And Then It Got Weird

In the midst of our mole hill to mountain lawsuit/counter lawsuit battle, we decided to throw a party at our house yesterday.

Some of you may think we partied to celebrate this year's State Supreme Court ruling in case #886 which strengthens our case. Or perhaps, some thought that we were holding a pity party over this year's State Supreme Court ruling in case #1287, which inhibits portions of our case. However, neither ruling was the basis for yesterday's frolic. This party was to celebrate the existence of construction engineers.

Invitees included three lawyers, definitely not the life of the party. One was ours. One for Madison TV station, WKOW, and one for the original plaintiff. There were also two engineers specializing in home construction. One was hired by WKOW and one by the plaintiff. (Our engineer had inspected a couple of months ago.) There was also one plaster/stucco specialist present. I'm not sure who hired him. There was a illustrator/note taker. These experts performed a thorough house exam and had to have taken hundreds and hundreds of pictures. They climbed ladders, they poked and prodded, inside and out. (One inspector claimed he was looking for my weapons cache. He failed.) After several hours, the party broke up and the revelers left. Linda and I went to work.

Then it got weird. While at work, I got a call from Linda. After we had gone, my step-daughter, Kim was in the bathroom while her friend, Joe, waited in the living room. At a knock on the door, Joe answered. There was a man with a camera who asked, "Are you Joe? I have to take some pictures of the house. He took several before Kim found out and gave him the boot. Linda and I could not figure what was going on with this. Were there underhanded shenanigans undertaken by our adversaries?

After a short while the situation was explained. The photographer was at the wrong address. He was supposed to be appraising our neighbor's house, who is also named Joe. There was no private investigative underhanded spying after all. Phew! I was afraid he may have found my secret weapons cache.

A fun time was had by all.

Our fundamental claim that started all this mess consists of a continuous 1/4 to 1/2 inch gap that was present before the contractor's work that was absent after the work. Claiming that plugging this gap caused tens of thousands of dollars damages to the exterior of our home got us sued for defamation along with WKOW (the deep pockets) for airing our complaint. The presiding judge ruled that our counter-claim for damages will be tried before defamation suit. We are thankful that WKOW has not settled to 'cut their losses'. The trial starts in November supposedly followed by the defamation trial sometime later.

And they say that baseball is a game of inches.