"Hey, kids, Patrick Ross owes me an assload of money and if anyone knows where he is, that would be great, thanks."
Apparently, in the universe where Patrick resides, the above is exactly equivalent to criminally misrepresenting oneself as a licensed debt collector attempting to locate a debtor. I will not waste precious oxygen explaining the thigh-sucking stupidity contained therein, but I will reproduce the last part of Patrick's most recent attempt at extortion -- see if you can spot the legalistic absurdity:
Yes, that would be Patrick, stamping his widdle feet and demanding an entirely unmerited settlement of $25,000 (and other moronic demands) which, if he does not receive, he will see me in court.
Small Claims Court.
Small Claims Court.
Again, Small Claims Court.
Patrick is, in all seriousness, suggesting that he is going to forcibly extract $25,000 in settlement from me by making his argument in ... Small Claims Court.
You can go back to what you were doing now.
P.S. Note also that Patrick is, amusingly, addressing something I posted in an earlier note, ridiculously insisting again that I refrain from any collection activities for nine months, but adding the condition that I waive any and all interest that is relentlessly accruing to what he owes me during that time.
I guess I'll be seeing Patrick in ... Small Claims Court.
Small Claims Court.
P.P.S. It occurs that, since Patrick has already publicly conceded that my judgment against him is valid and that he owes me all that money, all of this could be settled in short order if he simply paid me what he owes me. It's quite baffling, the time and effort Patrick is expending in playing games and dodging collection efforts and writing and sending extortion letters and demanding money that absolutely no one is going to give him and letting interest pile up to the tune of hundreds of dollars a month when all of this goes away the moment he simply ... pays off his debt.
I wonder if that solution ever occurred to him. Perhaps someone should suggest it.
And I doubt it will surprise anyone to learn that I have advised my coruscating lawyer that unless correspondence from Patrick represents a genuine, financially viable and unconditional offer of settlement, she is to ignore it entirely and not respond. I refuse to spend any more money dealing with Patrick's crippling insanity.
BONUS TRACK: Perhaps the funniest thing about all of this is that Patrick is threatening numerous legal actions, while refusing to reveal either where he currently resides or where he works, making proper service of legal documents as difficult as possible. This is, of course, deliberate -- while Patrick claims that he will accept service by e-mail, that doesn't help once he is hit with cost awards since all he needs to do is stop answering e-mail.
This is why I badgered Peter Skinner to insist that, in the context of his spat with Patrick, Patrick be required to inform the court about his actual location, so that personal service can be effected, and that the RCMP know where to go if that becomes necessary.
5 comments:
I don't think that regulation means what Patrick thinks it means. But that's just me.
Small claims court justices aren't usually overly impressed with "creative" readings of either the law or regulation, and I suspect Patrick's reading of both are more than just a little bit creative.
"He who has himself as a client, has a fool for a lawyer"
@MgS: It's more a case of Patrick thinking that small claims court is the right venue to argue about a proposed settlement. Generally, SCC is for someone to say, "So-and-so owes me X dollars, here's why, and I want him to pay!"
It's not for people to blue sky possible settlement offers.
All Patrick can do is file a complaint, which I guarantee, he'll be told we haven't done anything wrong.
He can't deal with this via small claims court. There's no slander, no libel. We're talking about the eventually of Patrick's world being seized for his debt to you.
I wish him luck because all he's doing to this point is ensuring my vexatious litigant argument will stick. We've decided Patrick's pointing "a big flashing neon sign" pointing the way for us.
@RNO: I was actually going to say that all Patrick is doing is painting himself as a vexatious litigant. I assume you will be taking all of this into court as evidence. I'll send you his letters.
@CC: Fair point - these allegations and related suits may well be better suited to AB CQB (Court of Queen's Bench). In which case, I fully expect the ABCC (Alberta Civil Court) justice to look at the case and say "out of my scope".
I think Patrick encountered the idea of "tort law" recently and decided that it's the ideal tool to harass people with - I noticed him start using the term on Twitter, when he hadn't used it before (bad case of "when all you have is a hammer, all the world looks like a nail).
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