Like Judge Wapner, BAM! Take 'Em To Court

Inspiration: Case of the PTA - Leaders of the New School "and now it's time to pay for the crime that I never got caught/ like Judge Wapner(BAM! take em to court) /a room of teachers, parents, and preachers/a principal and one kid dress in sneakers/Case of Brown Versus The Board(ORDER ORDER)/yo twelve, verse one is a slaughter"

What I'm Listening To: "God's Stepson" Nas (9th Wonder remix of "God's Son" album)

Question(s) I Asked Myself Today: "How many people gonna be mad that I didn't do another Blog Real World joint?"

Yesterday was an interesting day. I had to go to court for my job. A former employee was trying to get worker comp benefits from my company due to psychological stress that me and another manager supposedly caused her and I had to be there in case they needed me to testify. Let me run through how it went down.

First of all, I had to be downtown Atlanta at 8:30 to meet our HR lady. Anybody who knows me will tell you that I am not a morning person at all. I have a problem sleeping at night, so getting up early in the AM is not my forte. I actually didn't fall asleep until 5:30 and had to wake up at 6:30 in order to get ready and down to our corporate office in time. Amazingly, (for me) I didn't get lost like I always do when I go downtown, and I made it to the parking garage with plenty of time to spare. But... once I got in the building, that was another story. I was supposed to meet the HR lady at her office, but I couldn't find it for anything. She was on the second floor, which sounds easy enough, but the elevator didn't have any numbers. I'm looking for 2, but they had abbreviations, like G (ground), AT (atrium), GN (garden level). I was like WTF? So, I'm wandering around the building for awhile trying to find her before I finally ask somebody where to go. The security guards says go up the escalators, pass the food court, go up another elevator and take the escalator down. I was really confused. Finally, I ran into her and we met up with another one of the witnesses and walked to the court.

We were supposed to meet our lawyer at 9Am to go over what to expect. We get there at 8:55. There were metal detectors at the door, but no security guard. That was my first sign that this was going to be some bootleg stuff going on. We walked through the metal detectors and noticed that they were not even on. I hoped that this crazy deranged ex employee wasn't gonna bring a gun in there and hold us all hostage. We sat outside the courtroom waiting for our lawyer, who didn't show up until 9:20. That gave me a prime opportunity to people watch. There are some funny looking people in Atlanta and most of them can be found in court.

So, the lawyer finally shows up and starts talking about the case in the lobby. I asked him if we should go somewhere private, but he declined. He's talking about all this confidential information in the presence of others and I'm thinking that this is really unprofessional, but what do I know? I'm not a lawyer. The employee walks in (with a Bible in her hands) and sits down right next to our lawyer and he is still talking. We are trying to signal him, but he is so enthralled with his own words that he is not paying any attention. Finally, he gets the point and stops laying out our entire case in front of her. Not that it really mattered as I was soon to find out.

We go into the courtroom and find out that the employee, (We will call her Julie, from now on) does not have a lawyer. Julie is representing herself. A little background about her. Julie is not the smartest person in the world but she loves to argue. This whole workman's comp case stems from us talking to her about her attitude at work. Back in December we brought Julie in the office to talk about some complaints we got about her being negative at work. Her co workers were sick and tired of her complaining about everything and told management about it. This was not a disciplinary meeting, but just a conversation about how we could make her happier at her job. My involvement was simply as a witness to the conversation. Well, when we were talking to her, she got defensive as hell and demanded to know who was talking about her, which of course is confidential. According to her workers comp claim, Julie got depressed b/c we wouldnt tell her and as a result got high blood pressure, chest pains and depression. I didn't know I had that much power over her.

The judge called the case and our lawyer tried to get it dismissed, because in the state of GA, workers comp has to result from a physical injury. You can't claim emotional or psychological stress. The judge tried to get Julie to drop the case because she had no chance of winning, but she refused. The judge told Julie that if she proceeded with an unreasonable case that she might have to pay our company's legal expenses. Julie still refused to drop the case. The judge did all she could short of saying "You can't win this case" before we finally proceeded.

They did all the legal mumbo jumbo of motions and objections and since Julie was representing herself, the judge had to explain every step to her. We had a long delay while they marked exhibits and decided who could testify and who couldnt. Finally, Julie got up to testify. She started off asking herself questions. It was crazy. The judge finally stopped her and told her just to give her testimony. The whole time, Julie kept saying that we were "intentionally abusing" her trying to make her sick, but never said why we would do that. It would have been funny if it wasn't so sad. Who am I kidding? It still was funny how bitter and paranoid she was. She got cross examined and started yelling at us from the witness stand. The judge had to admonish her several times. Julie grabbed her Bible every time the judge said anything to her.

Then came her evidence... All of her evidence was articles she printed off the internet. Julie thought that she could use this to supercede the law. She also wrote little notes all over her evidence. She really didn't know what she was doing. Our lawyer objected to every little piece of evidence, until the judge told him on the sly, that he should let it go because it makes her case seem even more "unreasonable." I was thinking the same thing, but I gave our lawyer the benefit of the doubt that he knew what he was doing. Umm... he didn't.

After 3 hours in court, I didn't even have to testify. Bottom line, is that Julie had no chance of winning the case under GA law and even if she did, she messed herself up by trying to represent herself. She's gonna wind up owing even more money for lawyer's fees. It was a big ole waste of my time that I could have used sleeping or reading blogs or doing actual work. And just to be true to form, I got lost trying to leave the city. I couldnt find the highway to save my life. Thanks Julie!!! LOL

It was written...