Nope, don’t know of one. But it kinda takes all the fun out of it when you ask the question directly rather than just hinting about it in a way that makes it totally unintelligible.
He didn’t respond. He asked for an extension of time four times and got it, then filed nothing.
Technically I think it was three times. First his attorney, then he did without filing a notice regarding the change to self-representation so they bounced it, he filed again a month later, then again a month after that, giving a specific date he would respond. On the appointed day, the sound of crickets.
He also decided to skip answering my motion for factual determinations on appeal.
I think it was the right move, but it was handled badly. (My second attorney and I had a bet about whether there would be a reply, he was sure E. Lawyer’s ego wouldn’t let him stay silent and I told him no way on earth…what the hell would it be? His whole case was pretty much “stoid is evil, STONE HER!” which goes over great in a trial court…and is absolutely deadly in front of a reviewing court. That’s what so cool about appeals, whole different mindset.) He should have stayed silent from the very beginning, repeatedly asking for time and then failing to file looks much worse than simply leaving it alone, which can be interpreted as deeming it beneath notice.
But his lawyer needed to keep things alive for a while longer while he tried to fake out the new judge that had just replaced our judge who transferred downtown by filing a request for entry of judgment and attorney’s fees, etc. Which had all been filed and denied a couple of months earlier by the former judge. Of course with a brand new ear he felt confident his lies could be ratcheted up, and they were. He went a little hog wild He lied about the judgment, he lied about the rulings, he lied about the law, he lied about me, his client… pretty much everything he said was a lie.
So I slogged through it all and copied all the paper that proved all the lies…well, actually I skipped a lot because proving ALL of them would have taken a book, so I stuck to the important stuff. And I did what I did 90% of the time in this case, I called them “misstatements” and “errors”. But ya know, when your “error” is to claim that the judgment doesn’t address the issue of who has to pay the receiver more, if anyone, when it contains a paragraph breaking it down in detail, and you ask to have the whole thing dumped on Stoid, the fact that your error is a lie speaks for itself. not to mention the fact that all this stuff was ruled on already! I mean, talk about nerve!
And hallelujah brothers and sisters, thank god almighty at long last he was admonished! Twice! Hallelujah hallelujah! Finally a judge paid attention to this guy pissiing all over the rules of professional conduct. it was indeed a happy day.
And right after that, Plaintiff became self-represented.
Now check THIS out… last week, out of the blue, E. Lawyer emailed me and asked me to join his linked in network!!! Now, I assumed this was some kind of automated thing or something…but no, it wasn’t. So I did. HA!
You missed it. do a page search for the word “mandatory”. It was established in Merlino that when the conditions are met, the court has no descretion, and neither does the moving party.
And the appraisal stuff is a separate issue, although interestingly it happens to be the only part of the law that specifically gives the court discretion.
I did buy the assets For quadruple the maximum that I would have paid under the statute, and probably 2-3 times what it was worth at that point on the open market, and 100% more than the minimum, which would have been zero, since whatever his part was worth, he breached the operating agreement by bringing the suit and therefore I can deduct damages.
The day I signed the papers submitting to the rules of the sale, I had the receiver sign his acknowledgement of my notice of protest, as follows:
In addition, by the fact of the auction sale, the money I paid for the assets was 100% of the value, vs. 50%, and every dime went into the coffers of the LLC itself, supposedly to be split between us somehow after the accounting. Because of this, it was technically in the “receivership estate”, out of which the receiver himself is paid, and the receiver had free reign to keep making up things to bill for until he wiped it out, and neither of us received a nickel of it.
If, on the other hand, I had been permitted to pay the ex by the election, whatever amount I paid would have gone directly to him personally, bypassing the business, and leaving the receiver with his dick in his hand.
And the single most compelling reason I have pursued this appeal, above all others, is to get the receiver to give me back every single dime, and that, as I said at the top, was what I was desperately trying to determine how to argue last year, because it was a bitch figuring out what to look for. I’ve got it all wired up now, but I was getting pretty nervous there for awhile when every lawyer I asked (who would answer) said I was shit outta luck on that.
And I hope to have enough time and energy to lobby the legislature someday on the whole issue of receivers. My sister had to take 350 hours of classes, then pass a written and a practical exam in order to paint ladies’ fingernails.
