Been quiet here for a while. Mostly having a hard time getting back into the swing of things, which should be remedied soon — I think I’ve burned out on reading, and need to take some time to start pulling all this stuff together and trying to hang it on the skeleton of the prospectus, to see where the gaps are.
And the other thing is the Dispute That Refused to Die, what feels like my own personal Jarndyce and Jarndyce. My pile of legal documents, which I’d hoped to be able to put up in the attic by Thanksgiving, and then by Christmas, and then by February, and then by tax day, and which I’ve now given up on, is about two and a half feet high. After much lawyering all around, everyone involved signed an agreement months ago, which I thought would put it to bed, but it hasn’t yet. Because of the courts. You know how they say the wheels of justice turn slowly? No. The wheels of justice are flippin square. We got the Orphan’s Court to bless the agreement back in March, and now a pathologically punctilious government auditor has suggested that what the Court blessed isn’t quite the way he’d like it, so he’s sent it back to everyone for another round of edits, petitions and signatures before passing it along to the judge again.
I thought university bureaucracies were bad. I was mistaken.
I feel your pain. I was involved in a suit over some real estate for about three years. I think the lawyers wound up with most of the money before it was over.
Yeah, that’s sadly a very old story. Here in Santa Clara County, before we were California, lawyers would handle real estate disputes, sometimes colluding by representing both parties. Those bringing suit were cash-poor, so would pay fees in the form of real estate. Thus, much property transfer from the old Californios to the Anglo legal eagles.