Thursday, March 24, 2011

TNJ............... Wrapping Up Loose Ends............



Part One

There's not much left on BG's accounting sheet but, like everything else on that list there's a manipulation hanging there along with his so called charges. The last item was stated as "h" but it really should have been "j" so people don't get confused I will refer to it as the second h) Reflections full care and training will adjusted when cancelled checks that are verified amount that could change as stated above.

It's been previously stated that I paid for Reflection's stall and that I had cancelled checks and receipts to show that amount was paid in full. I think BG was planning to claim I hadn't paid for those months I bought his hay but for once I'd listened to that listen voice inside and my receipts reflected his deliveries.

The issue of training has already been answered since BG's numbers did not support he'd worked all the horses he'd claimed. Even with the horse in the pen and Reflection added to the list, the numbers he claimed were not reached so there's no way it's appropriate to add either horse to this list of duplicated charges. The only reason I put this item by itself was to address the issue of board.

When all was said and done BG's Just in Case list that he claimed:
Note: This amount alone would exceed $5000.00 Amount here will need to be adjusted

really came to a whopping Actual Total: $292.50 and a tank of gas. Even at that the total is based on giving him consideration where nothing is due. There were no provisions in the contract for any such fees and as the favors they were, believe me they were met with plenty of favors from me.

Considering the man had made a concerted effort to make me look like I was not grateful by making such notes as "gas would be appreciated, " it should be no surprise the last thing on the page read: *Loaned pair reins and apertures (returned)

I do not have these reins and the item he is referring to as apertures are really nothing more than two snaps added to those reins. Using the word aperture makes them sound like they are some fancy technical piece of equipment when it's probably a $3 piece of hardware that can be purchased at any tack store.

It's important to point this out because like all these things by themselves they don't look that bad. Put them all together and the picture gets pretty clear BG's intentions were less than honorable.

I will say I wish I had those reins. If I did I'd be holding them hostage for the assortment of saddle racks that I loaned to BG for his set-up at horse shows. A least a half dozen of the racks are just a 4 x4 board with a hook on the end. The hook slips into an eye bolt mounted on a board or wall to form the desired saddle rack. They may not be fancy but they work, don't take up much room in the horse trailer and come in quite handy at horse shows. One saddle rack is a very nice framed rack constructed of wood and suitable for a big fancy western saddle. It has a bridle hook on one end and the eye bolt on the other. I won it years ago at a poker ride. Racks like this one sell for more than his pair of reins. BG's using my fancier rack in his barn for all his work pads.

I might as well add on more than one occasion when I looked at those things on BG's lists that were supposed to be "friends helping friends" that he was now billing me for, I wanted to say what about all the stuff that I did. If I was just like BG, I'd be billing for all that stuff too. Instead I just feel the fool because I bought his line and I did things for him I wish I hadn't.

Believe me with everything that's happened, I'd love to have back the
brand new mountain climbing rope I gave him that was long enough he built a complete set of long lines and a lunge line. I really wish I hadn't helped him with problems with clients or helped get him new clients. I'd really like to have the money back in my wallet for the dinner we bought both BG and WF at the Red Lobster to celebrate our budding business relationship/contract. What a fool I was.

Before I get onto discovery, there was one more set of documents I gathered for my case I should tell you about. To show the court why I would NEVER have allowed BG to train Legs I was prepared with show records for each and every horse that has come through their barn in the last three years that was trained or coached by BG.

Since the show records not only show placings but how many horses are in each class, it is easy to tell when a horse is only getting a ribbon because there are so few horses in the class there is a ribbon for each horse. Those kinds of ribbons are not a measure of good training. It is obvious from those records that the horses are not finished as show horses need to be. I also had pictures and video of some of those horses in the show pen that would support that fact.

For comparison I had Legs' complete show record, pics and videos of him in the pen. Legs is far more successful in the ring than anything BG has been involved with. It's pretty easy to see that my horse is far closer to being finished than anything BG has worked with. Why would I pay the man to do something he doesn't do as well as I?

