(04/27) HOTL Hour 2

Handel on the Law, Marginal Legal Advice. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to handle on the law marginallegal advice where I bill Handle tell you,
whatever your name is, you haveabsolutely no case. Lawsuits get filed
constantly. Matter of fact, thiscountry is the lawsuit litigation capital of the
world, and Southern California is thesort of poster child of our legal system

(00:24):
in terms of lawsuits for the country. This lawsuit happens to we have in
Fresno, California, Fresno small townsort of what maybe ninety one hundred miles
away from Los Angeles, and theyhave a minor league team affiliated with the
Rockies, the Fresno Grizzlies, andof course lawsuit went in doubt file a

(00:46):
lawsuit, and this one is thediscrimination lawsuit over a Ladies Night promotion that
happened last season. And this lawsuitwas filed against the team last week.
And here is the argument, adiscrimination lawsuit because female fans were allowed into
the ballpark ballpark for free, andtherefore ladies were free, men had to

(01:10):
pay. And the lawsuit reads thatfemale fans allowed into the ballpark for free,
while men and non or non binarypersons. God does that tell you
where we're at today? Men andnine non binary persons had to pay to
get into Chakazini Park. No ChikanziPark. Okay, fine, why not?

(01:38):
Harry Krouch, the male plaintiff,said he paid eighteen bucks to get
into the stadium, while his guestsor the person he was with, female
Christine Johnson, was able to getinto the game for free. You think
that'd be a good thing, right, but went and out file lawsuit.
So here is the statement made bythe plaintiff, that is, Harry Crouch's

(02:00):
attorney. The Fresno Grizzlies ill conceivedLadies' Night promotions seemingly sexualized female fans by
treating them as little more than sexualbait in order to attract men buy tickets
to the game. I guess theGrizzlies are that bad. In doing so,
the Grizzlies male dominated front office managedto pull off a rare trifecta of

(02:23):
sex discrimination, misogyny, exor sexism. I have no idea what that is,
and Missandry don't know what that isall at once. By treating I
got this female, non binary andmale fans unequally based on their gender.
Therefore, it is in violation ofthe UNRU Act, which says that the

(02:49):
law provides protection from discrimination by allbusiness establishments in California, housing, public
accommodation because of age, ancestry,color, disability, national origin, race,
religion, sex, and sexual orientation. By the way, the Grizzlies
won that game over the Stockton Portsten to two, so we'll see what

(03:13):
happens. My guess is Ladies' Nightis going to be eliminated. Now that's
it. How about kids get infree? Is that discrimination? Who the
hell knows? I mean, justtremendous, isn't it all right? Gail?
Hello, Gail, welcome? Whatcan I do for you? The
mine bill? I share a sixfoot tall brick wall with my neighbor,

(03:39):
and twenty years ago my dad,who lived with me in the home,
built a latticework type fencing on topof the brick wall. Since then,
too fast forward twenty years, nothing'sbeen done with it. It's all dilapidated,

(04:00):
hanging down, and I'm getting tiredof looking at it, so I
want to I don't particularly like theseneighbors, so I was wondering if I
could just make out a letter askingthem if either they could take this down
or I could take this down thatI want to get rid of it.

(04:23):
Yeah, yeah, no, ofcourse you can write a letter. I
mean that's so that doesn't stop you, and you're nice, say hey,
would you please take this down?You can do that. It's a it's
a wooden lattice. Is that whatyou're saying. It's it's white plastic plastic
Okay, not it looks like wouldbut it's not wood Gee. I was
going to say next, I wasgoing to ask if you would do you
have a barbecue near it and agrill? And then accidents do happen?

(04:47):
Okay, so a couple of things. Do you know which side of the
fence line or which side of theline that delineates between the two the boundary
line? Do you know which sideof the boundary line that I was on?
The brick wall is exactly down themiddle of the Okay? Got it?
So all right? Fair enough,So you got to down the middle

(05:09):
part. And so is the latticework down the middle on top? Yeah?
No, I get that. Sonow I'm thinking, because it's half
yours, can you take it downand just do it arbitrarily and they sue
you I don't know what they sueyou for what? And the other thing
you can do is simply call thecity uh and find out because there's a

(05:30):
six foot cap that most cities have. You can't go above six feet,
or you can't go below six feet. You're gonna put a fence up there.
It has to be exactly at sixfeet. And if that is if
if it's a six foot wall,as you said, and the lattice works
on top of that, that maybe in violation of city ordinance. And
if that's that's the case, youtake it down and there's not a damn