I am not kidding when I say that under the law of California, you dont even have to prove you can read and write in order to be a court appointed receiver with the power to destroy and take everything. There are virtually no rules of any kind apart from not being in cahoots with parties to the action. None. You don’t have to have any particular training or education, you don’t have to have insurance (they get puny bonds for each action…whoopdie doo. His bond was about 10% of what he took from me.) or a license of any kind… you just have to be able to persude someone to give you the first gig and the next thing you know you are billing $225 an hour to destroy people’s lives.
helluva gig if you can get it.
It’s a genuine travesty.
Bingo!
Oh, I’m all topped off on the whole findings deal. (Which, interestingly, was the first topic here on the Dope that I wanted to talk about a couple of years ago.) That’s why I filed the motion for factual findings.
Again, the judge made it pretty easy on me in that department, because she made the mistake of listening to his lawyer, instead of listening to him. The two were rarely in concert. My ex is not by nature a liar, exactly the opposite - it was something we both loved in each other, our respective organic truth-telling. It was actually pretty funny at times seeing how frustrated his lawyer would get with him because he screwed it up so badly… someone asks the guy a question, he just can’t help saying what’s true. (Or at least what’s true for him, the only lies he’s really pretty good at are the ones he tells himself.) His lawyer was constantly, and I mean constantly, relentless objecting when his client was being cross examined. It was absolutely out of control during his deposition.
Anyway, the lies that led to the receiver I didn’t devote much energy to, since he’s more easily undone as a side issue - if I win the reversal of the election issue, it automatically nullifies the receivership.
What I focused on in the motion for factual determinations was more about the accounting trial, because it was a bigger deal there. But again, she made it pretty easy on me. Ex, E. Lawyer, receiver, all the existing documents on the face of the earth and me are all in perfect agreement at all times: after ex moved out, not one single penny was paid by him towards his mortgage or any other related debt or expense. And yet… Judge NAME somehow managed to “find” that after March of 2006, Mr. Ex “paid his mortgage and expenses himself, stoid did not pay them.”
And then she awarded him half the salary I took from the business and then paid his half of the mortgage with, as well as rent.
I think that qualifies as incredible and without support, don’t you?
Lessee what else… oh. Mr. Ex, in response to E. Lawyers insanely leading questions ( I wasn’t feeling secure enough to be doing a lot of objecting, I was trying to fix it in cross) said “yes” when E. Lawyer asked him if he believed the value of the house was $750,000. Okay, whatever. An hour later, I have him on cross. I bring out the appraisal for $630,000. I ask if he recalls receiving it. Yep. Did he question it then or at any other time? Nope. Did he object to the value then or at any other time? Nope. Did I offer to buy him out for a value of $650,000? Yep. Did he agree, at least initially, to sell to me based on a value of $650,000? Yep. Did the bank value the house at $650 4 months before the appraisal he has in his hands? Yep.
Somewhere in there she asked: what’s the point here? And I reminded her that he had responded earlier that day that he believed the house to be worth 750,000 at the same period of time we’re now establishing that the house was worth $650 and he agreed it was worth that and we got an appraisal, see that shows it was worth $630,000.
Oh. Carry on.
Appraisal is entered as Exhibit X.
The judgment/statment of decision? The Court finds that the parties received an appraisal of the property showing it was worth $750,000.
Alrighty then!
The next one is absolutely priceless for the internet-savvy.
Ex gets on the stand and shares with the court how he has determined that I personally received, into my bank account $18,000 of money due to the business for pictures we sold on Ebay. How? Well, he looked at the feed back, searched around the internet to find out about fees and things like that, did some multiplication and division , there you are: $18,000! And it all went into my personal bank account because he found one copy of a check that showed $20 made out to me for Ebay sales.
TA DA!
That was in the accounting phase.
In my deposition, when asked about the income of the biz at ridiculous length (although I loved my deposition because I drove his lawyer insane with how completely chilled I was. I did the same in trial. He was trying so hard to make me say things that he was never going to get me to say… one of the few satisfying things, for all the good it did) I volunteered the fact that a small portion of the money we got for pictures would come to my name because it was on the ebay records.
In trial, I said the same thing.
I left the copies of checks in the records because I didn’t think anything of it. I’d told the truth, and I knew that I had taken in less than I’d put back.
In the accounting, after ex described his leap from a $20 check to $18,000 I stole from the business, I pulled all the paypal numbers that I had never even thought to pull before. I submitted the entire history of payments both in and out, which showed dates, ebay numbers, descriptions, buyer names, etc. I also produced a report from my books showing the money I received in checks over 3 years, it was about $2000 I think. The income into the Paypal account was about $10,000 or so. And the expenses paid out of that paypal account, also detailed, were something like $14,000, which I covered personally, which means I gave back more than I got. Bottom line, every dollar accounted for and documented in detail vs. Ex’s elaborate guess which was not even backed up by a piece of paper showing his creative calculations. Nothing.
