I Guess I'm Going To Trial (With A Complete Psycho)

Remember my blog post about the woman who rear ended my car, and then drove away? If you do remember, you’ll also remember that I was able to catch up to her at a stoplight, and snap a photo of her license plate. Then I pulled up beside her, honked, motioned for her to pull over, and she basically laughed, flipped me off, and drove away.

#RUDE

Because chasing her down the street and I dunno, running her off the road or something, seemed like a bad idea, I pulled over and called the police. The police looked at the photo I had taken of her and the damage done to my car, and actually took the time to track her down. When they found her and pointed out the damage to her car, she admitted that she had hit me. She was then charged her with several things, including a hit-and-run.

If you don’t remember that post, well that was basically the entire story so consider yourself caught up.

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Anyway, thankfully she had insurance, and her insurance company assumed full liability and paid to fix the damage on my car. I thought that since the police had found her, she had admitted to the crime, and her insurance had paid for the damages, that all was said and done.

I was wrong.

Because really now, can anything ever be that easy?

Nah, of course not!

A month later I got a letter in the mail saying that the woman had pled not guilty to her charges, and that I needed to go to court and testify for the states attorney. Annoyed that this woman was now requiring even more of my time and effort, I begrudgingly dragged myself to court one morning a few weeks ago, feeling thankful that Frisbee Boy’s Mom — aka my surrogate mom — had agreed to come with me and keep me company.

And here’s something I learned that morning; traffic court may look like a courtroom, but it is in fact, actually a circus.

They are not fooling me.

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If I thought that the family law courtrooms were bad, this was an absolute catastrophe of human existence. First off, it was SO incredibly crowded that people were stacked two and three deep to a chair. Strangers were sitting on top of each other, some were laying on the floor, and one had even climbed on top of a filing cabinet just to get some fresh air.

Oh wait.

No, sorry, that didn’t happen.

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But it sure did feel like it…

It really was incredibly crowded and we were so smashed in there that I swear I got my feet stepped on no less than 13 times. The bailiffs were actually lining people up in the hallway and around the corner just because we could not all fit in the court room.

People were there in slippers, hair rollers, and pajamas (no joke! It’s like they attempted to look nice for court, and then just didn’t follow through on the effort. Or perhaps, figured they'd use their "free time in court" to get ready for an evening out). One lady actually had foil in her hair as if she were in the middle of a dye job, which I found to be especially concerning considering that if you leave that shit in too long, it burns your hair right off (and I've been to court, that place is not a drive thru!). I was honestly waiting for this woman's head to spontaneously combust, or I dunno, melt off her neck or something.

The girl next to me was in her full Dunkin’ Donuts uniform, including the coffee stained apron and pointy edged hat. (Why would you not at least take off the hat!?). There was a guy who was proudly showing off both butt cheeks and more crack than the Grand Canyon, and a guy who had to be told to keep his shirt on. There was also a woman who had brought her toddler, and then got into a fight with the bailiff when she was told that she could not sit at the attorney's table and feed her kid breakfast.

She literally ended up face to face with two bailiffs and was loudly proclaiming “HE HAS EVERY RIGHT TO BE HERE!”

The bailiffs did not agree with her, and nearly hauled her right out of the room.

After waiting almost two hours, the states attorney came over to tell me and the cop who was also waiting to testify with me, that the woman who had hit me was requesting a different type of trial. And because of the court's busy schedule, the trial wouldn’t be held until close to three o’clock.

It was just after ten am.

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She then told me that she couldn’t believe the woman wanted to wait that long, especially since she had brought her kid with her.

Newsflash: I had not recognized the crazy lady with the kid since she had done something different with her hair. 

But when I saw her again a few minutes later, I realized that she did look familiar, except that this time, instead of laughing at me and driving away, she was fighting with the bailiffs AGAIN. Apparently she had come back into the room, refused to leave, and her toddler was now loudly stomping his feet up and down the aisle.

The judge, clearly exasperated and just wanting to get the woman and her toddler the hell out of the courtroom, called everyone waiting on her case to approach the bench. After the judge read the charges and asked the woman if she understood why she was here, she asked her if she had an attorney.

“Yes I do” the woman stated.

“Ok.... where?” the judge asked.

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“In the city” the woman stated, and then just stood there.

“Ma’am, you realize that you are here for a trial today, right?” the judge asked her.

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“Yes, I realize that is why I am supposed to be here” the woman said.

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“So why is your attorney not here ma’am?” questioned the judge.

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“Because he is in the city and I’m here. It’s why I had to bring my son with me today,” the woman explained as if anything she was saying made any sense at all.

Just then her kid tipped a large fan over into the jury box, and several people gasped while they jumped to try and catch it.

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(Can we please take a moment to praise the awesomeness that was finding this gif? I'm rather proud.)

Continuing on...

“Ma’am” said the judge, who was CLEARLY annoyed, “if you don’t have an attorney, one can be appointed to you,” and she went on to explain how the process works if you can’t afford an attorney.

Offended, the woman said “I have an attorney! A good one! I can afford him!” and so once again the judge asked her why the attorney wasn’t present.

“BECAUSE THIS IS RIDICULOUS” the woman shouted. “HE TOLD ME THAT HE DIDN’T NEED TO BE HERE SINCE I WASN’T EVEN THERE WHEN THE ACCIDENT OCCURRED.”

If the judge could have said “what the fuck,” I’m pretty sure that is exactly what she would have said.

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The woman then began to ramble and talk over the judge, and explain that she wasn’t even there, and whatever she had said to the cop was incorrect because after she thought about it, she realized it wasn’t her who had hit me (even though her paint was on my car, mine on hers, and I got a picture of her). Talking faster and faster, she turned to me and informed me that if I was poor and needed a new bumper, that she would happily buy me one because she was not poor.

Then she thanked everyone for coming, apologized that we had not found the right hit-and-run driver, and wished us luck in finding the right one.

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The judge — trying desperately to get this woman to shut up — kept repeating over and over again that she needed to stop talking since everything she was saying was being recorded. The woman did not heed her advice, and the judge finally resorted to snapping and telling the woman that she was ordering her to stop talking, and to come back when she was actually prepared for a trial.

Being smart un-medicated, the woman yelled that it wasn’t fair to do this to her, because she wasn’t even there when the accident happened, and her attorney had told her that she just needed to explain the confusion to the judge and it would be fine.

She then started to whine ask why we were doing this to her.

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The states attorney walked away from the bench, pulled the cop and I aside, and said “OK, clearly we are not dealing with… with… with…” and I jumped in with “normal.” "Yes, clearly we are not dealing with normal here" she laughed, "so I’m going to set it for pretrial, and then we will have to come back after that for a full trial.”

The cop looked at me, we both laughed, and Frisbee Boy’s Mom told me that I had better let her know when the date is because she absolutely does not want to miss “the second part of the train wreck.”

I swear, if it’s not one thing, then it’s another these days.

So next week, I guess I’m going to trial.

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Or not.