It
seemed like I was never going to hear from Charmayne regarding my judgment against
her. I sent the Sheriff the Transcript
of Judgment form I’d obtained from the County Clerk, along with an Income Execution for garnishing Charmayne's wages, and a check for the Sheriff’s fee of
$22.75.
About
a month later, I was reading a notice from Greatest Pest Control about a $1.07 increase in their monthly maintenance fee, when Giselle called to report that
the walls in the second bedroom were now beginning to crack. An overworked Wim added it to his list.
By
this time, my house had been on the market eight months, and I’d only received
one measly inquiry which never amounted to anything.
Giselle
managed to find a job, and shortly afterwards Social Services sent me a notice that
they were terminating her #rental assistance.
“Great,”
I muttered, remembering what had happened when they'd terminated Charmayne’s assistance: goodbye #security #deposit! Giselle took over paying her own #rent, and although the money orders
always arrived late, at least they arrived!
It
had been a while since I’d sent Charmayne’s Income Execution to the Sheriff, so
I gave him a call. The Sheriff's office
informed me that they’d been unable to serve it because Charmayne was on
disability.
When had they been planning on telling me that?
If
I were to ever get anywhere with Charmayne, it seemed I needed to take a circuitous
route. Working in a lawyer's office helped me figure it out. The plan was to serve Charmayne with an Information Subpoena. She would almost
certainly ignore it as she had ignored everything else. I would then serve a Summons upon her to appear
in Court to explain her default. If she
failed to show up in Court, I could get a warrant issued for her
arrest.
These
measures might sound rather severe and over the top, but I’d got the hell in
and was determined to make her pay. The Information Subpoena demanded Charmayne's current address and bank account
information. It also asked about pending lawsuits and identification of attorneys. I mailed the subpoena to the Sheriff and
settled down to wait. I knew it could
take a while.
Finally,
on November 15th, the Sheriff's Department very enterprisingly discovered that
Charmayne had moved to a new address.
They served the Information Subpoena upon her and notified me of the
address. A month went by with no response from Charmayne. Being otherwise occupied with preparations
for Christmas and visiting relatives, I didn’t have time to follow up on it
just then.
Another
dismal report arrived from Wally the #realtor.
The market was about the same. In
fact, #properties seemed to be selling for a little less.
He
called me at the end of November. “It’s bin three months. You wanna renew?”
‘Will
it cost me another hundred and fifty?” I asked.
“Nope. From now on, renewals are free. You wanna drop another five thousand to
forty-nine-nine?”
“Sure,
whatever. Go ahead.”
*
* * * * * *
It had been a while and I'd seen neither hide nor hair of Diane. However, in October,
November, and December, the Department of Social Services had been sending me notices that
they were either terminating or reducing her rental payments. These had been quickly followed by more
notices stating that she had been
reinstated. Clearly, something
was going on with Diane’s case but at least #D.S.S. was still sending me the
full rent.
In
January, however, Social Services paid only $300.00 of Diane’s rent. I had the
feeling this did not bode well for the future.
Indeed, I soon received another notice advising me
that, as of February first, D.S.S. would be closing Diane's case, once and for
all.
Goodbye security deposit. Yet
again.
Without much hope, I wrote Diane
a letter, asking her to pay the balance of January's rent.
February
was fast approaching, and Diane still hadn’t responded to my letter. I sent her
a second letter requesting the rent and asking her to get in touch with me. On February 9th, I sent a third letter,
advising her that if she didn’t pay up by February 16th, I would have to serve
eviction papers on her. I sent Giselle a
copy of the letter in the hope that she might have some influence over her errant
cousin. Maybe it worked because Diane
called soon afterwards. She told me her sister had just died and that she would
try to pay me the balance of her rent as soon as she could.
Funny ... Giselle never mentioned anything about
a cousin dying.
Meanwhile,
I had to do something about Charmayne. I
asked one of the lawyers at work for advice.
"I believe my #tenant has a personal injury lawsuit on the go,"
I told him. "Is there some way I
can put a #lien on any #settlement she might receive?"
Friendly
Lawyer scratched his chin, thoughtfully.
"Hm, let me think. Yes, I
think you can serve her lawyer with a Restraining Notice to Garnishee. Then, if she receives a settlement check, your
judgment and his fees will come out of that first before she gets any money."
"Okay,"
I nodded. "I've got some of those
forms."
"First,
you need to look in the file at the court house to see what papers have been
filed," Friendly Lawyer reminded me.
"Will
do. Thanks."
That
evening, I drafted a letter to the Schemmerhorn County Clerk, asking if there
was any action on file brought by Charmayne Brown. A few days later, the answer came back. Yes, there was an action pending but the
Clerk’s Office required $5.00 to make copies for me. I duly sent the money and received a copy of
the Summons and Complaint. Charmayne and
another girl were suing the driver and the manufacturer of the car for personal
injury damages caused by the motor vehicle accident.
Great.
Now I had something to go on.
I
called the attorney listed for the plaintiff, Charmayne Brown. A woman answered the phone.
"Can
I speak to Mr. Pecker?"
"He's
not in at the moment. Can I help you
with something?"
"I'm
calling about Brown vs. Monster Bins Motors."
"Where
are you calling from?"
I
gave her the name of my employer, thinking it might get me a bit further. You know. Like in a legal-secretary-buddy-network-we're-all-in-this-funny-law-business-together
kind of thing. I did add, however, that this matter was personal.
