plaintiff: monica from rockford, illinois. COME THRU, ROCKFORD!!!!! monica glides into the courtroom in a pair of tight olive green khakis and a tasteful black t-shirt, with a gleaming neon pink watch and her shiny bangs swept to one side. she starts unwinding and unpacking her accordion of truth™ as soon as she hits the podium, so her evidence must be thicccccc.
defendant: ladarius from rockford, illinois. my favorite thing about when people are local is imagining them just, like, getting in their cars and driving back home once the case is over??? i mean, do you think monica and ladarius carpooled to the studio??????? i can’t imagine arguing a case in front of america’s greatest television judge and then going right back to my house and doing all my regular shit. what a dream, looking at my schedule for the day like “okay i have a work call at 9, lunch with my sister at 1, then i gotta run downtown to be on judge mathis at 3, i wonder if travis wants to meet me for dinner later?” can you imagine?! anyway, ladarius is looking casket sharp in a maroon v-neck sweater over a crisp blue dress shirt paired with grey slacks, and his accordion of truth™ is ready to roll.
the complaint: monica says she was attracted to her former friend and let him borrow her car and he totaled it so now she’s suing for the cost of the car.
what does she want: $2793
how it went down: monica says that she met ladarius in college a few years ago when she saw him across a crowded classroom and instantly took a liking to him because he was helpful and had good conversation. after a while monica noticed that ladarius wasn’t coming to class anymore so she reached out to him on facebook to see what was going on, i.e. ask him if he wanted to bang. i gotta say: girl, i respect that!!!!!!!! my dumb ass would’ve DM’d him something like “uhh hey bro wyd i was hoping i could copy your trig homework” and meant it (absolutely lost my virginity to a young man in ms. nixon’s fourth period algebra 1 class who had invited me over to “study” and that was cute but like...i still don’t know how to multiply fractions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) but i appreciate that she didn’t beat around the bush pretending to care about why he no longer was in school while asking him to, ummm, i dunno, beat...around...her bush????????
monica says they started “chilling” (read: having sex and getting drunk sometimes) and everything was cool until she noticed that ladarius had “a lot of drama in his life.” for example, on her birthday one year they went to the store to get some drinks. monica waited in the car while ladarius went inside, and a minute later he came running out screaming “pull off! pull off!” monica asked him what was going on (this is so funny, if you run up and jump in my car i’m just gonna assume we’re about to get murdered and pull off??? imagine pausing with your hand on the key in the ignition to be like “catch your breath, then tell me what’s going on before i slowly ease out of this parking lot” girl are you serious?????????) and he yelled at her to drive but it was too late, one of his exes emerged from the store and started screaming at him and throwing rocks at the fucking car. in a surprise twist, monica broke up with him after that! what a pleasant surprise!!!!!!
ladarius says he did meet monica a couple years ago in college and they started out as friends but then became friends with benefits, which he explains to greg means they were “having sex.” ladarius says he met monica’s parents (uh oh) and they told him to be careful because she has a bad attitude, and he says he paid them no mind because monica was such a good friend to him, but then he started to see evidence of it and that became a problem. he says that monica would be texting with her exes about the things he was doing (shouldn’t be a problem if that’s just your friend!) and he caught her going through his phone on more than one occasion (again, if we’re all friends here what’s the problem???) and that pissed him off.
ladarius says one night he and monica were hanging out “kicking it” (i am so old, please could they just say “watching tv until we got horny enough to have sex”) and he passed out drunk, only to be awoken by A SLAP TO THE FUCKING FACE. listen, if you slap me awake you better have a knife to my throat otherwise i’m gonna smash you in the head with whatever i can find on the bedside table (a cpap machine, let’s not be cute) and then i’m gonna throw you down the stairs (my muscles are atrophied, and i can’t see shit without my glasses, but let’s pretend for a second that i’m tough) and run you over with the lawnmower. apparently monica was mad about some texts to other women she found on ladarius’s phone, and the moral of this sordid tale is that friends with benefits isn’t real, goodnight!
monica says ladarius hit her up in june asking for a ride to work over the weekend. monica told him she was gonna be out of town that weekend, so ladarius asked if he could use her car. she says that they’d built up trust in the two years they’d know each other so she told him that as long as he had a license and would sign a promissory note that was fine. monica hands greg the note she made ladarius sign and greg is, dare i say, shocked??? he asks how she had the insight to know that she needed to have ladarius sign a piece of paper saying he was responsible for damages when he was only going to have the car for a couple days. greg is like, “that’s kind of smart!” monica shrugs like she’s just a shrewd businesswoman but we all know the people in our lives we wouldn’t loan a pen to without a fucking contract, and clearly she’s too nice to say it.
monica says the day after she lent ladarius the car his mom called her freaking out, screaming “your car looks like a taco!!!!” mm, delicious. his mom told her that ladarius was at work but monica’s car was parked out in front of the house, crushed. holy shit, what did he DO??? greg can’t believe monica’s foresight, but i can’t believe the damn pictures of this car. greg is talking about the promissory note (she keeps calling it that but i think it’s more of a rental agreement???) while flipping through pictures of a normal car that looks like a fucking transformer stepped on it, like those junk cars monster trucks drive over. what in the world!
greg asks monica what ladarius told her happened to the car and she says, brace yourselves, “this is the first time i’ve seen him since it happened.” excuse me???????? dude flattened her car like a pancake and then never? talked?? to her??? again???? y’all know what time it is: ELECTRIC CHAIR.
the ruling: greg and i are both astonished. i lend you a car and you return an accordion (of lies™!!!!!!!!!) and you just don’t talk to me ever again?? wowie! i am incandescent with rage!! okay so greg asks ladarius what happened and he says that he was at a four-way stop and he stopped but then the other guy went when it was his turn to go and he t-boned him. and that’s cool i guess, EXCEPT: the back of the car is smashed, too! greg asks for an explanation and ladarius says he doesn’t know what happened (he doesn’t know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and greg is like “oh, you were drunk?” and ladarius says he wasn’t drunk and then greg asks “well then do you smoke crack? because ‘i don’t know’ is a crack-ish explanation” and ladarius says “no” and how is monica not choking him out right now???
apparently the cops came to the scene of the accident and ladarius was arrested for driving on a suspended license (wasn’t that stipulation number 1 on the rental agreement? smh) and when he got out of jail he told monica he’d help her pay for the car with a check he had coming but when it did he just...didn’t. greg says “oh yeah, you do smoke crack! you’re high right now!” and then he does the bit where he pretends to light and smoke the gavel, so judgment for the plaintiff but with a reward for us all!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “friends with benefits? what’s the benefit, pension???? social security????? health insurance????????”
*bangs gavel*