Small Claims

Yesterday K and I went to small claims court to destroy the company that sold and serviced the water filter that exploded and flooded our place a couple of years ago. This warlike rhetoric comes easily for some reason. "Destroy" prevails over "beat." "Crush" wins over "beat." "Emasculate" beats "beat."

In short, being in court makes me aggro.

I loved everything about small claims: this weird Wild West version of the judicial system, the scoping out of everybody in the hallway (wondering who you're going to be up against), the unprepared riff-raff, the people coming in from off the street into the wrong courtroom or on the wrong day, the elderly Russian couple who talked loudly during the whole afternoon (earning the continued ire of the bailiff and the clerk), the bailiff who looked like a short angry version of Uncle Fester who stalked over to the man behind me and pointed sharply at his own head (please remove your hat, I translated), the crazy plaintiffs with no case, the crazier defendants who showed up even less prepared, the window into debased human existences.

Completely entertaining.

And I loved the process of building a case, doing the research, anticipating our adversary's line of argument, refuting it, and then delivering the performance of this water-tight reasoning in front of a judge. I enjoyed my last session of jury duty as well. I'm learning that the law can be fascinating, even when the details of the case itself are boring. And, in our case, it came down to who was better prepared, not who was the most brilliant. We were shocked at how unprepared the enemy (defendant) was. We were shocked that the crux of their defense was "They signed on the line that the filter was fixed when the service tech left" (even thought the filter exploded 30 hours later).

As one of our lawyer friend/relatives said about this defense, "Yeah, that never works."

We were better prepared, we won. How gratifying is that? It's the opposite of Hollywood -- it's like an advertisement for hard work or something.

Mostly I loved hearing the following words, which are the sweetest words in the English language:

"Judgment is for the plaintiff, for the full amount."