Blood Pressure

I usually change names on this blog.  Not so with Alex J. Stinson and Misty Shephard, AKA Misty Marshall, AKA Misty Falero.  Those are their real names.  I post them as a public service for other people who do business or rent property in central New York.  Alex’s date of birth is July 24, 1972.  He has lived in and around that part of central New York since 1993.  Misty’s date of birth is December 19, 1977.  She has also gone by Misty L Falero, Misty M. Falero, Misty L. Marshall, and Misty Lynn Marshall.  Since 2000, Misty has lived mostly around that area of central New York, although she also lived briefly on Long Island and in Texas and Georgia.  Both are White, of medium stature and build and in their late forties, with tattoos on their arms, legs, hands and necks.  When last seen, Alex had short brown hair and Misty had a buzz cut.

Alex J. Stinson and Misty Shepard, AKA Misty Marshall, AKA Misty Falero, are lazy and incompetent workers, deadbeat tenants, slobs, liars, cheats, drug users and petty thieves.  Under no circumstances should a business owner hire them or a property owner rent to them.  A law school professor used to give us a hypothetical in which one party steps out of his car, punches the other party in the nose, and says that the other party has a ‘loathsome social disease’.  The purpose of the hypothetical was to pack as many torts as possible into a minimum number of syllables.  The final tort, of course, was defamation.  I am comfortable that a claim of that type will not lie in the present case because truth is an absolute defense – and Alex J. Stinson and Misty Shepard, AKA Misty Marshall, AKA Misty Falero really, truly are all the things listed above.

And the proper term is now ‘STD’, not ‘social disease’.

I hired Alex a few months ago to do maintenance around the park.  He brought Misty along as his WOG.  She was never in contractual privity with the park, but when we asked her what her name was, she said, “Misty Shephard”.

Alex was a bust.  He fudged water system journals.  He stole a lawn mower.  He tried to break into the rent box.  He took tenants’ money to do repairs and ducked their calls.  He built things out of duct tape and chewing gum – when he built things.  He broke the master meter antenna.  He trashed the skid steer.   He plowed half the park and disappeared in the middle of a snow storm.  He bought a pitbull.  A home mover who was in the park once during the fall called me specially to tell me, “Keep an eye on the maintenance guy of yours”.  I asked,

-Why?

-Cause he’s up to no fucken good.

Alex was fired at the end of March.  His severance agreement granted him thirty days to move.  He got $500 when he signed the agreement, and the right to an additional $500 if he was fully moved out not later than May 1.  That’s a great deal, for someone who did a shitty job.

It is now late June.  Alex and Misty Shephard, AKA Misty Marshall, AKA Misty Falero, are still living there.  Here are some recent pictures of their lot:

Under New York RPAP 713(11), no landlord-tenant relationship exists between two parties, one of whom entered into possession of housing belonging to the other party incident to employment by the other party after that employment is terminated.  In a case like that, the party in possession does not have a right to notice of a special proceeding.  So – we served a petition on Alex and Misty in the middle of last month.  We appeared before a judge and explained the case to him.  He signed a two-week warrant of eviction – although getting the warrant signed took some time.  We appeared before him on Wednesday.  We sent him a draft for his signature on Thursday morning.  Because the judge only shows up once a week, we did not get the signature until a week after the draft warrant was sent to court.

(Although courts issue warrants of eviction, they do not draft them.  If you want a court to issue a warrant of eviction, you need to draft it for the judge’s signature.  After he or she signs it, you bring it to the sheriff, and the sheriff executes it.)

After the warrant was signed, it was delivered to the sheriff’s office.  The deputy served it on Misty in person and on Alex by nail-and-mail.  When the deputy served it on Misty, she said – “I’m not Misty Shepard.  I am Misty Marshall”.  When I called the sheriff’s office to check on the warrant, they told me that we would have to get a new warrant because, the nice lady at the office told me, the name was wrong.

I am pretty healthy for a guy my age, but that raised my blood pressure.

I printed out a record pulled from public databases showing Misty’s name, social security number, date of birth, known addresses and known AKAs and sent it to the Sheriff’s office.  The woman sometimes known as Misty Shephard, I told the nice lady at the Sheriff’s office, is the same person as the woman sometimes known as Misty Marshall.  Since the warrant was made out against a person rather than against a name, it should be valid even though it shows an alias that Misty decided not to use when she was served.  “Sorry”, the nice lady told me.  “The county attorney tells me that you need to amend the warrant.”

-And get it signed by the judge again?

-Yes, that’s right.

-The judge who only shows up once a week?

-We’ve served her several times for other petitioners.  Each time we served her, she used the name Misty Marshall.

-So you know her?

-Oh, sure.  Her and Alex both.  We deal with them all the time.

-You could have bloody well told me!

-You didn’t ask.

The nice lady continued,

-You know, the warrant against Alex is still valid, and we plan to execute it on the 30th.  Let’s hope she will leave when he is evicted.

-Hope is not a strategy.

-I suppose it isn’t.

Five minutes after we hung up, something occurred to me and I called her back.  I said, “Sorry to bother you, but I had another question.  You said that, when the warrant is served on Alex, we can change the locks –“

-That’s right.

-But what if it is served on Alex but not on Misty?  Can we change the locks then?

-That is a good question.  I will ask my supervisor.

-Please do.

A few minutes passed.  I heard muffled voices.  The nice lady came back to the phone.  She said,

-You can go ahead and change the locks.

-That’s great!

-But you will have to give Misty a key.

–What!  Alex will slide right in after her!

-I suppose he will.

-Can’t you just serve Misty at the same time?  We know who she is, for Christ’s sake.

-Sorry, no.

I felt a blood vessel in my temple throbbing, so I hung up and did some box breathing.  Then I emailed the paralegal who is handling the case for me a message explaining the situation and asking her to get a warrant issued for Misty Marshall as quickly as possible.  The updated warrant will get served on Misty Marshall, AKA Misty Shepard, AKA Misty Falero shortly.  Execution should happen before mid-July.  I need to keep my blood pressure down in the mean-time.  If I die before the warrant is executed, those clowns will win.