Markus’ Blog

We have entered the next phase of the bird poop story. Yesterday, we got a letter from court informing us about the mediation session that has been scheduled for mid-April. This morning, I finally filed our reply to their ridiculous counterclaim, where they are asking for almost double the amount from us as to what we are claiming from them. (I don’t have to mention that we disputed every single point of their counterclaim, right?)

I am sure the mediation session is going to be interesting. A gut feeling tells me, this stupid issue might actually make it before court. Why? Because this is not the usual dispute with a contractor or something, where both parties are giving in a little and come to an acceptable agreement.

The previous owners of our condo are obviously not going to give in, otherwise they would have approached us a long time ago to try and work something out. What did they do instead? Ignore our letters and counterclaim imaginary figures that are way higher than the original claim itself. Of course, they are not going to get away with that, but it sure shows their mindset.

We are not going to give in either, not anymore. At this point, only 100% reimbursement for our expenses of getting the deck cleaned (and filing the claim) is going to be acceptable. Would we have been willing to settle for less, back in September or October? Probably. We wouldn’t have been happy, but we wouldn’t have been poops either. Now, however, after all the time and effort spent, nope, now it’s got to be a full ruling in our favour.

What annoys and upsets me the most is the following:

• They ignored our letters on purpose, not taking us seriously, thus forcing us to either give up (and be stuck with a bill that we shouldn’t be suck with) or go all the way. However, they still think it’s our fault that this matter escalated so badly.
• The audacity to counterclaim twice the amount when they didn’t even have any expenses (other than alleged lost wages), pisses me right off. I despise this kind of attitude. I expected them to dispute our claim, yes, but never in a million years would I have thought that they would actually try and claim money from us.

Like I said, it’s going to be interesting, and unless the mediator makes a very convincing case that one of the two parties has almost no chance of winning the case (and the ones not winning won’t be us ;-)), the “pigeons” will end up in court. Come to think of it, even if he or she does make a convincing case that they can’t really win, they’ll probably try anyways — given what we’ve seen from them so far.