who's on judge mathis today? #286

an idiotic recap of the greatest syndicated courtroom show of all time

plaintiff: dana from rochester, new york. dana’s giving glamorous mime, she’s giving impossibly chic zebra, she’s giving the most stylish referee on the powderpuff football field. dana strides into the courtroom wearing a black-and-white striped boatneck top, which reminds me of this incredible bell-sleeved version i just bought from universal standard that is so good i will probably wear it every single day until i inevitably spill a giant glob of grape jelly down the front. anyway, while i pair my shirt with outside pajamas and neon orange beanie, dana has paired hers with a chic pair of black leggings and large white fashion earrings. she looks like a beautiful penguin.

defendant: frankeisha from rochester, new york. okay so frankeisha is rocking a look i used to love ten years ago, before perimenopause ruined my ability to self-regulate my internal temperature, the “cool and interesting jacket/scarf combo” that you definitely leave on even when you’re inside because it definitely was hiding a grubby, sweaty t-shirt with cat hair on it. a cool jacket is an easy way to look chic and put together, especially when you never take it off, and even though you wear it every single day no one thinks you’re gross because they assume your clothes are different underneath. i went to new york for a weekend in the fall of 2013 to do some bootleg events for the original meaty and i only took one shirt and no one was the wiser. anyway, i’m assuming frankeisha is also a genius.

the complaint: dana says she wouldn’t be in court today if frankeisha hadn’t stolen and married her boyfriend, and now she’s suing her for slander and emotional distress.

what does she want: $3000? damn, what the hell did ol girl SAY? frankeisha is countersuing for $5000??? what the fuck did she say?????

how it went down: dana begins, “your honor, we wouldn’t be here if the defendant didn’t steal my boyfriend, marry him, and slander my name.” okay, well, first of all, that’s not your boyfriend that’s her husband. i’m not a genealogist (shut up) but i’m pretty sure husband > boyfriend, right? okay never mind that, we gotta be serious: dana says that the slander she’s suing frankeisha for is because she wrote on facebook that dana had aids, and boy is that shitty. also, like, there’s PrEP now? and antiretrovirals? magic johnson is out here thriving, what kind of ridiculous outdated insult is that???

dana says she and frankeisha were incredibly close; so close, in fact, that when they were both pregnant at the same time they were going to be each other’s godparent. dana says that frankeisha was with her in the delivery room and even stayed overnight with her at the hospital, and a week after her daughter was born she found out frankeisha had slept with her ex. dana says a week after that she and frankeisha got into an altercation about the ex-boyfriend, and frankeisha retaliated by bringing her sisters over to dana’s house and busting out the window over her sleeping baby’s head. holy shit, it’s been awhile since we’ve had a case bad enough to be turfed over to murder court, do you think i should call and wake up the judge???

dana has six police reports detailing various incidents in which frankeisha has done a crime to her prior to the slandering. as dana gets together her printed out facebook evidence™ for the judge, frankeisha interrupts to say, “first of all, your honor, we were never friends.” lmao yeah girl, i guess not! she says that they grew up together and haven’t liked each other since middle school, and that she was friends with her husband before dana started dating him. frankeisha says the harassment has gone both ways: dana and her friends jumped her during her first pregnancy, dana had her cousins jump her in the supermarket, and dana had her new boyfriend kick frankeisha in the back (oh my god?) while she was pregnant with her second child.

frankeisha says that dana would show up at the hospital when she had doctor’s appointments and, when she was dealing with a cps case, sent her son over to visit his dad and asked him to steal frankeisha’s court documents, which she then posted on facebook. i’m sorry but i think i might be dying. this is all extremely horrible!!! frankeisha says dana has popped up on her at the store, at the gas station, all over town, and she’s stressed her out so much she went into pre-term labor with one of her sons. greg asks (kind of nastily) if she’s ever called the police on dana and of course she has, frankeisha says dana is on probation right now for fucking with her!!!!!!!!!!

