The pretrial conference for the eviction case against me was this morning.
The title of this page was the judge's response to my starting by saying "I'm not a lawyer, I don't like public speaking, and I got about three hours of sleep last night."
I don't know if he knew who I was or anything about me other than my being the defendant in this case, but he was abrupt and cruel every time that he spoke to me.
I asked the judge if I had the right to have a meeting with the property manager and the property management's attorney. He said "I'm not here to give you legal advice." I said "I think I have the right to that meeting." He said "I'm not here to give you legal advice." I said "I'd like to have that meeting."
Then he said "I can't order anyone to give you a meeting like that," which it seems to me wasn't true, because when I was in court for the first eviction hearing for the apartment that I had from 2013 to 2014, the judge for that case told the plaintiff's lawyer to schedule such a meeting.
I then told him that the plaintiff hadn't provided documentation relevant to what I had requested for the discovery; he interrupted me, saying "The discovery is complete," meaning that neither the plaintiff nor the plaintiff's attorney have to provide any of the emails or other written discussions of me that might have happened between people who work for the property management when it was known to them that I'd be moving to the building. I had thought it would be relevant to have copies of those discussions, in case one or several of them were about installing the hidden, illegal cameras in my apartment or about preventing me from moving to the building at all. It seemed to me that they never really wanted me to live at that building, but since they couldn't think of a legitimate reason to prevent me from moving there, someone who works at the building thought he or she should illegally film me in my home for his or her amusement.
Fortunately, when we were dismissed from the courtroom, the plaintiff's lawyer asked me if I wanted to have the meeting with her and the property management. I said that I did, and she said that she would talk to them about it.
The judge was a visiting judge. He is not the judge to whom one of the police officers who investigated my apartment for the cameras spoke a few weeks ago; I know he wasn't because the police officer said that judge was female, that she "didn't want to see me on the street," and that she had said she would "investigate" the case.
Since that phone conversation with the police officer, I have heard nothing from him. Whatever the judge to whom he spoke thought when she "investigated" the case doesn't seem to have helped me. The absence of tangible evidence that the cameras are in my apartment is what is causing the eviction case to proceed.
The jury trial is scheduled for April 3rd.
Copyright L. Kochman, March 2, 2017 @ 10:11 a.m.
