It's no Boston Legal, that's fo' sho'

There were no beautiful people...no quick quipping counsel...no brightly lit court rooms filled with mahogany desks and modern comfortable chairs. That isn't how court rooms look in Cook County District 3. Much to my chagrin, that is.

What they do look like are basement rooms filled with lacquered desks covered in other peoples sticky finger prints, as if they haven't been cleaned in years, and chairs that have permanent butt indentations and mystery stains. They have florescent lighting...no windows...and 30 degree temperatures.

More importantly though, they also contain me, my boyfriend, my insurance company's lawyer, the dude who doesn't speak enough English to answer the lawyers' questions...yet miraculously obtained a driver's license, his insurance company's lawyer, three arbitrators to hear the case...oh and that's right, a big fucking waste of time.

If you haven't guessed already, I had to throw 2 and a half hours of my life away today in the basement of the Rolling Meadows Courthouse. Just stepping into the place makes you automatically feel like a criminal. Why in our dear Lord's name would I, a law abiding citizen, possibly be sitting in a court room today? I will tell you why.

Just a little over a year ago, Sean happened to be driving my car to pick something up from his Mom's. On his way home, while he was at a complete stop in a line of cars at a red light, some assbag was "distracted" and slammed into the back of my car. There was damage to the back end of my car and it got repaired, but ol' dude's insurance is fighting the claim and won't pay my insurance company for the damages. Sean is still out the deductible he paid and in total there are about 2000 bucks floating around out in insurance land that need to be paid by Ramos Insurance, the defendant's insurer to State Farm, my insurer. Basically they are trying to say that the damages didn't occur from the accident. The dude admits to fault and to propelling his GMC pick up truck into my vehicle, but he says there wasn't any damage to my car and that it must have either already been there or it happened after the accident. He's a douche bag. Insurance companies like this fight every claim so they don't have to pay them. In return, I have to take hours out of my personal time at work to sit in an effing court room for basically nothing. I will tell you why it is pointless.

Because even if the arbitrators decide to award us the damages, the other company has a right to reject the decision in 30 days and then it goes to TRIAL. WITH A JURY. No you didn't read that wrong...I said a trial. With a mother effin' Jury. Because they won't pay $2000.00. So basically whatever happened today, means nothing. it was like a "practice round."

In a way it really pissed me off that this guy's insurance won't pay the $2,000.00 and shut the fuck up about it. Then I got pissed when I thought of how much money my insurance company, State Farm, has and they are spending time and money going to an arbitration that means nothing and then a TRIAL by JURY for $2,000.00 in damages!!! How about eating it and saving yourself court and legal costs? I almost wanted to ask the lawyer how much money they were going to end up spending to prove a point...then we got into the room and the defendant attempted to say that there couldn't possibly have been any damages to my vehicle after he failed to stop while driving 30-40 miles/hr into the back of it and his truck was not drivable from the scene because the whole front end was smashed in and it was leaking various fluids. He admits to it being a very heavy impact, yet still held strong to the fact that nothing was wrong with my car. If that was the case, I'm pretty sure everyone would be driving a car with a spare tire attached to the back. Because they'd magically be invincible, you fucking genius.

By the time I got out of the court house I thought my head was going to explode. Frealz. Then I went back to work, did 2 and a half hours of nothing...told the same story 3 times...and went home. Today pretty much sucked and I felt like I was in bizarro world.

Moral of the story. People suck, too many things in life are a waste of time and eventually, I'll be attending my first trial by jury. At least I'm the plaintiff, right?

And there's our silver lining for the day.

....annnnnnnnnnd scene.