who's on judge mathis today? #246
an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time
plaintiff: tammy from maple grove, minnesota. tammy is wearing a black v-neck shirt that has an inch-wide strip of intricate lace where her cleavage should be and black slacks, and her long auburn hair has curling iron curls (y’all know what i’m talking about) at the bottom. tammy is also wearing my absolute favorite accessory: a copious and distracting amount of blush. every time i leave the house i do so looking like someone splashed acid in my face; right now i don’t know where my debit card is (it’s been missing for at least three months) but i do have one of these in my coat pocket, a bunch of these at the bottom of my day bag, many of these cluttering the bathroom counter, my desk is littered with these, and three of these stashed in various spots inside my car. suffice to say, tammy is a woman after my own rosy-cheeked heart.
defendant: wayne from rice, minnesota. i’m sorry but i didn’t know bob barker was gonna be on this show? is this a daytime TV crossover episode??? what’s next, kelly clarkson flipping vowels over on wheel of fortune????? wayne swaggers into the courtroom in slate grey slacks paired with a lighter grey blazer that has some sheen to it, over a deep blue dress shirt that really makes his full head of white hair POP. i mean, it’s the dictionary definition of “brilliant!”
the complaint: tammy is suing her ex-husband for the value of a motorcycle after he allegedly took it to have it repaired then refused to give it back.
what does she want: $5000!! the maximum!!!!! bob/wayne is countersuing for $3000 for unpaid loans and motorcycle repairs, which is truly insane because this old-ass man better not be getting his old ass on a fucking motorcycle?????? bob barker jr. better come on down to reality!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
how it went down: tammy says she started dating wayne when she was 17, and i’m sorry to be this person but i immediately said “HOW LONG AGO WAS THAT” so loud jackie hissed at me for waking her up. tammy says they got married when she was 22, and when she left him years later “that’s when [her] crack addiction started.” uh oh. tammy says was addicted for twenty years, and at the time of their eventual divorce she’d let wayne know that she was struggling and he lent her money. she also says that wayne continued to ask her for sex after they’d divorced, and i’m not sure what she wants us to think about that? i can tell you what the judge thinks, though: “sometimes ex-spouses, they look back and see, y’know, no one’s as good.” *wink wink*
tammy agrees but says that she and the 76-year-old wayne just talked about sex, never did it (isn’t that marriage in a nutshell??? like why even get divorced) because she was no longer into him like that. tammy says wayne constantly asked her for sex, even while she was in a longterm inpatient rehab program. ugh god it makes my stomach hurt imagining tammy in her grippy socks standing at the one pay phone in the facility listening to this bag of bones demanding “when are we gonna FUCK.” (they bleeped it out but judging from the reaction of the audience it’s clear he didn’t say, you know, “tongue kiss” or whatever.)
wayne says, in a gravelly smoker’s voice, that “it’s been a roller coaster with her ever since the day we met. the money, the DUIs, the drug charges, the arrests: she’s been a headache since the separation.” i don’t know what he’s about to say next but i do know that if i was a marriage counselor my first talking point would be to remind people that marriage is first and foremost a business agreement and that if you wouldn’t, say, open a shoe store with this person then maybe you should pump the brakes on getting hitched. i mean, you are linking your fucking social security number to somebody, please understand that they can ruin your entire life!!! even from the relationship graveyard!!!!!!!
wayne says that he’s given tammy over eighty thousand american dollars (is he looking for a new wife, or) since they separated and i thought maybe she’d wrecked his credit or something egregious but come on wayne we can’t feel bad for money you willingly lent her! wayne says she kept calling him and asking him for money and when the judge asks “why did you give it to her if you wanted her out of your life?” wayne says “because she asked for it.” he says that tammy never paid any of that money back, and i would love to know what wayne does for work because if somebody took 80k from me this trial would be i.
wayne hands the judge some wrinkled papers from his accordion of truth™ that he says prove how much money he’s given tammy and greg reads the list: $20,000 cash; $11,000 for a mustang; $5000 for two cars; $1000 cash; $750 for a pick-up truck; $8600 for a down payment on a house; and $10,000 for a ford taurus. the judge says that he’s just gonna go through the big ticket items and that’s fine but can he please ask miss lady what the fuck she did with five different cars??? does she break them down into little pieces and cook them or what, why does she need so many shitty cars!!!
tammy says the mustang was a gift, as were the other cars, and by the way the house down payment was a gift as well. greg says to wayne “damn man, are you rich???” and when wayne says no he shouts “ALL RIGHT THEN, I NEED EIGHTY.” yeah, and throw a subaru forester in there for me while you’re at it, daddy warbucks. tammy reiterates that all these things were gifts but also not really because wayne wouldn’t stop asking her for some ass every time he coughed up a car. (an equal exchange, if you ask me.)
