The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Re: a moment of cringe....

Re: a moment of cringe....
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Saturday, April 2 2016, 22:34:32 (UTC)
from *** - *** Commercial - Windows NT - Mozilla
Website:
Website title:

...when people (two) have threatened to sue me, both of them proud Assyrians, I told them to go ahead and sue. If there is any advantage to being poor, and there are lots, one has to be the absolute freedom you have to piss people off, the kind of people who insulate themselves behind lawyers and their money and threaten.

...in one case, I won't name names, I knew from the start that there was no way I would lose, mostly because I was sure as can be that the person suing me would not want to appear in court, under oath where I could do the cross-examination...and I was right. After two years of legal foreplay , which slightly was inconvenient for me as I had to fly up from Mexico several times to appear at preliminary hearings...the person dropped it and went away.

...it was just meant to be major harassment at which I was supposed to cave. At one point the lawyer for this person suddenly appeared beside me at the internet cafe I had been using (too poor at the time to own a computer)...he'd flown down from Seattle to present me with a letter of apology to the person suing me. "Read this and sign it and you will be left alone". I read it and agreed not to sign it.

...before I sound too devil-may-care let me say that if I'd owned a home at the time, or any other asset, I would probably have been worried because even if you win such a case, it's going to cost you...and if you lose it, you could be forced to sell your house or other assets...to be really free you have got to be poor enough to not risk losing too much, in case your freedom and even self-respect is challenged in court at least.

...full disclosure. Actually, I DID lose the first go-around, but only because I threw the summons and court date away when I got it and never appeared in court, thereby losing by forfeit.....the court awarded the other person damages of $135,000.00. To which my reply was, "so, sue me again". Nothing ever came of that and I never paid.

...in the other case it was a threat to sue me, which effectively ended our chances of getting the Shumirum Monument installed in Chicago...this time I sued over the lies and slanders and to recoup money I was promised for a commission I was almost done with...this man, seeing his chance when his sister died, she who had commissioned me, said there was no commission and I had only received a gift of charity, which is how he described the deposit she had sent...so I sued his ass, in Chicago.

...he kept at it, using his wealthy nephews' law firm, an international one, till I uncovered a letter written to me by the man's wife telling me that he KNEW and was thrilled because one of the pieces I was making, which his sister was paying for, was of him. When his fancy lawyers saw that letter they told him to forget and pay up...which he did to the tune of $55,000.00.

To this day I use the "John Nimrod Memorial Camera", I bought with my winnigs...oops, I blurted out the name.

I say all this because when you're poor, living in a $100 a month rental in a half-deserted Mexican mining town way up in the mountains, you have to have SOME perks!



---------------------


The full topic:



***



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9