who's on judge mathis today? #188
an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time
plaintiff: jane from louisville, kentucky. ALRIGHT, NOW. the wig: magenta. the pantsuit: black with white lapels. the jacket: a stunning, in every sense of the word, neon pink pleather motorcycle piece. the fake gucci glasses: cocked to one side and tinted pink. jane (i feel like she’s the kind of lady who would refer to herself in the third person as “miss jane”) has not come to play on this lovely afternoon, she came to serve!
defendant: robin from louisville, kentucky. robin is wearing a very no-nonsense work shirt and pants, and the color of the shirt is that exact shade of hospital-scrub-blue mixed with regional-manager-periwinkle that i’m like…girl did you just get off work!?
the complaint: jane is suing her former roomie for rent and eviction.
what does she want: $925 now, miss jane, i’m not going to clown you for not rounding up to a smooth thousand because i respect my elders, but i want to! countersuit filed: robin would like $800 for harassment!
how it went down: jane starts off saying that robin rented a room in her home and was a terrible roommate because she always invited men and drugs over. honestly??????? WHAT’S THE PROBLEM, BABE. jk jk but seriously if i walked into the crib and a man was there? i would have consensual sex with him then steal his weed. win-win, bestie! okay so jane says she would come home after a long day of work and just want to eat some food and chill but she couldn’t because there would always be dudes up in her spot, plus the drug thing was extra bad because she’s a recovering addict. ugh yikes.
it’s worth noting that during jane’s testimony robin is doing jim carrey-level face acting, rolling her eyes and looking shocked before pivoting to disgust, and it’s absolutely enthralling. jane says that the stream of men through the apartment was so constant that she she didn’t feel safe in her own home, oh and also robin had a gun and was sleeping with those men for money.
it’s robin’s turn, and i was not prepared for her to sound like a foreman on a construction site AND YET. robin says that everything jane has said thus far is a lie, and that she has pictures of the apartment that prove that jane had put up barricades all over to keep robin trapped in her room, and those same photographs show the floors covered in mothballs, which robin thinks was a tactic to get her to move out. i’ll tell you what, that shit would’ve worked on me. there was a dude who lived down the hall from my last chicago apartment who, i don’t know, might’ve been trying to disguise the smell of a rotting corpse with mothballs? it was the most pungent thing i’ve ever smelled! the entire hallway reeked, so obnoxiously that i had to buy a door snake to keep any air from the hallway from sneaking through the crack and poisoning my nose and lungs. every time i got a pizza the delivery guy would be at my door with his shirt pulled up over his delicate mucous membranes, eyes raining tears. it’s so awful. anyway, mothballs all over the floor???????? electric chair!
robin gestures to a (frankly, fine as hell stocky lil beefcake) man sitting in her witness chair and introduces the court to her son (he’s not, like, a child son, he’s a grown man son i swear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and says that in addition to the barricades and the moth balls, every time her son would come over jane would throw herself at him! okay, sure, inappropriate, but i get it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! jane says that isn’t true, the son says jane was always asking him for “hugs” (“i’m a hugger!” - jane, salivating on the other side of the courtroom) that were too intimate and made him uncomfortable, and robin says, “SHE A COUGAR, BABY!” please god………………………….do they need a third roommate?
greg wants to get to the unpaid rent. jane says that at first robin was great about paying her rent on time ($197 a month, i think? everybody is shouting and while i absolutely looooove a ruckus it can make pesky little things like DETAILS hard to catch) but then she started skipping months or paying $80 here and $100 there. robin has a bunch of wrinkled receipts and crumpled up photocopies of money orders in her accordion of truth™ and she hands a big mess to doyle and he takes it over to the judge, who is already hilariously exasperated.
jane says she took robin to eviction court (is that a thing??????) but robin shouts over her that the faded, rapidly disintegrating sheet of paper she’s waving in judge mathis’s direction is proof that jane’s case was thrown out of court. i can’t stop laughing because i have a sister named jane, and every time robin says her name i just picture my dumb ass sibling pouting behind the podium and it is killing me. almost makes me regret having sent her to voicemail on two separate occasions last week! (she doesn’t want anything, she never wants anything!!!!! hoe just text me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
the ruling: jane says the only reason her eviction court proceedings (i still am not sure what this is but who cares tbh) were tossed was because she filled out the paperwork incorrectly, and while i’m like “HUH???” greg is like “ok!” so i guess that’s the end of that? does robin have to pay her or not??? does gregory ellis mathis have the power to overrule an actual american court???????????
robin is suing for emotional distress (earlier they said harassment but lol whatever babe) and says that not only did jane remove the mailbox, she also intercepted robin’s mail and opened it, sending her pictures of the mail she was stealing to robin on messenger. excuse me?????? old black lady facebook shenanigans, my favorite kind!!! greg doesn’t believe the mailbox story because jane denies it and robin doesn’t have any concrete proof, but he does take the photocopied money order robin has presented and applies the $630 amount the money order was for (jane’s name is on it, she cashed it, etc etc) to the amount jane is suing for, and—
HOLD UP. robin interjects as greg is trying to put these ladies to bed, screaming “so we’re just going to ignore that she locked me in my bedroom and i had to shit in a bucket in the corner?” GIRL WE ARE DEFINITELY NOT. why is this just coming up now?? she should’ve started her testimony with this bombshell!!!!! does she need me to step in as her lawyer?????? robin hands the judge a bunch of printed out cell phone photos™ of the outside of a door that appears to have been booby trapped from the outside? there’s a complicated system of ropes and pulleys and shit holding this door closed and between the bungee cords and the mothballs i’m wondering how this isn’t being argued in front of the supreme court.
greg is disgusted (but also laughing, i mean, come on) and jane says wait, she didn’t lock robin in her room, she locked herself in the rest of the house! ok girl, that’s genius. and despicable!!! greg tells robin he’ll grant her $200 of her claim because she had to sleep next to a bucket of her own piss, and so many numbers have been tossed around i’m not sure what jane is walking away with? like, 95 bucks???????
in the hallways after the verdict doyle looks on in amusement as these ladies in their finest montgomery ward suits continue to argue while also telling each other how much they love them, and robin’s son leans in to hug jane’s witness and i might be a pervert but i swear i can see jane take a big inhale of his masculine aroma while inching closer to see if she can get in on my man’s strong embrace, but he spies her out of the corner of his eye and runs away. cougar on the prowl!!!!!!!!!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “as many men as you got? how you gonna fall behind on the rent??? you need to tell some of them fellas to leave a few dollars as they hit the door!”
*bangs gavel*