We're buying a house. Yay! It's been a long road. It took us a week to negotiate the price. The sellers are apparently from 2006 and were blindsided by a not full priced offer. They had to "sleep" on every counter. Fine. What-evs (as my students would likely say).
All of the inspections went well. There were only $200-300 in repairs we required. Acceptable levels of radon. No termites. The basement is so dry we couldn't even find out if the sump pump works (quite a feat since we've not seen much sun since March).
Everything was going reasonably well until the title search came back. There was normal HOA stuff but there was also some scary there's-no-record-that-they-own-the-land stuff. Everyone told me, "Hire a lawyer!" So we did.
As I sat in the waiting room of the attorney's office I couldn't help but to think that I probably belonged there. I was forced to confront my long unspoken fear.
Ever since my first angry student event, I've been afraid. I've been afraid that some slowflake* will sue the crap out of me. I know that it would be a very hard case for a slowflake to make with all those wrong test answers and all. But this seems like just the kind of case that the ACLU would get a woody over.
The headlines would read "University, Professor Destroys Student's Life". MSN would make an online poll "Should College Grades Be Negotiable?". Obama would be quoted saying, "We need college professors who want our students to be successful. Everyone deserves a college education!" Nancy Grace would have a multiple-guests-via-satellite segment in which the only guest in my corner is Strelnikov, who rants about how all our students are worthless and should be sent to Siberia, and mid-Strel rant Nancy would emphatically do the Trump cobra and yell, "Do you mean an honest attempt and effort are worth nothing!? Are you saying that doing some work is worth nothing!?"
I've always sort of assumed that the University would pick up the tab for my defense. Seems to me that it would be a work related lawsuit and so they should. But perhaps I am wrong.
The prospect of having an actual "asset" has brought all these fears to the forefront. Some slowflake could sue me and in this litigious climate win. We'd be forced to sell our house to pay off the multi-billion dollar judgement.
This is, of course, why you hire a lawyer when you buy a house. They give legal advice about how to title the home. If you're married and your state allows it you should consider holding the property in tenancy by the entirety. You get all the benefits of joint tenancy with right of surviorship but your property is shielded from lawsuits against a single party. So that means that if a slowflake wants to take my house, he needs to have a legitimate claim against my very saintly spouse too. It also means none of our individual debt holders can enforce a lien on the home. So the house is safe ... for now.
* Spellcheck caught my using "Slowflake" for "Snowflake" and I thought "How apropos!" I hereby declare that "Slowflake" refers to an 'F' or 'D' Snowflake.
A saintly spouse (always puts me in mind of Yaro), a Strelnikov reference, AND a new term.
ReplyDeleteCan we have two posts of the week? Or an "early POW" and a "late POW"?
Hey congratulations to you!
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall a conversation a while back re students threatening to call out the lawyers over grades or professors' real or perceived shitty attitudes, and I think a lot of us came a away from the discussion feeling secure in the notion that getting sued is unlikely in our positions. Worst case scenario, someone lawyers up because you discriminated against them by failing to recognize their genius and giving them an F. The university has to respond, not you. You might be named, but the issue would be with the university. The university would probably just give them a higher grade to make them fuck off. It seems unlikely a kid would get a lawyer though...that'd be a lot of money for a grade.
Also, I dont' think anyone was able to point to a case where a prof was sued by a student. And Crazy Math Professor, you probably won't be the first. Enjoy your summer in your new house!!!
This is a beautiful post. Yes, POW. And CMP, you should consider submitting this to the Chronicle.
ReplyDeleteBTW...I *love* slowflake...excellent. Add that to the CM glossary.
ReplyDeleteI was taken to small claims court over an F grade. Fortunately, the slowflake named the college, too. It took about two weeks of wrangling with the college to get them to agree it was in everyone's best interest to have their lawyer handle it. Then the %*€£¥^%# slowflake was a no show, so we won by default.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, an F grade apparently is worth $1475 in damages.
