I’ve laid out the preliminaries of my case in Part 1 and Part 2, now I want to discuss how a case does or doesn’t move forward to trial.

Bullshit
I am now in what’s called the Discovery Phase.  It’s a euphemism for BULLSHIT.  You ask them questions; they ask you questions; they hide behind dozens of objections to each of your questions; sometimes you get an answer, often you don’t.

In the early stages of my case, the bully banks hired their first set of attorneys.  These jerk-offs sent back responses to my discovery requests with objections that they could not respond at all because they and, presumably, the bully banks themselves had no comprehension of such terms as these: people, residents, relationship, communications, eviction, foreclosure, foreclosed upon, successful, visit, check on, checked, foreclosures and/or evictions, evict, California Code, representative, court.  Seriously!

I later discovered that a number of people on the internet from all across America were complaining of the same English language deficit by big bully banks and their various brain-dead attorneys as I had experienced.  It was frightening to learn that attorneys, after all that schooling, still cannot understand English, nor do they know how to use a dictionary.  I wanted to send them one, but, out of principle, I refused.  After all, they earn far more money that I do and surely, I thought, they could afford to buy one if they really wanted to.  Obviously they do not.   I suppose they’ll try to blame the paralegal.

I also noticed that after they sent all their non-responses, they didn’t even to bother sending the required verification by a bank official under sworn testimony that says everything they just sent is all true.   How telling!  Later, I learned from a different attorney in the case that when all they send back is a bunch of bullshit objections, they don’t need to have it verified.  As I said … how telling.

Then, the big bully banks stepped up their attacks by way of hiring new higher-priced litigators to mash me into the ground.  “How dare you, little lady, think you can get away with suing us?  You’ll never work in this town again! — I’m sure that’s what they WOULD have said if they bothered to think about me at all.”

More Bullshit
: From the Trusted REO Realtor
Anyway, the attorney for the slimy real estate agent did the same thing after sending non-responses in his client’s name with no verification from her.  First he claimed they couldn’t understand the meaning of the phrase “legally foreclosed” and “legal title” that had already been clearly defined at the start of my requests.  Then another objection was that his response would contain “secrets” and special “notes” that were protected by the court – this evasion tactic is called “attorney-work product”.  In this case, it was very clearly more  BULLSHIT.  When I reported to him that none of his objections were valid, he simply ignored me as he’s done repeatedly in the past.

I’ll refer to this attorney as “Mr. Blockhead”.  If the shoe fits …  call a spade a spade, you know what I mean?  He’s representing the slimy licensed realtor defendant.  If a licensed realtor doesn’t know the meaning of the terms “legally foreclosed” and “legal title” then ‘we’ve got trouble, that’s right, trouble, right here in River City’ – that’s from “The Music Man”, in case you missed it.

So how slimy is this realtor?  Why, she’s so slimy, she swore under oath that she wasn’t an independent contractor hired by the banks at the time of the incident, but rather was an employee of a real estate firm that conveniently went bankrupt soon thereafter.  She claimed her employers were the ones hired by the bully banks.  She also claimed that she had not a single document in her possession to support her alleged employment.  We had a discussion with the owner of the bankrupt firm and she was nice enough to confirm that Ms. Slime solicited the banks business all on her own.   I then asked one of the bully banks about that and they, also under oath, denied they had hired the real estate company Ms. Slime mentioned.  Then the realtor turned around, in yet another sworn-under-oath-declaration, stated that she was an independent contractor hired by the banks, after all.   Was I the only one actually reading this discovery bullshit?

Speaking of Slime
For about a year and a half, this realtor defendant and her blockhead attorney had been declaring in multiple court-filed documents that she had no insurance.  Then during a short period, for whatever reason, in which she was representing herself, she got on a court call with an unknown attorney and swore to the judge that this guy was her new insurance lawyer.  The two of them finagled a two-month stay in proceedings.  Not only had there been no required substitution of attorney in order for that representation to be valid, but neither that attorney nor his law firm were actually representing Ms. Slime.    She obviously performed this little stunt with the help of “officers of the court” in order to buy time so she could get her blockhead back in the game.

A few months later this lunatic refused to accept certified mail court documents from us.  Remember, she was representing herself and was obligated to receive such documents.  And it gets better … she then filed a TRO (temporary restraining order) against my co-plaintiff because he sent her mail.

And this is the kind of realtor the bully banks called their “trusted REO” partner.  Geez!

I Object!
I could give you the long list of other objections they send back but that would be a waste of time.  Suffice it you say, if you’re representing yourself, they will insist that by law you are required to answer every one of their questions, relevant or not, and that they don’t have to answer any, or at least, not many.  The same goes for document requests.  Most often the excuse they give is that after a “diligent search” the documents requested can’t be found.  What, they’re all buried in the sands outside Las Vegas with the bodies?  Maybe I’ll hire a private detective and have him look for their answers and documents in “River City”.  I have as much chance finding them there as anywhere else.

Author Ginger Marin is an actor, freelance writer and storyteller.  You can also find her on Google+