My parents sold their house some time back to, I found out today, a former Olympic athlete. For privacy’s sake I won’t mention the sport or nationality. I called my mom today because my dad’s back in the hospital with a blood clot in his leg and in the course of the conversation she mentions that this fine example of the Olympic spirit and his bitch of a wife (mother’s words) have sued my mother (since the house was in her name), two home inspectors and the realtor, alleging that they all conspired to conceal active termite infestation. The suit’s been going on for a while but they never mentioned it to me for whatever reason before today. I’m so pissed off at these fucks I can’t think straight.
Apparently the nitwits were renovating and a wall in a back bedroom area collapsed. Notwithstanding that these idiots yanked a line of 20+ year old bushes out of the ground right next to the wall with a chain attached to a trailer hitch (no chance the root systems were at all infiltrated into the wall, huh dumbasses). notwithstanding that two different home inspectors found no evidence of active infestation, notwithstanding that my parents had actually replaced all the rotted studs in that wall before putting the house on the market, notwithstanding that the fuckers had to shop around to several home inspectors before finding one shady enough to claim infestation and notwithstanding that my parents agreed as part of the sale contract, despite there being no evidence of active infestation, to pay for termite treatment and the fuckers signed off on it and are now claiming that my parents concealed the information despite having signed papers that they knew about it, somehow my 70+ year old parents managed to convince not one but two reputable home inspectors and a licensed realtor to enter into a conspiracy to defraud this upstanding Olympian and his bitch of a wife (as mother succinctly put it) out of a few hard-earned dollars. Oh, and they’re also claiming that there was extensive water damage in one of the bathrooms and that my parents did a shoddy repair job on it to further defraud them, which is complete horse shit because in their 13 years in the house my parents never had any water problems in that bathroom and never had any work done in it.
The first thing this keeper of the Olympic Flame and his bitch of a wife (as mother speaks of her) wanted was for my parents to buy back the house, for just $100,000 more than the original selling price. After that was quickly called bullshit upon, the next step was mediation in which the various defendants offered the little fuckbastards about $20,000 nuisance abatement money. Rejected. So the next step is that my parents’ lawyer (a partner in one of the city’s most respected law firms) will be unleashing a can of legal whup-ass.
Meanwhile, while my parents are putting out time, money and stress dealing with this bullshit frivolous claim, my dad’s been in and out of the hospital with multiple bouts of cancer, innumerable chemotherapy and radiation treatments and now this life-threatening blood clot for the last week. There’s no doubt in my mind now that I know about it that dealing with this has contributed to my dad’s illnesses and probably shortened his life.
From a legal perspective I hope my parents’ lawyer slaps these motherfuckers with a nuisance suit so big that if this asshole had actually won any medals (he didn’t, the big loser) he’d have to hock them to pay off the judgment. From a personal perspective I’d like to take one half of his Olympic apparatus of choice and ram it up his Olympian ass and cram the other half right up the skanky twat of his bitch of a wife (mother’s appellation).
Can I request you keep us posted? I absolutely hate elderly people being taken advantage of, having two elderly parents of my own. Luckily, it is only a golden retriever who is currently taking advantage - dinner time gets inched forward by around 5 to 10 minutes each day.
I just happen to know that Madison has more than its share of Olympic hockey players and speed skaters. But I agree, from the OP pole vaulting vould be a convenient sport in terms of getting the proper stick to shove up someone’s ass.
Man, I feel your pain. I have been through a three year legal battle over a house.
As an aside, does not the buyer pay for the termite inspection? Henceforth was it not their contractor that said there was no problem?
It is very tough to prove fraud in this manner, but there seems like there has to be a lot more to this story. Especially because your side offered 20k during mediation. That is quite a chunk of change. How long was it before the discovery of the “problem” after the sale? Most contract have a clause in there about undetected termite infestation.
I would unleash their names here and everywhere else I could think of. I’d call the papers. I’d call the local radio stations. Celebrity is a two-way street. It’s the thing that showers them with fame, adulation and money. And that’s all fine and well. But if they’re going to be dicks, people should know about,and they should have to live with that aspect of celebrity, too.
I admire your initial position, but rethink this, man. They brought this shit upon themselves. I’d even write a letter to the owner of the team and just let him know what a shitty human being he is employing and that you will take it as your personal task to let as many people as possible in on that little secret.
Tame him with his own fame. That’s what I say.
I hope everything works out well for your parents.
I would, however, check with your parents’ lawyer regarding his opinion on outing the jerk. Things that may make us feel good are not always the same things that appear appropriate when mentioned in lawsuits.
Yeah, assuming that this particular athlete is anything like famous. If he didn’t medal, the chance is even less. The most I could predict is less than a hundred words on page four of the local paper.
Either way, I’m very hopeful that you keep us posted. It really irks me when people who are already having a rough time are being taken advantage of. I realise there may be more to the story, but it doesn’t make the accusers look very good in this light.
My parents are not in Madison, and if it were my case I might consider going public with the Olympian’s identity, but since it’s not my case I’m not at liberty to go any further in identifying him than I already have. Suffice to say his is not what one would call a marquee sport and he lost so any fame he might have would be amazingly localized.
Dunno who was responsible for paying for the termite inspection or how long after the sale the problem was [del]made up by these fuckers[/del] allegedly discovered. But there were two pre-sale inspections, both of which the buyers had access to, and post-sale/pre-lawsuit they had to shop for an inspector willing to claim signs of active infestation. The fact that several of their own inspectors repeatedly refused to say there was infestation is IMHO what ought to be exhibits A through whatever in the enormous counterclaim.
The actual settlement offer was $18,000 split amongst four plaintiffs, my mom, the realtor and the two inspectors. This was the counteroffer to “buy the house back for $100,000 more than we paid for it.” Personally, my first impulse would have been to make a counteroffer of “go fuck yourselves and then slash your own throats for being such wretchedly awful human beings” but my parents are often more sensible than I am. My parents’ feeling, and I agree with them in a cold rational the world is a shitty place sort of way, is that 25% of $18 grand is a small price to pay to get these parasitic assholes out of their lives forever. If the case doesn’t settle and goes to trial, lord only knows what a jury might do. Better to put it behind them for a few thousand dollars than deal with the stress and attorney fees of defending it. Now, though, my mother is royally pissed off so Mister Olympiad and his bitch of a wife may find themselves in a shitstorm. I’m truly hoping.
This is the part that blows my mind. They are claimng that he house was not worth the selling price, so they want to sell it for x plus 100 grand? WTF?
It’s possible that the poster’s parents really did conceal a termite infestation.
(It’s interesting that the parents had done work on a wall which later collapsed. It also strikes me as odd that removing bushes would destabilize an adjacent wall. In my area, it’s the house’s foundation that’s underground, not the wall.)
One thing I do know: 95% of people who get sued will tell you that the lawsuit is frivolous if you ask them. When they finally settle, they usually claim that it’s basically a nuisance settlement. And defendants rarely if ever admit that a lawsuit has merit.