"Can
you tell me the name of the attorney for the defendant?" I asked.
Sounding
somewhat suspicious, the woman gave me the name of some outfit located south of
St. Albans.
"And
the co-defendants?" I asked.
"Why,
you are," the woman answered, sounding surprised that I didn’t know
this.
"Oh
… um … okay. Well, this is a very large
firm. It's probably in another department." I thanked her quickly and hung up.
"Gawd,"
as Diane would say. Now what should I
do? I had a feeling that my firm wouldn’t
be able to help me now – conflict of interest, and all that. When I told Friendly Lawyer what I’d
learned, he was surprised too. Ours was
a very large firm, though, employing more than twenty attorneys.
"Sorry
I can't help you," he said, ruefully. "You'll have to handle it on your
own."
"I
hate to serve my own employer with a restraining notice," I said. "They might fire me. Maybe I could just
go after the defendant and leave the co-defendants alone?”
"I
think you can go ahead,” said Friendly Lawyer. “Don’t worry about being fired.
You can't help it that you work here. It
‘s just a conflict of interest if I help you. You're not allowed to peek in the file, of course."
"Of course."
"If
the action just started,” he continued, “there'll be depositions and discovery going on. You know how long those can take. I’d say you've got some time."
*
* * * * * *
Around
the middle of February, Wally called and told me that another realtor had a
client who was expressing interest in the house. “I’ll call you when I have
more info,” he said.
The
next day he called back. “Sorry, they
decided the house was too small. The
client has three grandchildren and a sister living with her.”
I sighed. “I’m
beginning to think I’m never going to sell this damn place.”
“You
might want to consider . . .” Wally began.
“I
know, I know … dropping it another five thousand. If nothing happens by the end of March, why
don’t we make it forty-five? Sounds
like a nice round figure.”
*
* * * * * * *
I still had not heard from Diane, and since she still didn’t have a phone, I
called Giselle. She told me that Diane
had found a job at the same place where she herself was working. She also told me Social Services shouldn't have cut her off from rental assistance, since she
had four children to support. Giselle had only two. She promised to tell Diane to phone me as
soon as possible.
“Of
course she didn't,” I reported to Allen, later that Friday evening, “but
after I served her with a three-day eviction notice, she did send me a money
order for three hundred dollars and promised to pay more soon.”
We
were on our way to the skating rink where Allen played ice hockey with a team
from the local university’s Biology Department.
This left me several hours in which to amuse myself before going to the
rink to watch him play the last half-hour or so. Usually, I went to see a movie that Allen
didn’t care to see — horror or suspense – at the old, run-down theater complex
where Allen and I had seen Wayne’s World on our first date. The air
conditioning sometimes didn’t work, and you never knew which seats were going
to be covered with plastic because the roof had leaked. All the movies
had been playing on the circuit for a while before ending up at the old complex,
and the film was sometimes rather scratched as a result. But, they only cost
$2.99, which suited my stingy pocket just fine.
Afterwards, I’d go to my nearby gym, or go to the
gym first and then see the movie if the timing worked out that way.
That
Friday I saw the 6:35 p.m. showing of Deep Impact and thoroughly enjoyed it. Another movie I wanted to see was starting
soon after Deep Impact ended, and I was
tempted to make it a double-feature and forget about working out. I dutifully got
into my car and pointed it in the direction of the gym. Once I got
there, I’d feel virtuous at having resisted temptation. When I realized my gym shorts weren’t in my
bag, it didn’t take me long to decide that this must be an omen. Obviously I was meant to return to the
theater. With good intentions of making it to the gym the next day, I watched Disturbing
Behavior about a wicked psychiatrist implanting things in rebellious
teenagers’ brains to make them “good.”
Afterwards,
I went to the ice rink to watch the last of the hockey game. I should really go at the beginning if I
wanted to catch Allen making enthusiastic saves and goals. By the last half-hour, he was usually so
tired, he could hardly drag himself around the ice.
Seated
on the top row of the uncomfortable metal bleachers beneath a feeble heat lamp, I
couldn’t help wondering at how much the team had improved. Of course, there were the young guys who’d
played hockey in school and were good and fast, but the rest of the players
were a mix of students and professors, most of whom had never played hockey before until forming the Lab Rats league.
Indeed, when they first started playing a year-and-a-half ago, they were pretty
awful. Half of them couldn’t skate
forwards very well, so skating backwards was out of the question. Instead, some of them would skate forwards
while looking over their shoulder at the approaching puck, then swipe vigorously
at it as it slid past them. Half the time the puck would sail on by, untouched,
and the skater would land on his or her butt on the ice. Being a college-hockey fan, and thus used to a
higher level of play, I found it very funny watching this lot and was reduced to giggles a lot
of the time. I guess they would have laughed
too if they’d had occasion to observe my geriatric ballet classes.
*
* * * * *
March
arrived but Diane’s rent did not. As the
middle of the month approached, I sent her a letter requesting the rent for
March and reminding her of her promise to pay more for January and
February.
She didn’t respond.
At the end of March, I asked Friendly Lawyer
to sign an official-looking letter on the firm's letterhead, demanding rent
pursuant to Real Property Action and Proceeding Law, Section 711(2). Then I served another three-day #eviction
notice on her via process server.
When
I spoke to Giselle about it, she claimed that Diane could definitely afford the
rent because she was now receiving monthly disability checks for one of her children.
I’d had enough. Just pay the frickin’ rent already!
