Capitol Hill Blue Forums Capitol Hill Blue Opinions CHB Columnists Lies and the Law

Lying is a major problem for humans. I might tend to think of lying superficially as a clear and well defined act, but the real range and complexity of lying is infinite and ubiquitous - even extending into the contrary realms of good and bad.

Lying is even defended by some interpretations of Constitutionally protected free speech.

What stimulated this post was the anticipation of lies to follow the AZ election ’audit’, but the reason for starting a fresh topic has to do with a construction contract legal dispute that I have been enjoying for three years now. The essence of the dispute has to do with a progress payment application that the owner refused to allow based upon her “feeling that the contractor had not done enough work to justify the payment”.

As it happens, the process stipulated by the bank for disbursements of loan funds requires that a 3rd party professional be engaged to do an inspection to correlate and certify that the goods and/or services for which payment is requested had actually been delivered - the “feelings” of the client are not in the contract anywhere. Oddly, neither the client, nor the bank, have chosen to follow that simple (and pre-funded) contractual requirement.

In a bizarre dance that has now involved four judges and eight learned barristers on the opposing side, and (fortunately) one retired, and highly experienced attorney working for us pro bono, we are three years into a mess wherein the substance of the dispute (the failure to have a competent 3rd party inspection and certification) has never been presented in court. The reason for this is the absolute avalanche of lies and fraudulent speculation about why we didn’t deserve to be paid have so befuddled the not-so-competent judges into thinking that this may be the most complex case ever to come before them, that they prefer to punt, and grant any motion to delay that is put before them. (One of the more amusing ones was a motion to dismiss by the bank on the grounds that the payment protocol imposed by them, that they refuse to implement, is not a contractual agreement with us, therefore they are free to ignore it).

I should throw in here that I have no good idea of why the bank has refused to follow their own progress payment protocol - they took $3750 from the client’s loan funds up front at closing to pay for 3rd party progress payment inspections - are they simply trying to skim that amount from their client? If so, they have now spent an estimated $50,000 on lawyers to protect $3750 in ill-gotten booty. Incidentally, we did finally hire a 3rd party inspector (a retired architect) to certify our pay app, which he did - but the bank and our former client are trying to dismiss his evidence as biased - because we paid him...

To the point (the topic is lying and the law), we finally got the parties to agree to binding arbitration (which as stipulated in our contract to be the first recourse in case of any contract dispute, in order to avoid the courts...). For arbitration, the same discovery process is followed as for a lawsuit, so we have been in the process of corralling our former client, collecting evidence debunking her amazing string of frauds and lies. For the most part, her attorneys have not done any due diligence in ascertaining which of her facts are true, and have merely repeated them to the court. A couple of years ago, she engaged her insurance company, who is now defending her, but not prosecuting any claims against us. She attempted to represent her companies (two are involved, an LLC and a corporation) but as she is not an attorney, that is not allowed by law. She is representing herself as an individual, however.

The discovery process is gradually awakening her insurance provided counsel to the fact that she has been lying to them (no prior due diligence into their client’s statements, either) which puts them in a difficult situation - they can’t ethically represent lies, and could be sanctioned if they do.

In a strategy review conversation with our counsel yesterday, he said that given the now well-documented pattern and practice of lying by our (primary) opponent, he plans to file a motion to prevent her from testifying on the basis of having put a fraud upon the court. If the motion is granted, she (and her irrational and dishonest “feelings”) will have to sit in a soundproof booth while we present our case and the arbitrator decides how much she owes us. The insurance attorneys are not going to be able to mount much of a defense because they will have no assurance that what she told them was the truth.

Perhaps the moral of this post is that, even though lying is pervasive and disgusting, it is possible to navigate our cumbersome ‘rule of law’ to find a cure in the end, even though it is an ugly process.

A real cure would be a healing of the human mind to not be devious, dishonest, and destructive. But I think our extinction will come sooner than that cure!