(05:51):
thing they can do. Okay,what are they gonna do? Sue you
because you've took down an ill legalfence that is on your property, half
on your property. So well,the corkery is my my dad actually,
who has a carpenter built that latticework. Okay, you still take you

(06:12):
down. It doesn't matter really whobuilt it. It's it would be easier
if they put it up, butokay, we built it, We're taking
it down. I don't know whatthey're gonna sue you for. And you're
gonna just get neighbors that are morepissed off at you. If it is
in fact in violation of the ordinance, you're totally home free. And the
shame of it is if it ignites, it's only going to melt. I

(06:33):
mean, it could have been anice bonfire that you that happened by accident,
if you know what I mean.So that's there's the answer. Oh,
okay, Edward, Hello, Edward, welcome, Hey, good morning.
Ago. Yes, sir, Ihave two issues. I drive for
a TMC company and they're doing wagestiff and price gouging. Yeah, talking

(06:57):
about what Uber left the other driveshare companies. Okay, you don't have
to tell me which one is stealingmoney from you, but how about all
of them? That's the allegation ofit. Okay, So what's your question.
Well, the allegation is on theon the wage step portion. They
will charge a passenger a promotion chargeor they call it a fee, a

(07:21):
promotion fee of anwhere between and sixtypercent of the customers that when I checked
when we swapped receipts become my passengersand mess up and then you'll see that
they'll charge them and they're between sixto fifteen dollars and they call it a
a promotion Okay, all right,So I don't know any other store like

(07:46):
if I go through McDonald's. Theydon't charge me at promotion, doesn't matter.
They can charge anything they want.They can charge anything they want,
and they can pay you any commissionthey want. What they can't do is
misrepresent the can't lie about it.They can't say we don't charge it.
They can do whatever. For example, McDonald's runs a promotion. Okay,

(08:07):
so they run a promotion, butBurger King doesn't. Okay, it's a
private company. Well it's actually apublic company, but it's a private enterprise.
So don't dry for them, justdon't drive for them. And you
may want to find out is somehowmaybe they're violating the law antitrust situation.
All you do is go on theinternet and you put in their name,

(08:31):
and you put in lawsuit, youput in class action lawsuit, and see
if there's anything there, and maybesome law firm picked it up because there
is some technical violation, because thereare lawsuits that would love to go after
these companies for being a quarter ofa cent off or half an inch off
with an ADA requirement, which isnot the case in your situation. So

(08:54):
that's it. They can do it. Well, then what about the issue
of price uninsurance? What is pricegouging. They can charge you whatever they
want, they can pay you whateverthey want. They have to pay your
minimum wage unless they're arguing that you'rean independent contractor, which they've won already.
They don't drive for them. Ifthey're price gouging. If they're not

(09:16):
paying you enough money, go great, I'll drive someplace else. Or if
all of them do it, thenthat's what they do. And anyway,
ask you what what's price gouging?They're not paying you enough? No?
The test an insurance portion is theywill itemize everything on your receipt. Okay,
so the insurance section they don't.They don't, they don't break Okay,

(09:37):
they don't have to. Okay,So they itemize A, but they
don't itemize B. So I don'tknow where you're going with that. I
really don't. Bell, Hello,Bell, Welcome to the show. Hello,
Yeah, yeah, uh. Thetopic is for security deposit and I
need to talk take them to smallcourt plan. Okay, well okay,

(10:00):
hold on security deposit. So explainwho you are, who paid the security
deposit, who it went to whenit happened. Okay, I paid the
security to deposit and a half yearsago and rent Yeah, okay, and
the owner of this the honor ofthis apartment. She doesn't live there anymore.

(10:24):
And when I deal with the securitysecurity deposit, I deal with the
management department. The management there isa company manage the apartment. And after
that, I don't know. Ihave her name and everything. When I
researched it, I found out youhave a trust for the apartment under somebody

(10:46):
else's name, but her name ismentioned. Okay, does she still bell?
Does she still own the apartment?It looks likely yes, but because
when I went into property attack,it was under trust, so I don't
know where. So your question is, uh, who are you moving out?
And are you moving out? Then? Yeah, I didn't move out,

(11:09):
went over a months now, okay. And they didn't give you.
They didn't give you an account.You didn't get an accounting from anybody.
You just moved out. Is thatcorrect? Uh? No, Okay,
what's happened is I bet I lived, I moved out and now almost seven
days past twenty one days, acouple of days ago, I sent them
a notice that I'm going to takeit the court if they did not pay

(11:31):
me my Uh the puzzle back.Okay, hang on, So you did
you move out. Did you paythe rent until the day you moved out?
Yes, okay, all right,so you send them a notice you're
taking all right, then what's yourquestion? My question is the management.
You're the only one know who isor not where she is. Okay,