Wow Annie! I stand corrected. What a little shit.
ReplyDeleteThe real capper to the whole thing: he would leave phone messages in which he identified himself, left his phone number, and then threatened me with sexual assault. The college was much more concerned with the potential for financial loss.
ReplyDeleteIt's been an entertaining year.
@CMP: great post, for all the reasons named above, and congrats! Enjoy the house (once the lawyer has vetted the situation. I think there are some cities where "ground rent" comes into the equation -- and can be hard to track down -- but a good real estate lawyer will know all about that, if it's the norm. If it isn't, well, that's obviously a pretty serious problem. I hope the current owners have title insurance.)
ReplyDelete@Annie: eek, and ugh. I'm sorry. It seems to me that your university is pretty badly behind the times. The VA Tech incident, the Giffords shooting, etc., etc. seem to have created a good deal more caution about students' potential for violence in most places. Has your university considered the possibility that *you* (or, god forbid, your survivors) might sue *them* if they fail to act to protect you from a clear threat? I'd consider a restraining order, though I've heard those sometimes make the situation worse, not better. Gavin de Becker's _The Gift of Fear_ is considered a pretty good resource for such decisions, I believe (there are also resources created by him, some of them free, at https://www.mosaicmethod.com/ ; I notice that "threat by student/university" is one of the choices, which seems to confirm my sense that most universities take this sort of thing pretty seriously -- at the very least, there's a market). You might point your U in that direction, if the situation isn't fully resolved.
Overall, though, I still think that the grade pressure from slowflakes (and pretty-swift-but-not-quite-as-swift-as-they-think snowflakes) comes more at the eval end of things than from lawsuits, with the possible consequence of too many students unhappy with their grades being non-renewal of a professor's contract rather than a lawsuit. That, of course, can also lead to the loss of a house, though in less swift or dramatic fashion.
That said, one of my grandmothers was the sole owner of the house in which she and my grandfather lived, because he was a partner in a firm that might be vulnerable to lawsuits. I suspect that approach became less common as divorce became more common, but it worked for them (he predeceased her), and may only be available in certain states anyway (the laws vary, I'm pretty sure). Umbrella liability insurance never hurts, either; it's relatively cheap, and covers everything from trips-and-falls to falling tree limbs to tragic mistakes while behind the wheel (we all make mistakes during years of driving; the question is just whether we make them at moments when they have major consequences, or not, which is largely a matter of luck, or fate), to, yes, I'm pretty sure, irate snow/slowflakes. And I don't think insurance companies yet consider "college professor" a profession that brings a high likelihood of being sued.
Thanks for all the praise and congratualatory messages. For those of you interested it only took about 24 hours to fix the title issue. Apparently someone from the record office has been sleeping for the last 40 years. The lawyer is doing all sort of other cool stuff, too. He's forcing the title company to release all the closing documents a day before closing (they apparently like to not do that) so that he can check all the numbers and we can review them. So in retrospect I can't believe we never did this before. Lesson learned! Learn from my fail, CM!
ReplyDelete@Annie: Was $1475 (or what ever it was) the total cost for the course? Or perhaps for repeating the course.
@Cassandra: Crazy Math Spouse actually works for an insurance company. So I suspect that we are rather oversold insurance. Unfortunately, we're not aware of an academic protection rider.
But if a student keys my car on campus it's treated as a deducible free no fault.
Where I live an attorney is required for all real estate transactions. Actually, it is more like five--one for the purchaser, one for the seller, one for the title company, one for the bank, and one to host the closing proceedings. So closings--I've done two in this state--are like fucking ABA conventions for losers who were too stupid to get good law firm jobs.
ReplyDeleteAs far as lawsuits go, grade suits don't have much standing, although I like the small-claims court angle (but not the harassing phone calls). At any rate, the university would have to step in there, since grades are official university acts, and they'd be the major party to the suit. I'd say that's anxiety way out of control if you spend more than a minute worrying about that.
