Well, at least it's over.
Thursday, June 8th, 2023 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizvogelWe had our mediation meeting today with the incompetent dishonest roofers. (This is a mandatory thing in this kind of civil suit in this state.) I say "with"; actually each party and their lawyer sit in a different room, and don't see each other at any point during the process, which I think is an excellent idea. Hearing their lies second-hand was quite blood-pressure-raising enough.
Short version: We settled. And, well, there's a reason they call it "settling".
We don't get our down payment back. They don't get any additional money from us. The lien on the house, our suit, and their counter-suit all go away, everybody signs paperwork saying no one can come back at anyone about this, and we never have to deal with those assholes again.
As the mediator said at the outset, mediation is not about making anybody happy; it's about finding a solution that makes both sides equally unhappy. Guess we achieved that.
Don't get me wrong: our lawyer did a fine job, and so did the mediator. And we could have taken it to court. We had a strong case, our lawyer thinks we'd've had a good chance of winning -- even the mediator thought we had a good chance of winning. But pursuing a court case is time-consuming, stressful, and hideously expensive. To push this thing all the way through the court system would cost us at least $10,000, and probably more like $20,000 or even $30,000. That's on top of the thousands and thousands of dollars we've already spent on legal fees, over a dispute that's only a fraction of that.
Access to justice should not depend on the size of your paycheck. It does, and we all know it does, and that stinks. But here's the real kicker: Let's say we took it to court, and won. A judge told those lying SOBs what a disgrace to the contracting profession they are, and awarded us everything we asked for, our money back, interest, court costs and legal fees, the works. Do you know what mechanism is in place to force the losing side to actually pay that judgement?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing. We could win everything we've paid out and a punitive judgement besides, and never receive a single penny. Not paying is so common, both our lawyer and the mediator considered it a far more likely outcome than us getting anything at all. And given that the roofers have already demonstrated that they're lying cheating deadbeats....
If money were no object, I would happily go forward with the lawsuit just for the pleasure of watching a judge take those jerks apart. In the real world, I don't know how we'd come up with that kind of dough, but I would willingly gamble on finding a way in exchange for the strong probability of getting it all back when we won the case. But to pay all that out, win, and get back... nothing? Can't do it.
It's not fair. It's not right. But settling means we can stop hemorrhaging (the mediator's word) money in legal fees, and get on with our lives.
We'll still have to pay our half of the mediation costs (lots and lots), and our lawyer's final bill (also lots). In the end, I think we'll end up shelling out about the same amount in legal fees that the incompetent dishonest roofers were still claiming we should pay them. I have to think about it that way, because the $$ total hurts, but I feel a whole lot better about giving it to the legal professionals who agreed we got screwed and who played fair with us and did the jobs they were hired to do. So there's that, anyway.
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thefridayfive for tomorrow is about meetings. Well, I sure had a doozy of a meeting!)
Short version: We settled. And, well, there's a reason they call it "settling".
We don't get our down payment back. They don't get any additional money from us. The lien on the house, our suit, and their counter-suit all go away, everybody signs paperwork saying no one can come back at anyone about this, and we never have to deal with those assholes again.
As the mediator said at the outset, mediation is not about making anybody happy; it's about finding a solution that makes both sides equally unhappy. Guess we achieved that.
Don't get me wrong: our lawyer did a fine job, and so did the mediator. And we could have taken it to court. We had a strong case, our lawyer thinks we'd've had a good chance of winning -- even the mediator thought we had a good chance of winning. But pursuing a court case is time-consuming, stressful, and hideously expensive. To push this thing all the way through the court system would cost us at least $10,000, and probably more like $20,000 or even $30,000. That's on top of the thousands and thousands of dollars we've already spent on legal fees, over a dispute that's only a fraction of that.
Access to justice should not depend on the size of your paycheck. It does, and we all know it does, and that stinks. But here's the real kicker: Let's say we took it to court, and won. A judge told those lying SOBs what a disgrace to the contracting profession they are, and awarded us everything we asked for, our money back, interest, court costs and legal fees, the works. Do you know what mechanism is in place to force the losing side to actually pay that judgement?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing. We could win everything we've paid out and a punitive judgement besides, and never receive a single penny. Not paying is so common, both our lawyer and the mediator considered it a far more likely outcome than us getting anything at all. And given that the roofers have already demonstrated that they're lying cheating deadbeats....
If money were no object, I would happily go forward with the lawsuit just for the pleasure of watching a judge take those jerks apart. In the real world, I don't know how we'd come up with that kind of dough, but I would willingly gamble on finding a way in exchange for the strong probability of getting it all back when we won the case. But to pay all that out, win, and get back... nothing? Can't do it.
It's not fair. It's not right. But settling means we can stop hemorrhaging (the mediator's word) money in legal fees, and get on with our lives.
We'll still have to pay our half of the mediation costs (lots and lots), and our lawyer's final bill (also lots). In the end, I think we'll end up shelling out about the same amount in legal fees that the incompetent dishonest roofers were still claiming we should pay them. I have to think about it that way, because the $$ total hurts, but I feel a whole lot better about giving it to the legal professionals who agreed we got screwed and who played fair with us and did the jobs they were hired to do. So there's that, anyway.
(
thefridayfive for tomorrow is about meetings. Well, I sure had a doozy of a meeting!)