(11:52):
but you know that's that's a crock. But they're probably not gonna tell you.
All right. If you know whothe owner is, the trust,
you can sue the owner of theproperty for your deposit back. And you
sue them, and you serve themanagement company, You serve the management company.
And if you file the lawsuit againstthe owner. Yeah, what I

(12:13):
did? I send a letter tothem, to the management told them you
passed it one too one days andI rolle Yeah, okay, so what
all right? So what them?Anyway? So you sue the owner?
Yeah, but if I show theowner, I can't find where if I
win, I don't know how I'mgonna get the money. You sue the
owner, that's a problem. That'sa problem because once you get a judgment,

(12:37):
which you're going to get probably becausethey owe you the security deposit back,
then you have to track down whereyou're gonna get the money. If
they don't have the money. Yousue both the owner of the property,
the trust, and anybody else involved, the lady that you know owns the
property, and you'll get a judgmentand then you have to then you have

(12:58):
to track down the money. They'renot just writing you a check. But
she also is going to have ajudgment on her record. Uh, and
that's screwed. There's nothing like havinga judgment on your on your credit report.
And if she doesn't care, shedoesn't care. But it's the management
involved with because now the management's notinvolved. They have nothing to do with

(13:24):
the security deposit. They just managethe property. Yeah, but they're the
one came in and told me inten days, I'm gonna return to my
security. Okay, So they toldyou return. So the owner is not
doing it. Okay. But asI said, game, I don't know
you. Okay, you know whatI told you. I don't know.
I just told you. Nice talkingto you. It's a real pleasure.

(13:46):
Stern. Hello Stern. How's itgoing, Bill? Listen, I'm gonna
get right to it. I'm havingto dispute with a roadside rescue company.
Uh. Triple triple alphabet you figuredout. Anyway, Long story short,
My strange wife. She did somethingvery strange. She we broke up.

(14:07):
She's changed my address. I didn'tmove. She left the service itself.
She put her step my step formersubdid on it, and she ran the
thing up past the limit. Theyshoot one hundred dollars situation. I didn't
even know what existed. I contactedthem for another issue, and I found
out I still had an existing tripleA situation. All right, So you

(14:30):
used to have open toughts, Idon't. Yeah, I got it,
I got it, I got it. How much money do they say you
owe? It's teddy, It's Teddychin'e hundred bucks. Here's a kicker.
I put them in contact with mystrange wife. She made an agreement to
give it to them. She renegedon it, and now they're coming up
to me. That doesn't matter.It doesn't matter. All you care about
is your name owing one hundred dollars. Well, the first thing you do,

(14:52):
of course, is you remove yourname from the Triple A card and
put your own name on a stepA card. And you say, I
hear that. Okay. Now theissue is how far do you want to
go to? Uh? They're sayingyou owe the bill you're saying you're not.
So what do they do? Theytoss your card? I mean one

(15:13):
hundred dollars? Is how much isthat worth? You're not talking one thousand
dollars and you're not talking about threedollars where, of course you know you
don't pay ATTT bill. They wantto put something on my credit? Right,
is it worth? Okay, let'stalk about that. Is it worth
one hundred dollars to screw up yourcredit or you just pay it? Suck

(15:35):
it up and pay it? Whatdo you think? Right? I'm gonna
pay it? But do I haveCan I go after them because they know
not after that? No? No, theoretically you can go after your ex
wife for one hundred bucks. It'sgonna cost you almost one hundred dollars to
go to small claims court and thenyou have to show up and you're gonna
spend half a day in small claimscourt. Right right? Yeah, I'm

(16:00):
what you do? You know what? You may be right by the way,
stern. I'm not arguing you're notright, But at what point do
you just suck it up and sayit is not worth it? That's where
you're at, So go figure,Jim. Hello, Jim, welcome.
What can I do for you?Hi? Bill, I'm an idiot.

(16:21):
Okay, start, It's a veryvery good start. Okay, so let's
move on. Okay. A neighborssold their house last summer. New neighbor
brought the house to major renovations.We have a shared boundary brick wall.
He needed access to his garage wall, and the space between the brick wall
and his garage wall was only afoot and a half. I gave him

(16:42):
permission to take that brick wall downto maintain his garage wall. The part
where I screwed up was I didnot tell him to put it back up.
We never discussed it. Is heobligated to put that brick wall back
you know? I don't know becausehe took it down and you agreed.