wayne says that tammy has pursued the post-marriage friendship with him, not the other way around, and she recently hit him up asking “for a ride on the plane.” A CASUAL PRIVATE PLANE REFERENCE? does this dude own the minnesota vikings or what??? and a follow up: if so, what is he doing on this show????? the judge asks wayne if tammy’s been “hitting on” him and he says no, so what’s the point of bringing up the plane thing? sir, you’ve admittedly given this woman many thousands of your dollars, why wouldn’t she ask you to drag out that old WWII fighter jet to drop her off down at the target???
finally it’s time to wrap up…………..whatever this is we’ve been doing and get to the loan. tammy says that during a rough patch in her addiction she pawned her trike (a three-wheeled motorcycle, i’m so annoyed i had to google that, my algorithm is about to be fucked up for weeks) and she asked wayne to help her get it back. wayne gives the judge a picture of it and greg says “this is shaaaaarp” which is hilarious and surprising. tammy says it cost four grand to get the trike out of hock and she borrowed that money from wayne, and after she got it back wayne came to pick up both the trike and its title because tammy had no place to put it.
tammy says she told wayne that she’d give him the $4000 back when she got her inheritance from her uncle’s future death and when she finally got it (note to any detectives reading this: find out where tammy was the night her uncle died) she gave the money to wayne immediately, only to find out that he’d put the trike title back in his name (he’d previously given it to tammy as a gift) as soon as he’d picked it up from the pawn shop.
wayne says this story isn’t entire true. he says that when tammy called to ask him to lend her the money she ran down a list of problems with the trike that needed to be repaired, and when he sent someone to pick it up wayne told her he’d take care of them. wayne says when the trike was delivered to his garage “everything was wrong with it,” and in addition to having all those problems fixed wayne also registered the trike back in his name since he’d had to pay to get it running again.
wayne starts explaining (in excruciating detail) each piece he meticulously fixed on his training wheel motorcycle and greg cuts him off like “we don’t care what you did to the brakes, why won’t you give this lady the trike back???” again wayne launches into all the work he did on the trike (he can rebuild a motorcycle transmission, in case you were wondering) and again greg interrupts him in a huff that’s about to boil over into a full-blown tantrum to ask why the hell he didn’t return tammy’s trike and finally wayne says “because she never paid for it.” the judge asks if wayne had ever given tammy an estimate for the repairs since he expected payment and wayne says no, which sends greg into that rage i foresaw a few seconds ago.
the judge asks about wayne’s countersuit, which he explains is for both a loan and all that engine work or whatever he was talking about before. while wayne gets his paperwork together for the judge, tammy reminds us she’s still there by piping up to remind judge mathis that this all went down when she was deep in her addiction, after she’d lost everything, and wayne knew there was no way she’d be able to pay him back. also, not to mind another man’s pockets, but isn’t it weird to give someone literal tens of thousands of dollars then suddenly demand a measly two thousand back? i’m not a hundred percent sure what’s really going on in this relationship, and i suspect i’d know more if wayne’s new wife wasn’t sitting behind him looking pressed as a panini, but i get why tammy would be confused and upset!!!!!
pretty sure whatever wayne handed the judge was just an itemized list of trike repairs and small loans he wrote by hand, but what isn’t on that paper is a single signature of tammy’s or a date by which she’d agreed to pay. the judge tells wayne he has to prove that tammy owes him and wayne gets slick (bad idea pops, can’t you see you’re losing!?) and says “can she prove she doesn’t?” and greg crosses his arms over his beefy, hunky barrel chest and snaps “she doesn’t have to prove she doesn’t, you have to prove she did.” that doesn’t sound real, but okay!!!!!!!
the ruling: greg hates this man and i am desperate for him to put this case out of its misery. rather than set me free, greg instead gives wayne a lesson on burden of proof that includes the phrase “preponderance of evidence” and i’m sorry but i didn’t know i was going to law school today? i woulda packed a snack!
wayne continues to read off the list of things he decided tammy owes him and when he says “in 1999 i gave her…” my jaw shattered as it hit the floor and blocked out the rest of what he was saying. thank god the judge finally cuts him off and asks how he determined which of the thousands of dollars he’s given her to countersue tammy for, and as he struggles to come up with a plausible explanation greg does us all a favor and dismisses wayne’s case. but he does tell him he can keep the trike, since he did so much painstaking work on it, and while he’s riding that shit around he can go on ahead and drop a $5000 check off for tammy. judgment for the plaintiff, vroom vroom!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “you just talked about sex? sir, they got viagra now, you can actually do it!”
*bangs gavel*