I'll See You In Court!

You remember me saying that FI-ance and I had to go to court last Wednesday? It's house related, and considering the issues we've had since moving in that shouldn't be a surprise for you, really.

We're suing the previous owner of our house. See, one of the conditions of us buying this place from her was that she set us up with a new roof, which the home inspector dude said we'd need. So, she put up the money for it, signing a contract with a roofer and handing a check over to the title company. Around May of last year, when we hadn't heard from the roofer, I started calling the number on the contract. All it did was ring. No answering machine, no secretary, no voice mail. Not a good sign.

In October, after months of calling the roofer, the realtor and then having the realtor call the previous owner lady (POL), we decided to sue. We sent POL a certified letter saying we got bids from REAL roofers who could actually be contacted and told her that if she'd just fork over the money we'd consider things done. Instead of paying, she called the realtor, who then called me while I was on my way home from my former job and pissed me off by trying to tell me who we can or can't sue when realtor lady IS NOT a lawyer.

We also got a couple of calls from one of the partners in the roofing company we could never contact. So suddenly, after trying for months to reach this fucker, after word of suing goes around NOW he knows how to use the phone. Anyway, he gave FI-ance a sob story about his business partner ruining things and screwing up all the files and contracts and begged to do the work. FI-ance said no. He told him to pay us the money that POL gave him so we could call it a day. We then sent him a letter covering our terms, giving him a deadline and telling him to pay up by that date or we'd sue.

Guess what? He didn't pay us either. Even though he agreed to do so over the phone when he talked to FI-ance.

Now, since the only contract we had was between us and POL, we're suing her. And if she needs to sue the roofer to get her dough back...fine.

The catch in all this is that even though we sent the papers and money to the appropriate department to get POL served so that she'd know we were finally actually suing her, they were never served because, apparently, they never got the shit in the mail. GOD. DAMMIT. So we show up in court last week and ended up having to file for new papers to be made so that we can then get the new copies to the appropriate department AGAIN along with the money for serving costs AGAIN so we can go to court AGAIN in March. Crap.

Also, if we win (which we think we will), how do we make sure POL pays us in a timely fashion?

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Photo above: Endless Vortex of Anger