The patent and Legal System does suck. And the Judges don't answer to anyone. That's why this concept is become borked, because no one simply cares anymore--too much apathy in the United States to FORCE accountability from our higher-up who theoretically are all responsible to the people
A Haiku about Haiku
Haikus are quite cool
But some of them make no sense.
Refrigerator.
I'm another victim of the contemptible, despicable legal system vs all the liberty and justice you can buy. I don't refer to the criminal system although there also resides injustice. I realize most culpable people and entities are successfully prosecuted and some justice is served, at least accidentally, but chances are facts will be ignored, testimony suppressed, and there is blatant, wanton disregard and obliteration of both letter and spirit of the law.
Such is my case with the Santa Clara (San Jose) civil legal system. I am a 50-year contractor with a clean record not many can claim, greatly experienced in the mobile home industry. I lived in New Mexico and Southern California and was contacted by a liberal fledgling woman real estate "developer" I contracted with to move her double-wide mobile home (I invented them) from a San Jose mobile home park to private Watsonville property, dismantling and preparing for the move when I flew up to check out the job and collect my first check. This married owner “had to go by her apartment” to get the check and invited me up to see her etchings, which I decline and the job went downhill from that point. It took me about 30 days to find a qualified transporter to move the 2 sections because they were too busy with new factory deliveries at that time. There were factory problems with the axles both prior to the move and on the freeway the owner was obligated to remedy. I offered to go there but she said “Don’t worry, I can handle it.” all of which was allowed by my contract.
Soon after the move during torrential rains she contacted me about hiring another contractor (she already had) to finish the job and asked for half, then all her $14K back. I declined of course, whereupon she threatened me with legal action. I explained that she would be held responsible for paying the balance of my contract or at least my lost overhead and profit. At that point, I still had faith in the legal system and thought it may be alive and well in the Northern California jurisdiction, especially since this was such a cut and dry case. It wasn’t, she sued me and I hired the first lawyer, who soon afterwards moved further North and withdrew from the case, leaving me unrepresented for a time during which I was ill with prostate problems I was being treated for surgically and was unable to make one of the pivotal hearings. I requested an extension, sending copies to the court and plaintiff’s barracuda lawyer that was summarily denied because it wasn’t in their strict format. This is when it hit me that I was in shark infested waters.
I finally hired another attorney, but he was inept. Binding arbitration was agreed to and held, where the plaintiff appeared to make her impassioned plea; we both testified and furnished exhibits but the arbitrator already knew what he was going to do, issuing his findings about 30 minutes after the hearing as I was on the road driving back home. This bum gave that plaintiff a $100K judgment against me using her brief and testimony verbatim. The plaintiff did not deny the rain but the arbitrator did, who also found that I’d cited the wrong contractual provision that allowed for delays in material instead the one right below that which allowed for delays due to rain. My lawyer’s simple mistake; and if that weren’t bad enough, this idiot even claimed there had been no rain. He even condemned my being out of the area. Contractors work from outside of an area, another state, even another country but this never-mind-the-facts arbitrator is biased and despicable.
They were all in collusion, tarring and feathering me. However, the arbitrator disallowed judgment against a long inactivated corporation but the damned court rubber-stamped the judgment and plaintiff’s attorney began to also move against that old, non-existent corporation as well. I was powerless to stop any of this rape. And equally bad, I am barred from bringing action against them for anything but malpractice and bar association complaints, but try finding an attorney to move against them since this was “binding” arbitration. And for that matter, try getting anybody at the bar association or judicial performance to intelligently, thoroughly, objectively look at a case and act accordingly. They did not, summarily dismissing my complaints then upholding them. Amazing. Just amazing. And I didn’t stop there, I tried every advocate, attorney and venue I could find on the internet all with the same apathy.
So, if you’re from out of the area and need justice for your cause in San Jose, forget it if they hire Gregory Gentile, Judge McKenny hears it and the arbitrator is David Sylva. It’ll be awhile before make the pledge of allegiance again.