there must be something damning in dana’s paperwork, because greg is unmoved. he asks frankeisha if she has any defense for the accusations dana has made and she says she never wrote anything like that on facebook. greg asks her if she’s sure and frankeisha says yes, she might’ve made some spicy innuendos and hit her with a few verbal jabs but no, she’s never written the word “aids” on facebook. my stomach just fell out of my butt, because the look on judge mathis’ face says YES YOU FUCKING DID.

greg adjusts his glasses and reads the following: “frankeisha: ‘this aids-having [bleep] still hating, don’t she know a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush? does she wanna go night-night?’” oh no, not her also slipping in a death threat with the defamation??? she didn’t stop there, the judge reads three more even worse comments and i’m not saying you should keep a copy of everything you’ve ever written online but how the hell did frankeisha forget she said all this? frankeisha says “i’m sure she deleted all the stuff she said to me” and that’s on you for not swinging by kinko’s on your way to court today, ma’am! photocopied facebook threads are your responsibility!!!

frankeisha says she wrote all that shit because she was provoked and greg says, “good enough………….what about the lie you told me?” and i wonder if it’s possible to just give up in the middle of a court case. like when you’re in an argument and you know the other person is never gonna hear you and you don’t feel like fighting anymore so you just throw your hands up and concede, can you do that in an actual court of law? like, you see all the evidence your opponent is laying out and you know there’s no fucking way you’re gonna be able to counter that, can you just turn to the judge and say, “fuck it, i give up?” because if you can that’s what frankeisha should try to do.

frankeisha says that she didn’t deny it, she said she couldn’t recall what she’d written, and greg is like, “umm i read four paragraphs and you used the word ‘aids’ multiple times in all of them” and what in the 1989 are we doing here, just give dana her money and let’s wrap this shit up and go gouge our eardrums out! frankeisha says she was just repeating a rumor that she’d heard “on youtube” (WHAT) and besides, dana deserved it because she’d gone online and talked a bunch of shit about her kids.

judge mathis is pissed, and he says that because frankeisha had made a statement as if it was fact (not “i heard…” or “somebody told me…”) to a third party (in this case, all the nosy aunties on facebook) and since that statement could’ve damaged dana’s reputation, this is an open and shut textbook case of defamation. he’s ready to go, but first he’s going to embarrass frankeisha for having the nerve to bring a countersuit before him. he lets her tell him that dana “often waits until i am impregnated” (shudder) “to attack [her] with her entourage” and i do not like the way she worded that at all. greg asks if frankeisha had admitted anything to the police all those times dana had filed a report on her and she says, “why would i do that?” opening the door for greg to respond, “the same reason you’d come in here and lie to my face.” at this point, this is like watching a lion play with its food. get to the gavelling, already.

the ruling: frankeisha tries to tell greg about dana and her friends jumping her at her doctor’s office and showing up at her home unannounced, but because he’s already caught her lying the judge refuses to believe anything else she says. he asks her to provide proof that dana has defamed her, and she hands him a twitter screenshot in which dana says something like, “i will kick a [bleep]’s [bleep] for [bleep]ing with me” but that’s more of an idle threat than it is slander. (yes, i went to law school.)

the judge admonishes dana for her threats and says, “the violence and harassment cancel each other out” and okay??? is that a real thing????? sure, why not! for the first time in these interminable thirteen minutes the judge points out that the man these two are fighting over is in court today and neither of them has so much as gestured to him, and that’s the actual problem here. i can’t tell from the look of his maroon sweater vest whether or not he fucks good, but is there literally anything a man could do in bed that’s good enough to be clowning first on al gore’s internet and now on nationally-syndicated television over? i think the fuck not! judgment for the plaintiff.

did uncle greg say anything fucked up to anyone: “that’s not defamation, all she was doing was suggesting that you two work out your problems violently!”

*bangs gavel*