Funny and kinda creepy lawyer commercial

Here's a pretty funny video I saw posted on facebook this week.  I am not into fantasy football so much, but I think Gary Busey is hilarious.

I've considered putting a video on my website, but I think until I can pull off something as entertaining as this (while still being professional), I need to keep working on ideas.

Whose fault is it?

This should welcome news to many of my prospective clients, but New York now has a no-fault divorce law.  Well, the law does not go into effect until October, but the law has been signed.  Since I handle matrimonial law, and advertise this service, I often get calls from people asking questions about getting a divorce.  Usually the call starts off with the basics - "do you handle divorces?" "what does it cost?".  Then, if the person just recently separated, the question turns to "do I really have to wait a year before I get divorced??"  "can't I just say that he (or she) treated me cruelly?"  or "I have a friend who got divorced in fifteen minutes and it only cost him $25 - he did it all at Staples!!"  

Until now, in order to obtain a divorce in New York, you generally had to prove that you had grounds.  The Domestic Relations Law listed a handful of limited grounds, such as adultery, cruel and inhuman treatment, abandonment, and living separate and apart under an agreement for a year. Abandonment and separation agreement are (were?) very popular grounds, but both require a year of separation between the parties. 

Another potential problem with abandonment can be illustrated by an example.  Say a husband and wife are living together in misery.  Neither want to be married to the other, but like many people, they each have a hard time "breaking up".  Maybe husband doesn't like the idea of having to get a new apartment, so he drags his feet, and eventually the wife packs up and leaves.  He may also be indifferent to the divorce, and also be reluctant to incurring the legal fees.  So as a result you have a situation where unless the husband were to file for the divorce, there may not have been grounds under the old NY system.   She abandoned him.  She probably was justified, but under the law she was at "fault" for abandoning him and he would have to be the one to be the plaintiff in the divorce.  

The new law requires only that one spouse swear under oath that a relationship has broken down for at least six months.  No blaming anyone for the breakdown in the relationship.  Much simpler, and less expensive than proving grounds.  

I'll leave it to others to debate whether or not expedited divorce is a positive thing, but New York was the last state to enact a law relaxing the divorce grounds, so it seems the state is just aligning itself with the rest of the country.

Human nature and the law of evictions

I hate to generalize, and would never make a statement like - "people are lazy", but I think it is true that most people try to find the easiest way to accomplish a goal.  Often, people cut corners to try to get something done easily.  More often than not, cutting corners equals sub-par results.  Everyone knows the old saying, nothing worthwhile is easy.

In my law practice I handle a good amount of landlord and tenant work.  I draft and review lease agreements, help property owners evict non-paying tenants, and help tenants defend against being evicted.  In New York, there are set rules about how residential evictions are to handled.  These rules can be confusing at first, but once you handle a few, the rules are relatively straightforward.  You cannot cut corners when trying to evict a tenant.  Even so, many landlords do exactly that, and I suspect that many of the landlords get away with it.

Like I said, I've represented both landlords and tenants over the years.  The number one question asked by my landlord clients is "how can I get this done as fast as possible?"  By the time the property owner calls me, they may have already tried working something out with the non-paying tenant and they are losing money.  I usually have to spend a little time explaining the importance of playing by the rules to new landlord clients.  

To describe the process in very general terms, a non-payment "eviction" case is called a "summary proceeding" in New York.  Before the proceeding can start, the landlord has to send a 3-day notice to the tenant.  This is a demand letter, essentially saying "pay me what you owe between now and three days from now, or I'm going to court".  You cannot file the summary proceeding without first doing this, AND, the 3-day notice needs to be served not just mailed.  This is probably the most frequent corner to cut in the eviction process.  Next, if the tenant does not pay the amount due, the landlord can then file and serve the Notice of Petition and Petition in the summary proceeding.  If, the tenant partially pays, then landlord either has to reject the partial payment or accept it and re-demand the balance with a new 3-day notice.  Once the summary proceeding is started, the landlord has to have the tenant served no sooner than five days before the court date, and no longer than 12 days before the date.

Recently, I was contacted by a client who had a question about a document he received in the mail from his landlord.  He had gotten a little behind in his rent, and received a 3-day rent demand by certified mail a few days prior, but now received in the mail a copy of a warrant to evict signed by a local judge.  I was skeptical at first, thinking that he must have received some papers in between and ignored them, but after discussing it with him and reviewing the papers it became clear to me that the landlord either didn't know the eviction "rules", or cut corners to get around those.  The local judge apparently didn't know the rules either and went ahead and signed a warrant of eviction without ever even having a formal summary proceeding before him.

I immediately called the court - a rural upstate court, and spoke to the judge.  The judge did not know what I was talking about when I explained the summary proceeding process and how it appeared that the rules were disregarded by the landlord in this case.  The landlord not only cut corners in not properly serving the 3-day notice, but completely skipped the summary proceeding and went right from demanding rent to getting a warrant of eviction.  I then filed an order to show cause before the court and demanded that the warrant be vacated.  My request was granted, and my client wasn't evicted, but if my client didn't question this he and his family would likely have been unlawfully evicted.

The landlord in this case wasn't a bad person - he just wanted his rent. My client shouldn't live for free, but my client never got the opportunity to respond to the allegation of non-payment.  Maybe he had a defense to payment.  Possibly the landlord misapplied the payments.  The landlord could have been in breach of the lease - maybe there was damage to the property cause by the landlord or another tenant, for example.  Maybe, as discussed above, my client made a partial payment under the mistaken understanding that the landlord was working something out with him.  In fact, my client began to tell me about some of his defenses to non-payment, and I stopped him.  It wasn't important to me at first, because the landlord blatantly disregarded the rules.   I'm sure the judge wasn't a bad judge either, he just probably hadn't had a lot of summary proceedings in his court.  

What happened is a classic example of the danger of cutting corners.  The landlord lost and has to restart the eviction properly.  Had the landlord invested the time and effort into properly serving the 3-day notice and properly commencing the summary proceeding, he would likely have removed my client and may have gotten a substitute tenant by now.  

Now I have a good story to tell my new landlord clients who ask me to get an eviction done as quickly as possible.