plaintiff: megan from warren, michigan. megan is wearing a voluminous periwinkle 3/4 sleeve keyhole blouse that i bet she bought with her accumulated kohl’s cash (as a person who wore a kohl’s nightgown to bed last night, you know i mean this with the utmost admiration), plus petite wire-rimmed glasses and tousled brown hair. evidence papers are sticking out of her accordion of truth™, and we love to see that!
defendant: suadod from eastpointe, michigan. ummm not to judge a book by its impeccable cover, BUT: suadod is dressed in a slick, fitted, expensive-looking black suit over a light blue dress shirt and diagonal-striped tie with a fucking tie bar. are you shitting me??? he’s immaculate! his five o’clock shadow is perfect, as are his freshly-shaved gleaming bald head, his jaw that is so sharp you could slice deli meat on it, and his deeply cleft chin. this dude is HANDSOME. what a nightmare, trying to win a case against a man who looks like he sells sunset for a living! literally no thank you!!!!!!!!
the complaint: megan is suing her landlord for a security deposit and harassment. okay, and i am being 1000% serious here, has any of you ever actually had a security deposit returned? and a follow up: if you have, did you receive it in a timely enough manner that you were able to use it to help offset the costs of the next place? i have rented approximately 900 chicago apartments and not a single one has ever sent me back so much as a nickel after i moved out. and i am too old and exhausted to destroy apartments, every place i’ve moved out of looked better than when i moved in, but it still wasn’t worth the hassle. i stopped asking after the second time because it’s pointless to argue with an asshole who has all the leverage about how stained the inside of the refrigerator door was when i left. megan better have photographic evidence!
what does she want: $2400 countersuit, because i obviously need more unwarranted stress: suodod would like $1375 for, wait for it, rent and harassment! this is gonna be horrible!
how it went down: megan says that she is the single mom of a five-year-old and was in the process of escaping a dangerous situation with her child when she ran across two houses that suodod had for rent. welp, i gotta take back everything i said about ruling in favor of that brioni suit because you can’t be out here fucking over an abused mom and her baby! electric chair!
megan says that when she went to see the properties she knew right away suodod was sleazy because he hit on her and acted extremely unprofessional in front of the kid. but she was desperate and getting out of a domestic violence situation, so megan says she picked the sleazy one over the abusive one. that these were her only two choices fills me with rage, but until murder court gets optioned (somebody set up the network meetings!) there’s nothing i can do about it.
suodod is as slick as he looks, baby, and he kicks things off by telling greg what an honor it is to meet him and how amazed he is that the judge overcame all of his struggles and how inspirational he is and all that after school special bullshit that screams I’M GUILTY, YOUR HONOR, BUT PLEASE IGNORE THAT IN LIGHT OF THESE COMPLIMENTS I AM PAYING YOU. it’s so transparent and gross! but i live to be flattered and am not ashamed to admit it would totally work on me, which is why i would get kicked out of law school on the first day.
anyway suodod says that megan actually hit on him, offering to date him if he would consider lowering the rent. megan jumps in to say that this isn’t true, and suodod is like “well, i have the text where you asked me to lower it to $750 if we went on a date.” okay that’s scandalous or whatever but is this what it’s like to be hot? i cannot imagine a situation in which i would proposition a potential landlord and get any response other than, “you want me to touch what? bitch, the rent is doubled.”
suodod says that megan signed a seven-month lease, and when greg asks him what the rent was he says $775, and i’m sorry girl you were gonna waste your time dating a scumbag for a $25 coupon????? if you gotta bone this dude for a discount (and why not, it’s fine!) that rent should be no more than $600. megan shouts “you’re lying!” and at first it’s unclear what she says he’s lying about? but then she clarifies that she only signed a six-month lease. at first i was like “what’s the big deal?” but obviously if she’s trying to get that last month of rent money back it matters when the lease was up, and he can’t keep it as a rent payment for a month she wasn’t legally contracted to be staying there.
suodod says he has a copy of the lease that she signed and it’s from january 25 to august 25, but megan claims she has a copy of the lease as well and that hers says it’s up in july. suodod says that even if the lease ended in july like megan claims she didn’t move out until the middle of august, so if we’re being technical about it she actually owes him half a month more money. the judge looks over both copies of the lease and megan keeps yelling that suodod is lying but who cares when greg has the paperwork????? in a stunning twist, greg says that megan’s copy of the lease appears to have been altered! what is this, an episode of la law????? we’re forging documents now???????? this is some high tech shit!
the ruling: megan is getting more and more frustrated, ie louder and louder, frantically trying to convince greg that the altered document he’s holding somehow isn’t...the altered document he’s holding? she’s about to cry and i feel bad for her but did she really think that 1 suodod wasn’t gonna bring a copy of the original lease to court and 2 that the judge wouldn’t realize she had whited out the dates??? a mess! greg yells at megan for perpetuating a fraud against the court (that sounds bad! is she in jail now???) and judgment for the defendant, who also won the job as my new imaginary boyfriend.
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: no! he was in a great mood! that flattery obviously worked!
*bangs gavel*
ps if you are bored and want to listen to me talk to my good pal doctor kate bowler, my favorite religious scholar and divinity professor (if you can believe i even know what those words mean), about my parents being dead for most of my life and trying to love a body that actively hates me in return, here ya go!