The Bird Poop Story (continued)
Yes, it’s time again for the next episode of the popular Bird Poop Story.
Like I said before, we filed our papers at Small Claims Court back in December, but couldn’t serve them, because the previous owner of our condo was on vacation — till January 29 (not January 15 like originally thought).
Anyways, we finally got their reply today and it couldn’t be more entertaining. They denied our claim, of course, which I kind of figured. If they were willing to pay for the cleanup, they could have offered that a long time ago. So no surprise there.
The fun begins once we look at the counter claim they filed. Yes, that’s right. They actually did file a counter claim, and an interesting one at that. They are claiming the filing fees — which makes sense, I guess. If you disagree with somebody’s claim, you want to make sure you get the money back you used to defend yourself, if the judge rules in your favor. So far, so good.
They don’t stop there, though. They are actually trying to charge us for lost wages. They are claiming 7.5 hours for each of them (husband and wife) at rates between $40/hr and $50/hr. Their reasoning goes like this: the wife missed a full day of contract work, because they had to go to court, hence we have to reimburse her. The husband had to take a vacation day to go to court, hence we have to reimburse him, too.
It’s actually quite amusing, because:
- Only the husband was named in the claim. Why did both of them have to go to court? To do so was their choice.
- They live in Vancouver, he works in Vancouver, she works at home. The court’s in Vancouver. How can you possibly spend a whole day at court for this matter. It took Brigette 15 minutes to file the papers. Then there’s travel time. How does that add up to 7.5 hours? — Easy. It doesn’t.
- He took a vacation day. Why? He could have just taken two hours off. That’s all it should have taken him. Tops.
- Since he took a vacation day, he already gets paid for it. He didn’t say he took an unpaid day of absence. So why does he want to get paid again by us?
So, quite obviously, they are trying to teach us a lesson here, getting as much money out of us as possible. “You dared to mess with us, now we are going to make you pay for that,” or something along those lines.
It’s going to be interesting when we actually go in and meet before the judge.
Stay tuned for the next episode. lol
