Category Archives: Law

Law, pregnancy

A pregnant woman doesn’t enter a bar

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The Bar Exam…

Is this upcoming week, however, after a long and hard think, I will not be taking it. Instead, I will be finishing the complaint for my first ever case as a licensed attorney, and will be compiling educational materials to assist in establishing a foundation in honor of my friend Nick.

As to my reasons, between baby, moving, and burnout, it was simply too much. I couldn’t make enough milk to feed Otter, freeze a store for the exam, and train him on the bottle. I couldn’t get the house unpacked, work on my case, and prepare mentally for the exam. I couldn’t get enough sleep to remember all the elements of a contract, or the Rule against Perpetuities (which I used to teach). It was all too much.

Thank you to everyone who believed I could do it, it helped to think I could, and I am beyond honored to be thought so smart by so many smart people. However, this time around, my eyes were bigger than my stomach, when it came to filling my plate.

So I am going to focus on getting things off my plate, reading Harry Potter, and having a good time with my mother.

Law, Uncategorized

Bad Faith

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Bad faith (Latin: mala fides) is a legal concept in which a malicious motive on the part of a party in a lawsuit undermines their case. It has an effect on the ability to maintain causes of action and obtain legal remedies.1

Bad faith is acting with the intent to defraud, the intent to cheat. There is a legal belief that one who has unclean hands cannot press a lawsuit against someone with clean hands. (I say a theory because like all human endeavors, the legal system is flawed and therefore I am sure all of you could cite many a personal story about some bad actor who sued your innocent and saintly uncle and took him for all he was worth. However, this post isn’t about your saintly uncle, it’s about me, so leave him out of it already!)

Therefore, the theory behind preventing bad faith actors from recovering in some court situations is a good one. If you are the breaching party to a contract, you can’t usually sue to recover against the non-breaching party.

Why am I giving this little legal lesson in Bad Faith? Why because it pertains to my life today, that’s why.

Our previous landlords are acting in Bad Faith. Bad Landlords, no rent check. They have the remainder of our security deposit, and have been holding it for ransom while they whittle away at it, bit by diminishing bit. These are the people who allowed us to move our little family, asthmatic child and pregnant wife and all, into a cigarette smoke covered and pet urine smeared house. A house that smelled so incredibly bad when I first walked into it that I almost threw up. These are the landlords that delayed removing the carpets that were so filthy we had to lay cardboard boxes over them to walk to and from our rooms, so our feet wouldn’t touch them, for months.

Now, here we are, happily out of their fracking house, and they claim there is a “strong doggy odor” in the back family room where we kept our dogs kennels. They are angling for new carpets.

No. I had them cleaned, professionally, per our lease agreement. The pets never, NEVER, urinated or defecated on the carpets. There is no reason to replace them, well, no reason other than greed and bad faith.

Wanna know where the unpleasant smell is? Why it’s buried deep within the cement under the carpets. The cement they were too cheap to seal with any sort of odor blocking sealant. The cement their previous tenant’s pets soaked in urine and feces. It could also be buried deep within the a/c ducts, where the hundreds of thousands of cigarettes he smoked, in the shower even, wafted their tar-laden contents into the air, to be whisked down the ducts and throughout the house.

Did they deal with any of these unpleasant odors when we lived there? Of course not, they wouldn’t even make the simple repairs we requested over and over again. No, they want us to buy them new carpets, because they are trying to sell their stinky little hell hole for way too much money and are too cheap to actually put forward enough dough to convince anyone to look at it.

Happily, I get to sue them if they try it. New Jersey, while muggy and full of people who like to make rude hand gestures on the highway, is a good place to be a tenant with crappy landlords. The New Jersey Rent Security Deposit Act allows me to recover double that erroneously charged me by my landlord, plus fees and costs.2

What does that have me busily doing? Why getting out my old photographs and filing a complaint.

It is the benefit to being a shark. When someone asks you to swim, you get to bite. Normally, I prefer to leave my teeth out of it, but these people have spent an entire year making my life hell. I have let violation after violation of our lease agreement slide, in the hopes that it would all be over soon. So now I am licking my chops.