That doesn't mean an umbrella policy or tenancy by the entirety aren't good ideas. There are certainly at least two kinds of suits I can think of where the university would likely leave you on your own to face the charges, including any pecuniary damages: sexual harassment and wrongful death (in the event of a snowy self-snuff). I wouldn't waste my time thinking about those possibilities, but I do have an umbrella policy for just that reason.
And Annie, if you have those messages, you would certainly have standing to file a harassment suit against slowy-the-snowflake. I'd seriously consider it. Or a restraining order at the very least. He's probably doing it because he thinks he can get away with it, but there is a chance that he is dangerous, and you shouldn't overlook that. That's my take.
I was hoping there would be some useful advice for what to do if you throw a shoe against the side of your mortgage broker's head because you were supposed to close 4 weeks ago, your contract gets voided in the middle of the holiday weekend if you haven't gotten the mortgage yet, and you've caught him in three lies in 10 days.
ReplyDeleteDoes the real estate attorney handle that, or will I need a second lawyer? I can't afford another lawyer, so I better keep my shoes on.
Could this buying a house process suck any more than it already does?
It sucks so bad, I'd take a specially designated Slowflake section of remedial science for dummies before I'd ever move. If I ever get in this fucking house that is.
@CMP, the amount was the maximum amount he could file for with the minimum filing fee of $75. No bearing on the cost of the class.
ReplyDelete@Cassandra, I pointed out Virginia Tech--and the Giffords shooting was on the Friday before he left the threatening message, which makes the lack of response on the part of the school and on the part of law enforcement even more reprehensible.
I've made sure copies of the messages are in various safe places, carry pepper spray, and made it very clear to the college that my husband will own their sorry asses if anything happens. And don't even get me started about the po po. I haven't heard from the flake for about three months, but I'm still being aware.
More importantly, though, congrats CMP on the new house! What a great way to begin the summer.
And thanks everyone for the supportive words!
ReplyDelete@ Wombat: Don't bother with a mortgage broker. Join a credit union and get your loan there. If you can't get into a credit union go with a several-branch community bank. These types of lenders keep mortgages in portfolio and won't sell your loan after closing. And according to our attorney they are much easier to deal with when stuff goes wrong since it isnt hard to find an employee empower to deal with the problem. You can't imagine the look of relief when I told him the local credit union was financing the deal. Plus today they emailed me the closing statements more than a week before closing. Almost unheard of. Besides our interest rate is really low. Lending Tree dot com couldn't beat our credit union rate. And if you are a first time homebuyer you might get a deal on closing costs. Our closing costs are not 1.5% of the loam value.
ReplyDeleteThanks, but it's a little late for that.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on the house! My partner and I are zeroing in on one that we really like, and I'm not looking forward to the "negotiation game" but it's an inevitability.
ReplyDeleteFortunately, my parents have used the same tax/contract/real estate attorney for forty years and I've inherited him so to speak, so I'm comfortable with that. His first advice to me in my formative years was "if you have to fart in public, cough."
As for being afraid of legal action from students, I had one that still stops my heart back when I was 17, teaching music at an arts camp. This was right in the midst of a lot of day care workers being accused of sexual misconduct, and a woman comes up to me during carpool time and says "What have you done to my daughter?!" My blood ran cold. It's one of those things where if she said what I thought she was going to say, my life was over. Even though I hadn't done anything, I'd have to move and start over. Imagine my surprise (and relief!) when the next thing out of her mouth was:
"She asked for the Beethoven 9 Symphonies for her birthday!"
Back to OP:
ReplyDeleteI don't appear on TV, though I would be willing to phone in. There would be ground rules; all guests would be allowed a 3 minute straight rant, then be allowed to answer/ask questions. No interruptions by the host during the 3 minute rant or guests can hang up/cut transmission. No censorship bleeps; if we curse, it's by accident, and I shall only curse in foreign languages.
Sound fair?