed an illegal restraining order against me. Illegal of course because it was completely made up.

I was served with the order on Monday afternoon, January 4th 2016, just after coming home from picking up my daughter at school. I was at that point in time ordered to stay at least 30 feet away from her and her son until my hearing date, which was scheduled for the following Tuesday. I was also ordered to turn in my guns to the local police department within 24 hours. That  of course didn't happen, and that's all I'll say about that right now.

I was in shock. I couldn't believe that as corrupt, inefficient, and perverted as I already knew our legal system  had become, that a judge could actually grant a temporary restraining order against a citizen with an immaculate record, based solely on several unsubstantiated claims.

The paperwork was actually filed with the county on December 21st,  and apparently was in the delivery basket of the of the local police department just before Christmas. I was later told by one of the deputies that he'd seen it there and just didn't have the heart to ruin our holidays by delivering the order during the season. I really appreciated that, because it definitely would have. Most of the deputies that I've dealt with over the last year are genuinely good guys, and I really have a lot of respect for many of them. They still haven't been corrupted by their surroundings, but that fate is inevitable. More on that later.

The events of the last year are by far the most interaction I've ever had with our legal system, and I've only had two other direct (I've had one or two others in some business dealings, but nothing I ever had to deal with directly) tastes of our system in my life, both of which were very foul.

I almost completely lost faith with our legal system almost twenty years ago. After breaking off a long term relationship with a long term girlfriend in early 1998 she made up a story that I had assaulted her. The police came and arrested me, and banged me up pretty well in the process. I was very surprised to see police coming to my door as I had absolutely no idea that they were coming for me. I answered the door thinking they'd made a mistake and before I knew it both guys were on top of me and my face was being forced into the ground.

She was a very pretty girl, and apparently pretty convincing.

The only problem was that her story was that of a disgruntled ex that had just been broken up with by the man that she  presumably thought that she was going to marry. Of course there's much more to the story than that, but the bottom line was that her story was false. I was charged with a battery domestic violence and resisting arrest. Neither of which I was even close to being guilty of.

I hired a lawyer and vowed to go to trial. I was never going to consider bargaining on charges that were absolutely false. I later heard it through the grapevine that her story wasn't adding up with the prosecutor and that she did not want to take the matter to trial. But the crooked Marin County DA's office had a problem on their hands. They had roughed up an innocent man while arresting him for a crime that he didn't commit.

What to do now? My naive young ass thought that I'd get an apology and the case would be dropped. That's the idealistic view held by young Americans that haven't yet been exposed to the cronyism, thuggery, and blatant dishonesty that makes up our legal system, and many other government agencies and institutions.

Of course not, dropping the case would be an admission of guilt on the part of the gun toting wannabe real men, that plague the ranks of  law enforcement throughout the country, and world. These are of course the guys that give the good ones, like the many that I've dealt with over the last year, a very bad name. So the corrupt, crony, dishonest DA, whose main goal is to justify their existence and protect the cavalry, dragged the case out for well over a year. This cost me well over $10k in attorney's fees, which was a hell of a lot of money for me at the time. A good chunk of it was paid for by credit cards that I eventually paid off, in full.

Finally, after scaring me with the costs and potential consequences of losing at trial, I plead People vs. West, which is tantamount to No Contest, which of course  is, in the eyes of the legal system,  GUILTY to one count of resisting arrest. The only charge they needed a verdict on to save their asses from a lawsuit, and that's all they cared about. That was one of the hardest years of my life. I lost 15 pounds going from 165 down to under 150 at times, and I caved to the pressure. The domestic violence charge was of course dropped. I walked away with some very small fines and a slap on the hand. I regret the decision of not going to trial to this day!

My second interaction with the system came more recently. After fifteen years in business for myself I was sued by a subcontractor that I fired. It was a firm from outside my network that purportedly claimed to specialize in the unconventional installation of window frames and sash. They sued me and the homeowner seeking the balance of the contract which was about $25k. We agreed to fire them after witnessing the substandard work they were performing on a highly critical and complex installation. They had been paid a deposit of about $7500 on a contract of about $32500. Most of the work that they'd performed up to that point needed to be redone.

Again I was shocked that we could be sued by these clowns. Any legal clerk at the superior court with minimal intelligence should have denied the petition for the civil suit based on the chicken scratch documentation they submitted to support their case. Of course that's not how our system works, the system is in the business of creating a backlog in the courts that ultimately justifies their existence, at least in their eyes, and of those that profit from the whole charade.

We "won" that case after a year of greasing the slimy hands of the "professionals" that support the industry. It cost us over $20k of legal fees and a ton of my time. We had the opportunity to proceed with our countersuit of about $70k, plus attorney's fees, but my client had had enough and just wanted it to be over with. We definitely would have won this one had we taken it all the way to trial, but it would have taken at least another six months or so, and another $40k- $50k in attorney's fees, and he definitely wasn't worth it. He was just another ground soldier of the legal mafia. I also regret not having taken that all the way, but I couldn't do it on my own.

Now that you're up to speed on my previous encounters with our lovely legal system, let me get back to my crazy witch neighbor. After the restraining order was served to me I was in shock for a couple of days. I had no idea what to do or how the process worked. I spent hours reading through every word of the boiler plate restraining order documents (about 6 pages) and the accompanying 5 pages of chicken scratch that summarized her allegations against me. After going to the county courthouse, which was a two hour round trip drive from our house, and getting the forms I needed to respond to the complaint, I got to work. Little did I know at that time that I'd have to make that trip over 15 times in the following several months to deal with what was in front of me.

