Freebie counterclaim

Last night was Tennis Pro Bono's deadline for submitting his rebuttal to our motion.


Just checked e-mail: UnGroom sent a scan of TPB's brief. The language and formatting is a mess. Other than to say that we were full of baloney and our motion ueberhaupt nicht nachvollziehbar, he ignores all the points in our motion. His "Verteidigungsmittel" involves references to my famous Unzumutbarkeit.


Here's where he gets spiffy:

TBP included a counter suit requesting an eviction order.

On the one hand, this was an elegant move. By filing for the eviction order in the form of a counter-claim, he avoided court costs he'd incur if he eventually filed directly for an eviction order.

The other hand is shoving wads of cash into the pockets of his dear colleague, Ungroom: his counter suit locked in our inflated claim value.

I'd pre-paid court fees for a claim value of a year's rent. There are strong arguments for our claim value being only 3 months' rent. Calling it a year was one part expensive paranoia medicine, and two parts feeling sure I'd win and wanting to maximize UnGroom's earnings.

The claim value for an eviction order IS 12 months rent. So Tennis Pro Bono effectively quadrupled his client's risk. Top-Model's now looking at total suit costs of approximately ten times what the court fee for an eviction order would have run her. Nice going, T e n n i s .

Either Tennis Pro Bono is a sloppy lawyer, or he was thumbing his nose at us.

I'm so tempted to dig up commentaries that argue that claim values are cumulative.