I bet you can guess what the judgment said, can’t you? Sure you can. I owed ex $9,000 for his half of the $18,000 I stole from the business by taking in all the Ebay sales to my personal bank account.
So I filed objections and requested a statement of decision that detailed how she got that kinda wrong, doncha think? Did you look at exhibit X and Exhibit X by any chance?
So in her second version of the judgment, she explained that I had 13,000 feedback or whatever, so that meant there were 13,000 sales unaccounted for that went into my personal bank account.
So, as you might guess, I filed objections again, explaining to the judge that 10 years of feedback numbers tells you absolutely nothing about where the money for sales during the last three of those years went, or even all of it - how does feedback = my personal bank account? are you fucking nuts and you do realize he pulled those numbers directly out of his ass, right?
Third and final version of judgment let me know that between his ass and my documents, well, his ass is just more credible.
This was a particularly galling finding, by the way, because in the first trial at one point E. Lawyer objects to something or other I’ve said and questions my credibility in relation to supporting evidence, and she says something about the lack of evidence would go to the weight of determining my credibility. Really? Blow me.
Okay, last one. (for you, I could go on…)
During trial One, Ex and E. whip out a bank statement that shows loan proceeds going into my savings after we refied and trying to make it seem like I stole it. I explained it went to pay our bills.
It was so stupid I didn’t even think about it.
Well, over the next year, starting right after trial, E&E brought it up again and came right out and accused me and called it"unaccounted for"
So I looked closer. Turns out the savings and checking appear on the same statement. And if you looked at it, along iwth the next two, you could trace, right on that statement, transfers from the savings to the checking, followed by payments to the mortgage, etc. All right there. I file this as an exhibit and I also include my records of all the transactions. I figure this is one subject we won’t hear any more about.
Wrong. 3 months later, the accusations come again, even harsher: She owes my client $30,000 she’s never accounted for!
What? Never accounted for? Are you insane?
So I re-submit it in my responsive declaration as an exhibit on an exhibit. There. Enough of THAT shit.
Nope. A few months after that, in the accounting trial. AGAIN with the accusations. When I ask during cross: “in all sincerity, Mr. ex, do you read the documents I’ve been filing?” and before he can answer, E. objects, and Judge reacts and everyone thinks I’m being snarky, move on.
Next thing you know, what does the judgment say? I owe him half of that money that I obviously stole from the refinance and never accounted for!
You guys think I’m a pro per with a persecution complex.
You have no fucking idea what it has been like to be in this case, watching this insanity go down, and realizing the whole time that it is so unbelievably over the top that describing it to people I will instantly be branded a crazy pro per with a persecution complex. There’s been times I thought it was deliberate, for exactly that reason. Not on her part, but on the E. lawyer’s part… everyone knows that pro pers are crazy and they give them no respect. I’ll be so over-the-top that when she tells people about it, they’ll laugh her out of town!
The only saving grace in all of it is that 90% of it is on paper, so however crazy it sounds, I’ve got the proof. So I compiled the citations to the record and made my motion.
I provided a complete record, too. I paid thousands to have every single word of the transcripts, and I slaved over the appendix, all 1100 pages of it. The cites to the record in the brief were brutal…
I almost forgot to explain what is somewhat explained by my examples: usually factual findings involve conflicting evidence that the judge has resolved one way or another. He said, she said…well, I see it this way, you see it that way, who are we to override? I get that. But for the most part, that wasn’t really the problem. The problem was that Ex would say one thing, and his attorney would claim he said something completely different. Ex’s actual testimony, which was really his entire case, was much more truthful than the declarations were, and much more truthful on cross than on direct because of the super-leading questions. As a result, our testimony was not that much in conflict, and the documents I put into evidence proved what I was saying, and what I was saying he agreed with at least sometimes.
But the judge made her findings based on what his lawyer said, not the evidence. And because the two were not the same, I pointed to the evidence in my motion. (“Statements of counsel are incompetent as evidence.”) And I used very little in the way of citation to my testimony, i just cited my uncontroverted documents (which included emails and letters between us) and his testimony, and compared it to her findings. Refer to my first example and tell me that you would support her finding?
I’ve answered all these questions in this thread multiple times and ways and configurations in excrutiating detail. Forgive me but I’m not giong to re-state for everyone who doesn’t want to bother figuring out where.
