Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Lessons learned from Judge Judy

I was climbing stairs at the gym today and Judge Judy was on. I figured that it was better than some shows I could be watching. Anyway, the guy suing was a restaurant manager who had struck up a friendship with a much younger female employee and made a series of loans to her. He was suing to get his money back.

Judge Judy's attitude surprised me. She said that a person who loaned money to someone who made no attempt to pay it back had no reasonable expectation that further loans would be repaid. I assume the law is written this way or she couldn't have ruled like that, but it's certainly not the way I normally think.

Probably it's an approach I should use more, though.

(e.g. If I have a friend who criticizes me constantly, I have no reasonable expectation that she will stop. I can be friends and put up with the criticism or I can not be friends and be free of it, but assuming she will stop because I asked her to is unreasonable, especially if I've tried asking her to before and it hasn't worked.)

Food for thought for one who tends to misplace her loyalty and trust a little too easily.

CC

Ps. I have a third-round interview tomorrow for a job I'd really like. Wish me luck.

4 comments:

LaReinaCobre said...

good luck on the job.

and my former roommate, who was finishing up her final year of law school said that Judge Judy "does not follow the law" quite a bit.

I don't know what this means, but I don't really watch Judge Judy. My grandma prefers Judge Milian (sp?).

indrax said...

This is just what I infer:
Judge Judy is not really a judge anymore, she is an arbitrator. Each party signs an agreement to enter into arbitration instead of going to a real court, and they are then bound to that judgement. All the 'court' show are like this. If she were so inclined, she could decide a case on any basis she wants.

Another way to look at this is that she can be a court of equity ('justice'), instead of a court of law. She pokes around the case, figures out who the biggest asshole is, and makes up a way to rule against them. I've seen her use a technicality against someone, and then not use it in another applicable case.

Wikipedia has everything!


Knock 'em out

Anonymous said...

I'm not going to put 1 1/2 years of law school up against Wikipedia, but having just taken international commercial arbitration, generally arbitration agreements include a choice of law provision, something like "will be arbitrated under New York law."

Also, although I didn't see that episode of Judge Judy, her decision may be legally defensible under the law of contracts, my cliff notes version of which included a big section on gifts and other things that are not contracts. If he was just giving this woman cash and didn't make any sort of documented agreement with her, this ends up looking like a gift instead of a loan.

Chalicechick said...

Indeed. And no part of "older guy paying a few bills for a young pretty girl" sounds like something people would draw up a contract over.

CC