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1. Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith
2. N.J. Stat. §§ 46:8-1 to – 49

Humor, Law, Otter, parenting, Stress

The great poo of 2007… and a sorrowful exploration of life…

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Okay, this post is bi-polar, as are my days most often of late.

The humorous part first, so those not wishing to feel sad can stop reading and retreat back to happyland. (Which is located no where near New Jersey.)

The great poo of 2007 struck full force tonight while I was enjoying an evening coffee with a friend, Tiff. Otter, who had been poo free all day and was sitting calmly on my knee, suddenly exploded, sending a river of poo out of his diaper, down his leg, onto his shoe, onto my leg, down my leg, and onto the floor. Ick.

At first, unaware of the extent of the damages, I began to perform a quick diaper change in the nearly empty cafe on the chair next to me. (The bathroom has nowhere to change him.) Sadly, there were two factors conspiring against me. The first, Otter had waited to perform his amazing feat until the cooing, baby friendly family had left the establishment and were replaced by the mean and glaring anti-poo family. Second, the extent of the poo rendered my “quick-change” plans useless.

I retreated to the bathroom and wiped my baby and I off as best I could. Happily, he felt much better, and my “quick-change” attempt had driven off the mad family, so Tiff and I were able to better enjoy the remainder of our coffee.

WARNING: The following contains not happy emotions.

I am struggling with something. I am supposed to sit for the NJ bar in nine days. I have not been able to study for it at all because I have a newborn, a child out of school for the summer, no nearby family, and recently moved.

Normally, these obstacles would be challenges to me, something to soar over and conquer with strength and grace. After all, I took and passed the Colorado Bar while preparing for a move to NJ, recovering from surgery, pregnant, and with my husband in another state. Because of this, many of the people in my life express their belief in my ability to take this bar and do well. I have my doubts.

There are differences between now and then. Fairly important ones. To begin with, the last bar I took after over 2000 hours of study with Nick. We had been at it for 6 months by the time the test came around. We had been at it for over twelve hours a day for the two months immediately preceding the bar. I was living with my parents, who were helping me with Marlena while Lee was in NJ. I had a pile of similarly situated friends around me, with treats and emotional support. I did not have a brand new baby.

Now, I am in NJ, with no family but Lee, and have been here for a year. I have friends, but none of them co-students. I have not been able to study more than about 30 hours. I have not slept longer than 4 or 5 uninterrupted hours in over 3 months. I have lost my previous study partner to drowning, and every time I start to work on the bar, I start to cry. My migraines are returning, I have anxiety attacks, and I have about a tenth of the support network I had before.

I am in the process of adjusting to a new house, a new baby, and a new town, again. I am still living out of boxes. I spend a great deal of time mourning the loss of my friend, my previous life, my days as a law student, and many other things. The rest of the time I care for my children and try not to let my feelings negatively effect them. I try and shop for groceries, get together with my friends, and shower before noon. I try and cook dinner for my family. I try to remember to feed myself.

I have been told I have the baby blues, I have been told all this is to be expected after the death of a dear friend. I have been told I can take the bar and just fail it if I can’t study.

Except I can’t just fail it. This is an area of my life where I have a bad case of OCD. I have literally bitten and torn my thumbs to pieces stressing out over not doing well on this exam. I have cried in frustration each time I have set a movie on for Monkey, gotten Otter to sleep, tried to study, and been interrupted by him waking up, or Monkey needing a snack.

I have to hand write the exam, which is next to impossible on a good day because of my lovely RSS and the injuries I suffered when the dogs pulled me over the stroller and dragged me across the yard the other day.

I am at a completely indecisive standstill. I can’t win. I feel like a failure if I give up and don’t take it, but I will feel like a failure if I take it and don’t pass. It is past the time that I can actually study in a real way and assure my passage. Taking it at this point is one big Hail Mary, thrown desperately from deep within my own territory.

So what do I do?