I spent dozens of hours during the week leading up to the hearing date constructing my defense. This was pretty serious, if a restraining order is granted against someone it's close to having been found guilty of a crime. You're name comes up in the system as a potential danger to society, you're not allowed to own guns for the duration of the order, you're susceptible to many other restrictions listed in the order, and the possibility of the person falsely claiming that the order was violated.

By the way, during the week that I was subject to the restrictions of the temporary restraining order (TRO), the witch made two false claims to the police department saying that I'd violated the order. They called me to get my side of the story before even responding to her directly, and in both cases wrote up reports that helped me out a lot in future court hearings.

Are you asking yourself yet how the police can let her get away with al of these lies and false allegations? How is it that she and her hoodlum son don't already have a criminal record? The fact is that many of the street cops and several of the employees at the police station know exactly what's going on, and would love to have the opportunity to see her in jail, (several have personally told me this off the record) but they have absolutely no power. The power, and corruption, begins at the higher levels. I'll get back to this in a bit.

My response to her 5 pages of chicken scratch false allegations consisted of a complete and thorough response to each of her allegations; documents from our local police department summarizing all of her prior interactions with the police department, most of which were false claims she had made against others over the years, which totaled about 40 pages of redacted documents. I was initially told by the clerks at the PD that getting those types of documents in less than a matter of weeks was almost unheard of, but they sympathized with my plight, and gathered them all up in two days; the rest of my documents consisted of declarations from about nine of my closest neighbors, I could have had more, but some people just didn't want to get involved, some fearing future revenge from the witch. In the end my response was an unprecedented 80 pages of substantive and immaculately organized documentation, pictures,  and a disk including some video evidence. I don't think the presiding judge had ever seen anything quite like it.

Oh, and while I was putting in all of this effort I figured that it would take a marginal amount of extra effort to just go ahead and file a restraining order against her. So I did. When we arrived at the hearing the bailiff came out into the hallway outside of the courtroom to have us sign some papers. We (my wife, some neighbors, and a couple other witnesses) were a little ways a way when the bailiff asked her to sign a document as the plaintiff in the case. After that he pulled up another document and asked her to sign. We could hear her say "I'm not the defendant." It was great, we all had a good laugh.

And from that point forward I never saw that smug look on her face again. But I suspect that I may, change, at least for a short while, in the immediate future.

Due to the extensive size of my response and all of the witnesses that I had the hearing was continued several times over the next few weeks, but the TRO that she had against me was dissolved immediately, much to her further dismay. And in the sprit of maintaining efficiency I figured that since I'm here I may as well sue her in Small Claims Court for Assault and Battery (against her and her son), Malicious Prosecution, and Defamation of Character.

On February 2nd 2016, just before entering the courtroom to hear the verdicts for the the restraining orders, my wife Erika served her with the papers for the three small claims cases. About an hour later we exited the courtroom.

I was at that point completely free and clear. She walked out under the restrictions of a restraining order, and with three civil suits on her hands.

In the months that followed we were in and out of court several times due to her lies and manipulation of the system of which I won't elaborate on here. But after several trials in small claims court in front of three different judges, motions to vacate, trials de novo, and trips up to the courthouse where the system just plain screwed up and wasted a day of my time I was eventually awarded about $13,000 in damages. I was seeking $30k, so I wasn't too thrilled with the outcome, but it was better than nothing, and it was a lot to her. I always knew she wouldn't pay so I just filed a lien against her house and would be happy to collect 10% annual interest until she had to pay up. If she didn't pay up until the day she died it was fine with me. Game over.

Or not?

You see, in the great People's Republic of California, if you lose a case in Small Claims Court you have the right to appeal that case to Superior Court and be represented by a lawyer, at your expense of course. But what about the person that filed suit in Small Claims Court? That person most likely did that because they didn't want to deal with the complexities and expenses of dealing with a lawyer.

Too bad.

But wait, any appeal in the PRoC, must be based on a legal mistake made in the course of the trials, and ONLY if that mistake affected the outcome of the trial. An appeal may NOT be granted for the sole purpose of having one's case heard by another judge. But those rules don't apply to Small Claims cases. Why? Got me! No explanation given on the .CA website, and good luck getting an explanation from anyone else.

Now I had to make my case in front of a judge that knows absolutely nothing about my cases, in a rushed environment, by myself, and against two attorneys. The proceedings took almost 4 hours, and I just simply wasn't prepared for that. I  thought driving up there that day that the request for appeal would have been denied, and that I'd have been out of there in less than half an hour with with the judgements that I'd already won in front of three other judges.


In the end I still won, but the amount I was awarded got cut from $13,000 down to $2500. I believe that the judge treated me fairly throughout the proceedings, but I also feel that he had absolutely no appreciation for what she had put me through over the last year, and that he had at least partially succumbed to her feigned crying on the stand, playing the part of the innocent victim, and the disgraceful efforts of the two attorneys to take everything that they could dig up on me, including the irrelevant issues that I've noted previously, in their attempts to berate and belittle me on issues completely irrelevant to the cases on hand.

But even though I still technically walked out of there with wins; the system, the criminal, and her two hired hitmen got the last laughs. And I got to make the final drive home a beaten man.

This ended up way longer than I'd ever anticipated. It was therapeutic to get everything into words, and for anyone that has taken the time to hear my story, thank you very much.