To support this would be another good place to use my expert to testify. The expert could easily explain the difference in training necessary to have a successful show record like Legs compared to the limited success of the horses has to his credit and the likelihood a person with my knowledge would allow a seasoned show horse like Legs to be trained by someone with lessor abilities for me to ride, just didn't seem likely.

If you're wondering why I even let BG touch Legs, I'm wondering that myself too. Although there's a big difference between letting BG do groundwork with my horse and allowing him to train him. As I said before I would have never allowed him to touch Legs if he hadn't told me he wanted to continue boxing him to help me as a friend. There's that "friend" thing again coming back to bite me but BG's work with Legs did not help me in the ring despite what he would say. The horse was clearly not using his back as evidenced by his lack of muscle tone. That makes that work useless as far as I'm concerned.

This argument of the show records of the horses in his barn also helped support the fact what I wanted from BG was to start unbroke horses. That was a term of our contract although BG seemed to forget that point. There's a big difference between properly starting a young horse and getting one finished for the show ring. The expert would be able to support that it made more sense for me to want BG to start young horses than it did for him to work with Legs or Dandy.

In support of all of the information I have provided along the way, I had other witnesses that I had not really mentioned. I did talk about them as my support system throughout this journey from the first days I took horses to BG's before anything about a contract ever happened, all the way through and beyond.

These three woman have heard about my days, about my horses and about the story with BG and WF every step of the way. How that fits into the picture of this lawsuit may not be obvious. Everyone seems to know about hearsay and anything that isn't first hand is just that. People think that hearsay means that something doesn't count in terms of the law.

The good thing about telling the truth is you never have to worry about what you're saying. The story never changes because, well, it's the truth. It may come out in different words but it's still the same story. That's what these three women had to offer this case. Each one of them had the same story to tell in their own words. If they read these posts today, they would agree, "That's what happened."

So does the law care about such witnesses? You're darn right! You see there's this provision that allows for people to testify to what they have heard when the purpose of that testimony isn't to prove the truth of the statements but the fact that they were said.

As far as I was concerned this provision was perfect for me. BG couldn't keep his stories straight on his four pieces of paper and my story hasn't changed since day one. These women were going to help me show the court that I am true to my word.

To be continued.............

My Expansion of Discovery.........

I'd be remiss in posting baby pics and not posting this one. Who do you think this little darling might be?

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15 comments:

  1. My gosh I bet that baby had grown up to be a handful. Poor tolerant mom.
    Great idea to pull his barns show records. No way to fake those for results.

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  2. Another great post. Can't wait to find out who the character is.

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  3. Truth will win out in the end. I have no idea who that little monster is, I'll guess Legs, but I'm not sure.

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  4. Is the Baby Legs , or Tango? How is TAngo by the way?

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  5. I can appreciate why you'd want those reins! And you're right, those statements were added to make it look like they weren't appreciated. I love the way you've turned it around and shown how much you did for him, too. And how wonderful that such testimony could be brought to bear in this case. If I were a judge or juror, I'd certainly listen carefully to the testimony of your three friends.

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  6. Sounds like you have it all sewn up, or at least well enough to show how fraudulant they were to you (and probly others as well)

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  7. Nicole, a handful indeed. Mom was indeed way too tolerant with the little brat.

    No way to fake them and it was something tangible for the court to help them understand the differences.

    Arlene, you are right, he was a little monster and it is Legs. That happens to be Scandalous he was jumping on but he spent a fair amount of time jumping on Heiress as well. They both thought he was so cute neither of them ever corrected him.

    fern, Your first guess is correct. I don't remember ever seeing Tango try to mount his mother and I know I haven't seen him try to mount Dare although he would be more like his father if he did. We've had a difficult week here with Tango. That tendon is still enlarged and he had quite a bit of swelling.

    Linda, seems like nothing I thought about this guy turned out to be true. He sure was no friend and everything he did for me was just part of his seduction to get my horse. If anyone was taken advantage of it sure wasn't him.

    Every time I talked with my friends about the lawsuit I was surprise at how consistent their views of what happened were. That doesn't happen often even with eye witnesses. Each of them even guessed pretty accurately how much work that BG had actually done just by our conversations each day and my relaying what did and didn't happen. I was really pleased when I found the rule of evidence that allowed for their testimony.

