plaintiff: bruce from ponte vedra beach, florida. listen my man walked into the courtroom today looking like budget don johnson circa miami vice and i am not mad at it: in addition to a fluffed-up blonde coif he is wearing a tight (and shiny???) purple blazer over a magenta dress shirt (clearly purchased at structure aka express men) with a black (and shiny!!!) necktie. also worth noting: HIS SKIN IS RADIANT.
defendant: jeffrey from palm coast, florida. jeffrey just looks like your affable, football- and bratwurst-loving dad. he’s wearing a blue shirt, dark blue pants, and a striped blue tie, with unironic 70s glasses and his hair in a supercut. i’m ready for him to adopt me.
the complaint: bruce is suing jeffrey because the defendant hired his moving company then refused to pay the bill.
what does he want: $150???? BRUCE WYD but also...um $150 for moving services? that’s an incredible bargain. put jeffrey under the jail!
how it went down: bruce kicks things off by saying “my story’s been a wild ride” and yes i’m a bitch but most people don’t really mean that? or they underestimate how wild a ride might be?? rarely has any regular person truly lived a wild life, especially when they’re about to fucking tell you about it. bruce says he grew up “in a really good home, like a ‘leave it to beaver’ type of family” and please, sir. he went to and graduated from college (ok???) and then after college he decided to start selling cocaine (now we’re getting somewhere). bruce got caught and was arrested (getting warmer) and after he got out on bail he decided to go on the run and assume a different identity for years (JACKPOT)! now this? this is fucking exciting!
this is, to me, the upside of being a dude who looks like this. nondescript white guy, not too tall not too short, average build, no scars??? you can do anything and go fucking anywhere and say whatever you want and people will buy that shit. i wouldn’t survive ten minutes on the goddamn lam. first of all, i’d have to stop and go to the bathroom too much, and the indignity of being surrounded by federal marshalls while having diarrhea in a greyhound station or whatever????? a crime deterrent if there ever was one! but also all these stupid ass tattoos and dumb glasses and a shaved head would give me away in a heartbeat, plus this mental illness and degenerated joints??????? “why yes, officer, i believe that fugitive you’re after is slowly limping across this chili’s parking lot, crying into a takeout container of texas cheese fries!”
but bruce says unfortunately he assumed a shitty identity, and one day he was pulled over and it turns out that the guy whose id he’d stolen had a bunch of warrants and he ended up getting arrested for that dude’s crimes. bitch i’m fucking screaming. electrocute this dude alfuckingready. can you believe this shit??????? this is the biggest case of “that’s what you get” i’ve ever heard. is it really that bad growing up rich and well cared for? every time i haul my miserable broke body out of bed in the early afternoon i’m like UGH THERE’S NO GOD but then i hear some shit like this and i’m like HEY THERE HE IS!!!
i can’t get over this. rather than do a few months in jail for selling a little recreational coke my man here decided to skip bail, hit the road, and accidentally stole the identity of a dude who’d done much worse crimes and ended up doing five years hard time in prison??? i am absolutely s h i t t i n g myself over here, i can’t believe it, life is incredible. i think this cured my depression!
so bruce got out of prison, started working for a moving company, and then several years later started his own moving company. i think? i’m sorry i can’t concentrate on this, i’m too busy laughing, life is so fucking hilarious and stupid. also can we just talk about the kind of confidence a person has to have, especially in this day and age, to think that he can assume a new identity and circumvent the law and the government when literally everything we do these days is attached to a number that some faceless drone is monitoring inside the pentagon or wherever? i mean, the fbi definitely knows what you’re buying on amazon, right? even if you somehow manage to have an entirely cash-based existence eventually you are going to need a social security number or a phone number and all that shit is trackable, babe! what in the world???
okay, oh my god, i’m so sorry, THIS CASE. jeffrey says he first met bruce through a mutual acquaintance back in 2011 at a concert. bruce told him his whole on the lam saga (i bet he never gets tired of telling that shit, i wouldn’t!) and they hit it off. they ran into each other several more times over the years, and when it came time for jeffrey to move the mutual friend said “hey, bruce does that!” and jeffrey thought he would give the guy a shot rather than calling a big moving company.
bruce says that in march 2018 he and jeffrey agreed that he would charge him $350 to move all of his belongings from one house to another. jeffrey gave him $200 in cash and then gave him a check for $150, on which he stopped payment. bruce says he called jeffrey for a year about the payment, and when he finally answered jeffrey said some things were missing from his memorabilia collection and that’s why he didn’t pay the balance on his bill.
the ruling: bruce has some printed out text sheets™ showing that he tried to get in touch with jeffrey about the money, but jeffrey says that he didn’t get the messages because he keeps his cell phone in a drawer and only uses it when he goes on trips. imagine a life that pure and free??? i’m literally breathless at the thought! jeffrey says “people know if they want to reach me they can try my landline or email” and honestly a tear just came to my eye, thinking back on the halcyon days of when a person reached you whenever you decided to be home and pick up the phone, not all this modern day “i called you and then i texted you and then i emailed you and now i’m facetiming you whoops here i am in your instagram comments and also did you see my tweet???????????” my kingdom for all my technology to fall in the sea for a week!
anyway, because jeffrey never filed a complaint about the things that he says are missing, greg is granted bruce’s claim because there’s no on-the-record proof that he stole from him. well, that stinks. judgment for the plaintiff, and for whoever that dude was who never had to serve his penitentiary time!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “you changed your i dentity? i was wondering whether or not that was plastic surgery, you’re a handsome guy!”
*bangs gavel*