(17:03):
No. If you didn't agree thatit goes back up, I don't know
where you're going to go with that. Let me ask this, Do you
do you want that you want itback up? Correct? Right? I
did. I gave him an optionof vinyl, and the vinyl material would
be around six hundred. He offeredfive hundred, but that would not include
the labor. Take it, well, how much is it going to cost

(17:25):
you because well, let me putit this way, including everything, what
are you going to be out ofpocket? That? Probably five hundred,
six hundred dollars? Okay, herewe go, same question I'm going to
ask you. Do you go forit, spend five six hundred dollars or
do you end up in and Idon't even know the answer or small claims
court? Because here's his defense.You sue him because you want the wall

(17:48):
back. He says, you gaveme permission to do it therefore, and
we never said anything about putting itback up. And I'm perfectly happy having
no wall there. And then youget to find out if there's a city
ordinance regarding that, and you callthe city and you talk to building in
Safety or whatever, and you layit out and you go, is,
tell me what the ordinance is.If you take it back, you have

(18:10):
to put it back up. Andif you have to put it back up,
then you take it. We gotto split it fifty to fifty.
We have no choice. And ifhe says no, well then you have
a small claim suit against him.I mean, do you just suck it
up? I don't know, doyou already? Let's what would be the
cost total of the cost. Iwould probably ask me about twelve hundred per

(18:32):
vinyl brick would be much more expensive. Okay, so you would if you
split the cost, it would besix hundred bucks each, right, yeah,
pretty much. Okay, And he'soffering to pay for basically half.
He's saying, I'll give you fivehundred dollars, so you're gonna be out
one hundred bucks. That's right,Suck it up. Not worth it,
not worth it, absolutely not worthit, whether you're right or not.

(18:56):
At some point, do you needa pissed off neighbor for one hundred bucks?
Well, in my case, Iwant to pissed off neighbor for free.
But still, tone, is thatTony your tone? Yes, it's
Tony. Oh t O N Eit's t O N I E. Oh
got it. It was just allright, put up there, wrong,

(19:18):
no problem, I live okay.So I live in California, and I
inherited the vehicle from my aunt.This year. I had to do a
Star Station smog on it, sothey had to inspect the you know,
the full vehicle. Upon fine finddoing that inspection, they found that it
was an unapproved California aftermarket catlet convertersystem on it, which you put it

(19:41):
in? Did you put that in? No, I'm going to tell you
where it came from the dealership backin May of twenty ten. Had an
auto shop put that part in?Oh okay. My question is are they
liable for probably improved? Yeah?Yeah? Probably yeah? And then how
I go about doing that? You'reso in small claims court. You say

(20:03):
you put it in. I inherited, you know, and they're going to
say our contract wasn't with you,it's with your dead relative and you probably
yeah, you can probably sue them, but you know, I don't know.
The argument is is we have nothingto do with you right now.
So how much is it going tocost to Okay, let me make it

(20:23):
easy for you. Let me goback and redo what I just said.
What is it going to cost youto bring it up the park? Over?
Three thousand dollars? WHOA, Well, you inherited a car that you
get to pay three thousand dollars forbasically how much does the car work?
You know, I'm not sure thatit's a twenty two thousand and three Landover.

(20:45):
Well, so you inherit Basically youinherited a car that you have to
do three thousand dollars worth of repairto be able to register it, and
then you get to figure it outbecause I don't think you had a contract
with with that dealership or that repairshow. It wasn't with you. You
just you inherited, and it wouldhave been the other way. So let
me ask you when did you inheritit? For example, last year?

(21:07):
Last time? Oh it's yeah.The small smog report is what every three
years? Every I don't even know. Yeah, it's every two years.
Okay, Well, then you gota car that is worth three thousand dollars
less, and then you get tofigure out whether it's worth it or not.
I'm not a big fan of landrovers anyways. I find them hideously

(21:29):
expensive to maintain. Yeah, soyou know what you so pretend you didn't
inherit the car. Were you ableto Were you were able to register it
in your name? I did?Okay, you got to figure out.
You got to figure out number one, is it worth it? Is it
worth three thousand bucks? What's therepair cost, what's worth for salvage?

(21:52):
And then you deal with it.I mean, there's not much more you
can do. Can you sue?They did? The app market but sure.
Now, if you inherited, canyou sue a that they did a
bad job, Except it's not youthat ordered the job. There's no contract
between them and you, So youknow, frankly, I don't think so.