    Crystal, to say it was sewn up at this stage would be premature. I had the evidence to do so but considering how easily they lied I could see the ways they might manipulate the information to make it look otherwise. The discovery process was very important to close the doors so they couldn't do that.

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  8. It just occurred to me that if he was claiming all this training done on such a large amount of horses it seemslike it would be fairly easy to get a neutral party trainer to give his opinion on the amount of training these young horses had. Obviously you didn't need it because of your record keeping, but one wonders how this didn't worry him.

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  9. There is nothing better than the truth thats for sure. I'm really not liking this guy. Cant wait to hear that he gets his just deserves!!!!

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  10. "The good thing about telling the truth is you never have to worry about what you're saying. The story never changes because, well, it's the truth. It may come out in different words but it's still the same story.Truth will win out in the end." I love this! and . . . it is so very true.

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  11. I don't think you were a fool at all with BG or WF. He obviously talked the talk and walked the walk. He said all the right things and seems like he did everything right in the beginning. Many people in your situation may have done the same thing, I know I would have been grateful for the assistance he promised. You had no reason to believe that any of this would happen. If anything, you've learned a valuable lesson in that from now on, I bet you'll make certain to have any promises put into a written contract.

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  12. what a rascal! and what a nightmare that you have lived through, with this ordeal! I'm trying to figure it all out, time wise, has it been going on for years? Why don't you bill him for things you did? Why don't you go over and get everything that is yours? take some guys with you and just go get what belongs to you. I'll repeat, what a nightmare, and what things we find out about people that we thought we knew!

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  13. Sorry to say, but if you haven't gotten those racks back yet I doubt you ever will.

    Climbing ropes cost about $200 new, that should more than cover any gas he used "on your behalf." Geez Louise.

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  14. horsemom, in one of the previous posts I mentioned we would be doing that for the court with an expert witness. I wanted to leave no stone unturned as to the possibilities. You just never know for sure what will happen in court.

    As for it worrying him, it seems nothing worried him for WF. As I've said before I believe she was behind many of the additions and from the looks of it, they thought they could put on that sheet anything they felt like regardless of the truth.

    sally, this whole thing was so bizarre about the only thing there was to believe in was the truth. Everything else just got stranger and stranger. As for just deserves, I'm not sure there is anything really like that in a case like this.

    cjharris, me too. As I've said, it was the only thing I could count on.

    JJ, I did learn a valuable lesson and it wasn't just about getting things in writing. If we had had a written contract we still would have ended up in court since most of the terms of this contract were confirmed by them. Before this happened I had no understanding how necessary it is to have a complex contract complete with a spelled out way of record keeping for the work. Without terms that provided for signed by both parties daily records we'd have still ended up in this mess.

    HAOL, this has been going on for years. The contract began in Oct of 2008. Billing him would do nothing. He'd be denying that just like he is claiming he did work he didn't do. There is no point in dragging this out any longer. Going to get what is mine is not as simple as it sounds. I don't know where the things are for sure and I don't need to be arrested for tresspassing and believe me if he could accomplish that over those little things, he'd be quite tickled. I will not give him that satisfaction, no stoop to his level. I got my horse back and that is what was important.

    smazourek, I know I will never see my saddle racks again. I just used these things as an example that this relationship was not one sided as he was trying to make it look to the court. Seeing what I did for him shows how petty the man really is with his requests for gas and such while his billing me huge sums of money for horses he did not work. I mean the difference between the $8000 I tabulated and the nearly $38,000 he claims is pretty freaking huge and he didn't even do the $8000 worth of work because I gave him credit for things I could determine the proportion on how much of the work he did. In each of those instances he did very little. I just sit here shaking my head that they really believed they could keep my horse for as little work as he actually did. The only thing I can say about it is it speaks to the pathology of their nature.

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  15. They sure seem to have the mentality that "If I say this enough times, it must be true..."

    People like that I have no use for. I can do without the fabricated stories, thanks. Stick to the truth and your story stays the same. Always.

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