There are some things that cry out for the most extreme revenge and it can be hard to hold yourself back. Cudos to this OP’s story about revenge. He really took it to the bitter end.
Wife Beater Gets Beat By Legal Revenge
Let’s call him Joe. I have to call him something, the man I ruined, but I can’t call him by his real name, so let’s call him Joe. Joe was a wife beater.
I was hired by Joe’s brother-in-law, the brother of the wife that Joe beat. My client was also Joe’s ex-business partner. Aside from the whole ‘you beat up my sister thing,’ my client had another beef with Joe, a serious business beef. My client took it to court, and gave me the case to handle.
Joe and his lawyers fought me long and hard. Joe was confident that his bullshit and outright perjury would carry the day. It had always worked before. His bullshit, and his fists, had won him a good settlement with his ex-wife, free of child support, so maybe he thought that threats and lies would carry the day once more, but he was wrong, and after the trial I had a judgment against him, a big judgment, far bigger than he could pay.
Joe twisted and he turned and he shimmied and shaked, but after a while I’d located and taken all his assets. It was easy, really; Joe had no thought of consequences, and so he didn’t lawyer up until it was too late. If one of my clients ever sues you, you’re in trouble, because my clients lawyer up before they even know your name. But Joe didn’t lawyer up until the process server threw the papers at his feet, and by then, it was far too late.
I went through Joe’s finances like a meat grinder, and after a while Joe had one property left, a house, and he clung to that house, for it was rented out, and his sole source of income. Joe lived in the unfinished basement, and he survived on what the upstairs tenants paid him. He cashed their rent cheques at payday loan places, paying hefty fees, but it was worth it, because he knew that I’d garnish any bank account that he opened.
Joe managed to hide his rental place from me for a while because he owned it through a numbered company, but my investigator found him one day, and followed him home.
Joe self-repped his way through the next stage, which took a couple of years, while I punctured his corporate veils and his sad efforts at a fraudulent conveyance, but in the end, I had his last house, the house where he lived in the unfinished basement. Joe stepped out one day to get a pack of cigarettes, and when he came back the sheriff had changed the locks.
“Can my client at least live in the basement?” Joe’s lawyer said to me, pro bono, because by this point Joe had nothing to pay lawyers. I knew the pro bono guy; he practiced law nearby. As I was talking to him, I could see Pro Bono guy’s office window across the parking lot from my office tower window.
“Ask the purchaser,” I said, “it’s out of my hands,” and it was. I told Joe’s lawyer that the new owner (a nominee, one of my client’s employees) wouldn’t let him back into his shitty basement apartment. Joe, a man who had owned this and that here and there and all over town had just lost the last thing he owned on earth. Except for his truck. He still had his truck left.
Joes’ truck was this big ass gas guzzling beast that he drove around in. It was too old and too frail to be worth seizing, so I let Joe keep it, and I was glad I did that, because now the truck was where Joe slept. Until he made a mistake, and lost his truck, too. He lost his truck the day I got a phone call from the tenants at the house that Joe used to own.
“He came back, and parked his truck across the driveway, ” the tenant said, adding that Joe had gone nuts. He’d parked his truck there in a rage, out of spite, and then walked into town, saying he’d be back later that day to sleep in his truck.
“Can you get around the truck?” I asked. The tenant could not. The driveway was blocked. I called one of the tow truck guys that I used to defend back in my criminal lawyer days, and in a couple of hours that truck was gone, and parked somewhere else, somewhere special, in accordance with my specific instructions.
“My guy wants his truck back,” the pro bono lawyer said the next day when he called me.
“Not happening,” I said. I stood in my office fifteen floors above the parking lot, and looked down where I imagined my pro bono counterpart was standing in his office, facing the same lot.
“But you have no right to the truck,” he said.
“He has no right to block a man’s driveway,” I replied. It was terrible, really, standing up high, pronouncing words that took away a man’s final asset, the last thing he owned on earth. I imagined that this must be what God feels like, before he strips a man of everything and sends him to hell.
“Are you really gonna make me go to court over this?” said Pro Bono guy.
“Do what you gotta do,” I said, and Pro Bono guy said his client was coming in the next day to sign an affidavit, and then they were going to court to get the truck back. But I was unconcerned.
The next day was bright and the sun was shining and it was nine a.m. as I looked out the window, and sipped my coffee. My phone rang. I picked up. It was Pro Bono man.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Joe’s truck was parked right outside my office?” His voice was tight, and I could tell that he must have been shaking with anger.
“Is that so?” I said, staring out at Joe’s truck parked fifteen stories below me. “How careless of my bailiff to leave the truck where your client could easily take it back. I really must speak to him.”
“Very funny. My client’s going to sue–”
“No he isn’t. He’s going to get in that truck and drive away, right now. I told my tow guy to fill up the tank, and he gave it an oil change too, gratis. Tell your client to get in his truck and drive off, and that if I ever see that truck again, I’ll seize it, to satisfy the rest of my client’s judgment.” Pro Bono guy tried to argue, but I was firm. Then I put the phone down, and picked up my coffee.
A few minutes later Joe walked out of his lawyer’s office and over to his truck. As he walked I saw that there was no longer a bounce to his step. The joy had gone out of him. Joe wasn’t the first guy I ruined and he won’t be the last, but he is the only one whose final ruin I witnessed from on high, from my office, and it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life, watching a man walk to his truck, knowing that I had stripped him of everything else he had, and that he owed his possession of his last asset, his truck, to my mercy.
Joe drove away, his big ass ancient truck spilling clouds of smoke from the exhaust. I was pretty sure I’d never hear from him again, and I never did.
The Final Word
When you have the law on your side, and know how to use it, you can be a formidable force of legal revenge.