It’s actually been very helpful, i wish I would have had this kind of feedback while I was preparing, there are things I found as a result that I would have liked to have had a chance to deal with. Nothing fatal, it just would have been nice.
And I’m so freaked waiting for the opinion that having it attacked like this is good, it calms me down because no one has really come up with anything that works so far. That’s reassuring.
Far, far more than I can possibly convey.
But of course there’s very real value, too.
Not deleterious to my health at all, apart from feeding my obsessiveness, which is rarely a good thing but I don’t need you guys for that.
Funny how there’s suddenly a lot of legal advice in this thread.
Yep. And his reply: pay me double that or I’m going to take you to court and take the business away from you.
Then he went into court and claimed he offered me the figure he demanded.
After saying in his deposition that he discussed making an offer to me with everyone he knew but not me.
And no findings of fact made on it.
Why? There’s no reason to think that I had to do it before judgment, especially in light of the fact that my judge heard my lawyer say I wanted to buy him out and didn’t say we had to stop.
Well, if anyone in this thread had shown my arguments to be ridiculous with citation to authority, rather than opining that I am wrong, you’d have a point.
But I have been serving up experts in the form of case law, not arguing that MY opinions have weight. The people in this thread, however, continue to completely ignore both the laws and the evidence and tell me I’m full of it based on their half formed opinions isolated around tiny little scraps that work for their argument and ignore anything that doesn’t. Take a look around you, everyone else is doing exactly what I’m being accused of, while I take on everything you throw at me and address it head on with data and law.
Who are you kidding?
Sorry, but the combined weight of all the condescension of every lawyer on the dope times ten will never convince me I’m wrong, and why should it? If your position has merit, you should have no problem at all showing me why. All you have to do is bring me one solid legal cite in support of your contention. Yet out of all these people devoting all this attention and offering all this expertise…nuthin. Not a single damn cite to anything at all. The one person who claimed to have googled something up that would smack me down squealed in terror upon being asked to produce it.
Just continuing to tell me your opinion and acting like there’s something wrong with me because I am failing to receive it as the One True Word is bizarre. Seriously, it really is kinda freaky, all due respect and everything, and you might wanna do a reality check on that.
I ain’t gonna argue with that. But what can I do, I’m right down to the wire.
You have no idea how sick I get when I have to open an envelope and I’m dreading this one. I think I’ll pass out. Or vomit. Or both.
But I’m a big girl with big emotions, and it’s all part of the adventure in the end.
IANAL.
I’m really not trying to be a jerk here, but I think you need to get more comfortable with the idea that you could very well lose, so that if and when it happens it doesn’t just kill you.
For a lot of reasons, mostly having to do with your being the only poster with any of the information about your case, you can make your argument seem very persuasive here. You could absolutely win on the SDMB but lose in real life.
Your posts have set off alarm bells with (AFAICT) every single lawyer here who’s read them, and it’s not just pro per bias. To be honest, your posts set off a bunch of alarm bells with me, as well. There’s just something about the way you talk about the case which is very disquieting, and just because myself and others might have a hard time explaining exactly why, that sort of gut reaction should not be wholly discounted.
I sincerely hope you win, but don’t be overconfident about the result for any reason, and especially not because no one here is able to prove to your satisfaction that your arguments are in error. And try to relax; the die is cast, you’re done, this is a huge weight off your shoulders.
Good luck, once again.
Well, your professors have a point, although it’s a point, not a fact. I’m very aware of how no questions can be a very bad thing.
However, you say “go through your whole argument”. I’ve observed the court a few other times so I know how a lot of oral arguments go, and it seems that a lot of appellate lawyers haven’t read the leading authorities on the subject, cuz they get up there and do exactly what they say not to: rehash their briefs, adding nothing.
I was there for a specific purpose, which was to add very specific support to a few of my arguments. Primarily, I needed to address a statute of frauds issue that was very straightforward, add an important detail to my disposition request that I had not included, and add stronger, more direct support for the argument I made regarding the receiver disgorging what he had received.
I also had found a corporations case that looked to the Dickson v. Rehmke case, which I mentioned just to nail down the fact that the courts have clearly determined that the rulings in these cases apply to all analagous statutes, and one or two other single-sentence things.
I was very focused, I wasn’t there to plead or re-hash or grandstand.
At the time I was unwilling to talk so directly about the case because it was still happening. I’m sure you can appreciate that.
(And really, unintelligible? “Have you ever seen a case where a bunny put a pancake on his head” is totally unintelligible? A break, please.)