(22:15):
I may be wrong. Matter offact, I'm probably wrong. But
then that's what this show is about, is me giving you a legal advice
is probably ninety percent wrong and it'smarginal. But hey, we have a
good time, don't we. William, easy name to remember, welcome to
handle on the law. What canI do for you? Good morning,
sir, Thank you so yeah,thank you. Myself and about a couple

(22:38):
hundred of my fellow employees, we'relaid off with no notice on Monday last
week. First all company. Thecompany did not shut down themselves. They
switched strictly from install and office workand sales to sales only. So I'm
wondering if I have a case undermaybe wrongful termination or okay, let's start

(22:59):
oka. You have a company that'sno longer doing what they did. They
just cut off this entire part uhand wrongful termination. So what are you
asking for? Usually wrongful termination andyou asked to be reinstated, and so
here you go in front of ajudge and go your honor in front of
a administrative judge and say, yourhonor, I want to be reinstated in

(23:22):
a job that doesn't exist anymore.What do you think, what do you
think you're going to say, Well, there's no company to be reinstated too.
Yeah, that's the whole point ofit. That's the whole point.
And if and let me let mego beyond that. What's wrongful termination?
Wrongful termination is when you are cannedbecause of your race, or religion or

(23:42):
sexual orientation. So when they shutdown an entire division and say we're done
and all of you are laid off, where is the discrimination, you understand?
Yeah, the point is it's nowhere, apsolutely nowhere. Katrina, Hello,

(24:03):
Katrina, welcome. Yes Hi,I live in a Hoa. It
was built in the nineteen eighties.We have two pools here. Neither one
of them are handicapped accessible. Onepool was done around twenty twenty and they
didn't put any kind of ramps oranything. And there are several stairs to
get up into where the pool is. Yeah, by law do they have

(24:29):
to have stairs, but they doin a hoa. Well, let me
ask you this I mean, youknow, when you talk about discrimined,
you know, living with the ADA, which is now part in parts of
Our Lives American Disability Act. Itsays that there has to be accessibility and
you have to in fact deal withpeople who are handicapped. But yeah,

(24:53):
it can't be like crazy now,it has to be reasonable. And is
it reasonable to put in a ramp, for example, into a pool.
Do you tear it up part andthen put in a concrete ramp so people
get it with a railing so youcan walk in or you can roll in.

(25:14):
By the way, the fact thatit was built in nineteen eighty it
doesn't really matter because it still hasto be accessible. Restaurants have to put
in ramps and make everything accessible orput in elevators and all that. So
an HOA, by the way,it wasn't built by the HOA. The
HOA comes way later. And I'venever I've never seen that. I've never

(25:37):
seen that where you have even majorapartments or condo complex complexes which are run
by HOAHOA is basically a management companythat's owned by the owners of the property
and they hire someone or the ownerjust hire someone to manage the property.
So it wouldn't be the HOA thatmakes that decision. It would have to

(25:59):
be the board of the HOA.And I've never seen that where they've torn
up a pool. I have seenwhere my daughter lived in an apartment where
there was this device that you satin and it was sort of this big
lever device. It was sort ofa crane like device that would put people

(26:19):
in the pool. That's the onlyplace I've ever seen it. Because that's
not unreasonable. You know, theydon't have to tear up the entire pool.
So my guess is probably not,are you handicapped? No, my
daughter has ms and when it's hotoutside, she really benefits from going into
a nice, cool Why doesn't Wellhow about this one. Why don't you

(26:41):
just walk her in and hold herwhen she walks down the stairs. Sometimes
she has no she can't hold herselfup with her okay, so she is
going to need you can't hold herup, so she is going to need
a place that puts a wheelchair intothe water. Correct. Well, No,

(27:03):
what what I'm having an issue andshe has an issue with is to
be able to get even actually tothe pool area. There are stairs,
Ah, there's I think there theyhave to put a ramp in. I
think there they have to put aramp in because that's easy to do,
because that's not that's not an undueburden. Uh. So you contact the
you contact the h o A andsay, guys, uh, daughters in

(27:26):
a wheelchair, I need access tothat pool and you put in a ramp.
That's an easy one. If youcan get the doctor to say she
needs access. If you get anote, that really excuse me, that
really nails the h o A.So that it has to do with it
has to do with undue burden.I'm sorry, go ahead, Well I

(27:48):
was just right because they completely wedid the whole pool. That don't okay,
So now to so what they couldhave and they didn't. So it's
a question of a ramp going intothe pool where they have stairs. That's
easy. You take part of thestairs if they're wide enough, and you
build a ramp, or you builda ramp from some area above and you
redo the fencing. That's very easyto do. That's not an undue burden.

(28:12):
All right, So yeah, youcontact the HOA and say, hey,
you got to do it. It'snot a big deal. Oh,
by the way, my doctor saidthat you have to make that accessible because
I need access to the pool.