plaintiff: cynthia and jeffrey from arnold, missouri. cynthia looks adorable in a black and white patterned dress with a tie-front cardigan over it, a real down home midwestern cozy mystery kind of look that makes my heart squeeze with love. just a real hallmark movie mom vibe and i am absolutely smitten. jeffrey is a giant teddy bear (i don’t know how to measure people with my eyes but i’m pretty sure he’s nine feet tall) with a shiny bald head and wearing the finest dress shirt and tie his local strip mall big and tall store had to offer.
defendant: jacob from washington, missouri. oh, jacob. jacob has wild eyes and a scraggly beard and is wearing a grey-and-beige plaid suit with a maroon and gold paisley tie and i bet he’s got “a beauty on the lot that’s not much to look at and got a lot of miles on her but still runs good” to sell you.
the complaint: cynthia and jeffrey are suing for a hot tub (hubba hubba!) they bought that immediately broke down.
what do they want: $2000. countersuit why god: jacob would like $1500 for...the cost of a hot tub??????
how it went down: jeffrey says that from the age of 21 he’s had problems with his knees and has had five surgeries on them from martial arts and arthritis. he says that he’s scheduled to have two knee replacements next year. listen, as a person with bad ass knees i don’t know if i can watch this. i’m already sweating!! greg is, too, because he keeps asking him specifics about the surgeries and saying he needs to pay attention because he’s “getting old.” ugh let me go take some meloxicam (and a xanax???) before i watch the rest of this stressful shit.
cynthia says that jeffrey has missed out on a lot of family activities due to his knee problems, and they’d heard that having a hot tub could ease some of his pain which is why they wanted to buy one. is that true? and, a follow up, could someone please drop one off in my backyard???
jacob says in december 2017 he was diagnosed with cancer and it was a life-altering event. he had to quit his job teaching at a culinary school in st. louis and fell back on his training as a hot tub repairman to make money. he would buy hot tubs on facebook and craigslist and fix them up then sell them. (he says “flipping them” but i refuse to write that like it’s a real sentence.) jacob’s cancer is in remission and he is no longer in the hot tub business. some good news!
jeffrey says that he found jacob on facebook (satan’s playground) and saw that he had a great seller rating. he responded to an ad jacob posted and called him, then jacob sent him pictures of the hot tubs for sale. there was a contract and jeffrey filled it out online, saying that it included delivery and a six month warranty. jacob brought the hot tub and hooked it up and it worked for about two weeks. jeffrey called jacob and he came out to repair the tub four or five times to no avail, then he brought him a different tub. ughhhhh can you imagine having to stand and make conversation with somebody on five separate occasions over the mildewy tub you boil your asshole in??? i would rather just not have knees!
jeffrey says that the tub leaked and then the heater stopped working and jacob said he would take care of it. jacob says that when he came out to look at the tub jeffrey told him that they were doing work on the back deck and here is where i expose my limitations when it comes to practical house knowledge because all i hear is CIRCUIT BREAKER THIS 220 VOLT THAT and a bunch of shit that sounds like white noise. the gist: jacob is trying to defend himself by saying that jeffrey plugged the tub into a box that couldn’t handle the voltage, but jeffrey is saying he didn’t plug in shit because jacob is the one who installed it! there is talk of blackouts and electricians but none of that matters because the problem is the tub and not the electricity.
the ruling: jeffrey says jacob brought a second (newer, nicer) tub and that one didn’t work either. jacob had to come out one dozen times in an attempt to fix the new one, showing up at all hours, sometimes without tools!, to work on it. he never got the new tub to work, and the last time he worked on it jacob filled it up with water in the middle of the winter and left it overnight so the water froze and the pipes burst, and now cynthia and jeffrey have a big, busted, unusable hot tub just sitting in their yard that is going to cost them $500 to have carted away. what a literal mess.
jacob says that jeffrey never signed their initial contract, scrambling to get the papers out of his accordion of truth™ to prove to the judge that...what? he fully engaged in this business transaction without getting the contract signed??? that makes him look like an idiot, not the other way around! the judge, clearly sick of this grifter, flips through the contract and says that since he never had jeffrey sign it the law states that things have to go back to the way they were at the beginning of the transaction, i.e. jeffrey has his $1500 back (plus $500 for removal) and jacob can feel free to repossess his broken down, fucked up hot tub. judgment for the plaintiff!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: *waving the contract paperwork in jacob’s face* “you get nothing! here’s your contract!!!”
*bangs gavel*