Insurance Claim1

The other day my boss asked me why I have a personal blog.  Truth be told, there are many reasons but a big reason I blog is because there are times when some people just make me laugh and because I can't (or shouldn't) really laugh at them (or in front of them), I hold it in and blog about the situation later. Take, for example, the angry lady (AL) that was in here the other day.  Seems she had been renting a place from Landlord (LL).  At that time, LL was also renting to another person (AP).  Got all that? At some point, AL determined that the sun was shining too brightly into her window in the morning.  So, she asked to use LL's ladder.  Up went AL to install some shades outside the windows.  LL left AL to her own devices and drove off to work.  At some point, AL ran into some trouble and called for AP to come help her.  AP never came.  AL subsequently fell off the ladder and broke her hip. Here's where the story gets, uh....interesting.  Seems AL blames LL

Today's tale is a story of greed. Once upon a time X lived a happy life - until he got a girlfriend.  Girlfriend was needy.  Very needy.  So needy, in fact, that X found that he was unable to pay basic bills.  But love does strange things to people, so X sought to get a loan from a friend Y.  Friend Y was a lawyer and knew better than to loan money to X without a contract. X signed on the dotted line and continued to satiate girlfriends needs. Months passed and when the contract between X and Y came due, X (to no one's surprise) had not the money to pay Y.  X, it seems, had another friend (Z) who (after much discussion and promises) agreed to pay Y the money X owed.  So, to recap, X and Y had a contract.  X didn't have the money to pay Y so X got Z to stand in his stead as debtor.  This is called a surety contract and Y agreed to accept Z as the surety.  In fact, Z insisted Y create a new contract indicating the above facts. This is where things got dicey.  See, a

The thing with the holiday season is that it starts tugging at the heartstrings.  People start longing to be with family, people start looking to go home, and kids look to be with mom and dad.  Well, some kids, anyway.   Some kids you kind of don't want to see again as all they want is more of everything (ungrateful little buggers).  Anyway, today's blog is a story about two diametrically opposed brothers who were in my law library a while back. Brother #1 was a nice enough guy.  Affable, dressed like Bing Crosby and spoke well of his mother.  Brother #2 was a jerk. He dressed like he lived on the Jersey Shore and spoke with a Harvard accent (even though he was from California).  Two brothers, two perspectives.  I know all about Brothers #1 and #2 because they came in on consecutive weeks seeking information about how to "best" deal with Mom's money.   See, Mom was about 88 years young and, apparently, was exhibiting early symptoms of Dementia. Bro

T he other day I was talking with an friend of mine who told me that they'd just finished s session with their psychiatrist.  Person tells me about how, when they first started going to the shrink , they were unable to reveal anything and were able to release all their pent-up anxiety and let it all out.  I'm guessing the telling me was part of their treatment. Anyway, as this person was telling me their story about their release, I tuned out and started thinking about a person who had come into our law library a while back.  Seems they had been sued for a LARGE sum of money.  Over the course of several years of litigation, they were finally able to begin negotiations on settling the case.  What they needed to know was if we had anything that dealt with settlements or releases or settlement releases . As it turns out, California Civil Code 1541 deals with all things releases.  According to Section 1541: An obligation is extinguished by a release therefrom given to th

Once upon a time, I was in the market to buy a house.  The wife and I searched everywhere.  Some houses were big, some small, some white, and one was this funky-psychedelic-freak-your-eyes-out-color.  Heck, there was this one that was so beat-up we called it the Lebanon house (because it was the worse fixer-upper we'd ever seen). One thing that I was looking for was what kind of neighborhood might we live in.  Some of the houses were in quiet neighborhoods.  Some were on (or near) a main drag with lots of car traffic.  The thing I would do is ask around and find out if people were good neighbors; were they loud, have bratty kids, have any kids (for our kids to play with), and whether they were nosey neighbors .   You know the kind - people who have to stick their nose in everything; have to know what all is going on around them.  Their house may fall apart but they've got to know what everyone else is doing.  It took us a long time but we finally found a house we could b