the plaintiff: latoya from troy, alabama. royal blue top (dress?), black blazer, glasses. she looks incredibly serious.
the defendant: eddie from troy, alabama. eddie is wearing his best church suit, a dark grey number with a bright poppy red tie and a crisp white shirt. he is accompanied by his wife marlo, who is wearing a cotton candy pink button down and a skirt pulled up to her clavicle. boy i love nothing more than an article of clothing i can tuck my nipples into. she looks like she’s attending a funeral which, depending on the evidence presented in court against her husband, she may very well be.
the complaint: latoya and eddie both dated (ruh roh) and worked together, and he owes her money for a job she finished for him that he never paid her for.
what does she want: $2565 for car repairs, unpaid wages, and emotional distress. countersuit filed! eddie wants $2000 for emotional distress, which really just means “i’m suing you because you had the audacity to sue me, bitch.”
how it went down: latoya met eddie in 2013 through work, when she says he “relentlessly” started pursuing her. eddie says latoya was his girlfriend for five years, and during those five years she wasn’t faithful to him. latoya’s witness, who i didn’t even know was in the courtroom, starts shouting “you’re a liar!” at eddie and greg immediately has her escorted out. i always forget that the bailiff is there bailiffing, just waiting for someone to act up so he can bailiff all over them. (in this case that means gently escorting latoya’s mom/sister/friend right up out this makeshift courtroom.) greg asks eddie the timeline of his five year relationship with latoya and he hems and haws then oohs and ahhs and we all know what that means: there’s some motherfucking overlap between these ladies standing here today and he’s not trying to get either beat down or divorced.
eddie claims he can’t remember the dates of their courtship because latoya hit him in the head with a cinderblock and that messed up his memory. [sigh] i’m not proud of this, but, i just had to google “cinderblock” to see what one looks like so i know exactly what we’re dealing with here. bitch, don’t make that face at me, i’m not chip gaines! i don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of masonry tools! anyway, cinderblocks look like serious business and i wouldn’t want to be struck in the softest part of my arm with one let alone my fucking head, but also where the fuck were they at that she had one available to even hit him with? did she have to pause the argument like “hold up a second, let’s finish this fight at that construction site around the corner.”
latoya says that the relationship was just sexual and she kept trying to end it but his lust for her was just too strong. she filed a police report and she put up a no trespassing sign! (at this point, latoya pulls out an actual “no trespassing” sign from her accordion of truth™ to present to judge mathis as evidence and greg absolutely loses his shit.) doyle the bailiff collects the police report from latoya and the judge reads it and it’s real. eddie can’t gather himself to give a verbal response so he hands the bailiff his statement, which greg reads aloud. basically eddie says he was fixing the radiator on latoya’s car, she started yelling at him at the same time her sister pulled a gun on him, at which point he noticed his shoes were untied so he bent down to tie them (IN FRONT OF A BITCH WITH A GUN???) and when he did she clocked him with the cinderblock. what in the world?!
the ruling: ok so we come back from commercial break and latoya says that eddie had asked her to do some sheetrock work with him (i’m not looking any more shit up lest all my targeted ads end up being for carhartt shirts and industrial strength hammers or whatever, but at least this explains that cinderblock shit) that he was supposed to pay her $800 for and never did. he also promised to fix a car for her and she is suing him for that, but greg says the “promise of a gift” isn’t binding. GOOD TO KNOW. eddie says that latoya never finished the job, which is why he never paid her. latoya says that eddie never finished his part of the job, and since he was the boss it’s not on her.
greg asks eddie about his countersuit, and eddie says he wants money for pain and suffering because since latoya hit him with the cinderblock (i don’t think we’ve established that she actually did?) he’s had headaches and memory loss, and he hands greg a doctor’s note. (sidebar: this is maybe the most evidence i have ever seen in a judge mathis case? there’s no trespassing signs and police reports and witness statements and doctor’s notes: a veritable cornucopia of printed-off sheets of kinko’s finest computer paper!) oh okay then greg asks latoya if she did it (i should be a lawyer man, i’m getting good at this) and she admits to throwing a cinderblock at eddie but says that it was in self-defense because he put his hands on her during an argument. latoya says the cinderblocking occurred in november, but eddie’s medical note is dated in march. also, the doctor wrote that he had a “neck and back strain typical of a car accident.” PLOT TWIST. you guys! pretty please skim your paperwork! at the very least!! the judge dismisses both claims, chalking this whole mess up to relationship game-playing. i agree. i’m emotionally distressed just watching this nonsense. where’s my goddamn settlement?!
did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: at the end marlo finally speaks, saying that ever since she’s been with eddie latoya has been at the periphery of their lives: driving by her house, calling her daughter at work, etc. greg tells the bailiff to give her latoya’s no trespassing sign, saying, “you see what she presented when he kept coming around? now that she keeps coming around you? you need this!”
*bangs gavel*