Stoid, I think you may have skipped over this post. I think I can say without fear of contradiction that we’re all very interested to see your response.
hi five
I am more than prepared to lose. All I’ve ever done is lose. There was a time, long ago, when I had enormous faith. But I have been kicked around the block with this, when I win it blows my mind.
Someone asked right at the start how I’d react if I lost, and I can’t know until I know why. All the losing I’ve done so far has been because a judge decided they wanted to rule a certain way and tough shit if I didn’t like it, pretty much. But the one thing I know I can rely on if I lose in the court of appeal is that they will absolutely justify it, and justify it in a way I can swallow, not in a way that is nothing but insulting.
Let me give you a poppin’ fresh example of the ways I’ve been smacked down that make me sick.
Under California law, if you file an appeal of a partition (lawsuit between co-owners of property toforce the sale of the property) you are entitled, based on a very old Supreme Court case, to a stay of the proceedings to enforce the judgment, without having to pay a bond the way you do in most other cases.
This rule is cited in every single major practice guide and treatise in California law regarding appellate stay.
There is also a whole “Title” section in California law regarding how partition actions are conducted, very detailed and comprehensive. This scheme includes an extensive provision for what’s known as a partition referee… someone to handle the whole thing . Partition referees are often also receivers.
So. I filed my appeal, and the receiver, (who was also our partition referee, in fact he was appointed under the authority of those laws, which was a specific correction the judge herself made), refused to believe it. I showed him the law books, he said I don’t care and got really shitty with me, threatening me with contempt. (He was trying to evict me at that point, something he had no legal right to do under any circumstances at all, but I didnt’ know that yet. All I knew was that whatever he was doing he was supposed to stop because i had an automatic stay without bond)
E. lawyer jumps on board: don’t listen to her! Evict! Contempt! Get her get her! (this is all email)
So fine, we go in front of the judge, I tell her about the Supreme Court case that all the legal guides say is still good law.
She says “Brief me.” Sigh.
Before we leave the courtroom, though, the receiver says: “I’d like to just go ahead with the UD right now, is that ok?” She says “fine”. So, without having any means of staying the action at all since we are going to go brief, she gives him the go-ahead to file an Unlawful Detainer against me…wait, that’s not right. He’d already filed it, because the minute she said “fine” his guy served me right then and there.
So I have to scramble to deal with that while we brief…UD’s are fast, that’s why they are UDs.
Ultimately, after back and forth briefs wherein I KICK THEIR ASSES (the receiver, who sucks, and the lawyer, who sucks less but still sucks) because I’ve got the law and they don’t, (I really am not clueless, people, trust me.) she has absolutely no choice but to find that yes, I am right, this is still good law, and she cites one of my brief’s cases as “progeny” of the original case to make her point. …EXCEPT…wait for it… it doesn’t apply here.
HUH?
Because in THIS case, we have a receiver! And you see this other part of the law over here that says to stay receivers you have to put up a bond, well, there you are. We have a receiver. No prize for you! Maybe next time!
Umm, yer onner, you may recall that the partition statutes actually call for receivers, so that wouldn’t make much sense, would it?
I’ve ruled. Now let’s talk about how much of a bond you have to put up. receiver, is it true these folks have no equity left, that the house won’t sell for the amount of the loans? Yes, your honor. Very well, stoid: you have to put up half the value of the house to get your stay, $250,000.
But your honor, the purpose of the bond is to protect the plaintiff from losses during the stay…how can he lose $250,000 in a house that the receiver just told you he has no equity in?
And the Red Queen says I’ve ruled!
I get home, I look up the case she cited as proof that I was right and appeal stays partition. Here, let me quote the very first paragraph of the case for you:
In other words, the case she used to confirm that I was right about a stay of partition without bond was an appeal from a partition and appointment of receiver. Her excuse for saying the law didn’t work for me the same way was because we had a receiver.
So that very day I filed a “Request for correction of undertaking” that she ignored.
All this to illustrate the kind of rulings I’ve had no choice but to swallow. So even if the appellate court finds against me, they will do so a thousand times more tolerably than the ego-driven bitch that’s been destroying my life did.
(But to give her a little back… a little… she made a ruling a year later, after she’d done all the damage she could do and I finally showed it to her, that will likely protect me from foreclosure while we wait for the opinion, if the banks lawyer accepts our argument about her “in res” jurisdiction to control the transfer of title…that’s property jurisdiction, for the gallery. She can’t tell the bank what to do, but she’s got all the power she needs to make orders over this property, which they have to respect.)