living, thinking and writing
|
|
| PRACTICE living, thinking and writing |
|
|
Friday, October 03, 2003 Time, money, justice “Baby, oh baby you just need some You just need some Time, love and tenderness” -from Michael Bolton’s song “time love tenderness” Bin complained that I’m too obsessed with trivial things these days, such as trying to get security deposit back from the greedy and sleek former landlord. “You should concentrate on your work, not the 520 bucks, it is not worthwhile”. He felt hopeless on me When I called our group legal service, the eloquent lawyer in Brooklyn could not wait till I finished my story: “getting money back from Buffalo while you are in Los Angeles? Forget about it! You will invest much more than 500 hundred dollars! have some common sense!… I did not get my deposit back when I was in college either. Why did you pay him the last-month rent?” Why? Because we are decent people, we followed what says on the lease which we signed for agreement. And we are punished now for our stupidity? We had to either let it go, or go to small claim court back in Buffalo to ask for judgment. We could lose money and justice, or lose our time and money, but won justice. Since when everyone has to measure justice with time and money? Yes, To win justice, you need money for good lawyer, or you need to invest time to fight by yourself, if you are not rich enough. So if you happened to be a poor but busy graduate student, you have to let the bad buy get away?! (Baby, oh baby you just need some You just need some time, money and justice.) The law must have some problem. From the very beginning, we knew what this bad guy trying to do to us, but as we consulted with legal service, nobody could do anything about it, because bad guy has right too. New York State Law do not require landlord to have walk-through inspection before evacuation, and not to return deposit in a “reasonable period of time” (what is it? Lawyer explains it s somewhere between 30 to 60 days). Once you move away, especially to place so far away like California, he possessed our money with no sweat. He knows that, and he knows people would not get themselves into law suit for only 500 bucks. But, No, I’m going to fight back. My rage and chagrin stole my sleep at night. I would not let him snicker in dream for his easy money, and I would not let myself being taken advantage with my eyes wide open. Plus I learnt laws in this process. I enjoyed learning all kinds of new things. Losing time? Yes, but I might gain justice back probably, and knowledge and experience, for sure. posted by lmeimei @12:22 PM| permanent link| | |
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
