Compelling Logic
Wayne Deeker
"No. I won't do it! Why
are you always so aggressive?" Woody stirred his coffee, not looking at his
partner.
"We tackle the lot, or they'll keep jerking us around," said Mikki.
"But you're demanding a refund before they've really had a fair chance to fix it. It's an intermittent fault. The computer's fine, it's just the monitor. Involving Consumer Affairs and going to court will only inconvenience us; just let them fix it."
"So we give them a third try? Another week, a useless computer, and our deadlines looming? They'll probably still find nothing." She poured Bailey's Irish Cream into her steaming milk. "I still don't believe this country. No American business could remain so incompetent."
"Don't start that again."
She sighed. "Enough. The warranty's up in two months; then we'll have to pay them to not fix it. Take it all back." Silence pressed as they sipped.
"Woody, faults like this just indicate others waiting to spring. It's a shit computer, we should take it back now."
"But, can't you understand, there's nothing wrong with the computer!" His voice rose in volume and pitch, "How can you justify a refund for that? We'll have no case if we go to court! You're just being greedy."
She filled her cup again, undiluted with milk this time, closing her eyes, "If you don't trust me, there's no relationship. I was beating mega-corporations when you were in pre-school."
At his silence, she circled the table and sat on his lap. "Compromise? I'll contact Consumer Affairs, and we'll take it in one last time. But I'll also write the manager with our complaints and requests. If they can't fix it, we get a refund. Okay?"
"Hmmm."
19 November
"Three bloody weeks!" he spat, entering the front door. Sitting beside Mikki, he handed her the latest fax. "No monitor, nothing but delays and lies. I don't need any more convincing."
"We know they haven't sent it anyplace," she replied. "It's a deliberate go-slow. Each fax said 'soon', but after 20 days they still can't tell us when we get it. Now we force them."
Brushing her straight black hair, he continued, "But this is what I feared. You know it'll be months before it'll get to court; meanwhile they've stashed our monitor somewhere. Again."
"At least we have our computer! But, it's a necessary inconvenience for what
I'm trying to teach you. Trust me. We'll win." Shifting to his lap, arms around
his thick neck, she continued, "Let them keep the monitor. We'll rent one. But
tomorrow we file at Small Claims Court."
Conciliation Day, 21 January
"There they are," Woody indicated with a glance across the waiting room. "They came after all. By the far wall, looking for a place to sit ... two suits. I recognise Normandy, but not the other bloke."
"Just a lawyer," Mikki said, hugging Woody. "I'm so thrilled! They brought a lawyer to Small Claims Court. This could be fun after all. I already taste blood in the water."
They found two adjacent seats by the far wall. "Did all your other opponents have lawyers?"
"Every one," she said seriously. "And they've always lost; corporate America against little me!" She laughed.
Her eyes concealed intensity. "Their strategy's predictable. Lawyers usually advise clients when their case is weak, and to negotiate over tidbits. It's cheaper than a full hearing, where they could really lose; most people think that's winning, and go home pleased with a moral victory. I never conciliate unless I get everything, plus a public admission of guilt."
"We're on," he said. "They just called us."
They met the bald, brown-suited man in the hallway. "I'm the deputy registrar, Brian Johnston." He turned to the two approaching men, "You must be from The Logical Approach. Come along here please."
Seated, Johnston began, "These conciliation sessions are to informally discuss settlement options available to both parties, avoiding court if possible. Nothing said here is admissible as evidence." He re-read the claim documents. "I presume," he said, addressing Woody and Mikki, "your claim against The Logical Approach is still outstanding?"
"Correct."
"Please briefly tell me the details."
Mikki began a long description of the problems they'd faced, especially the service difficulties, The Logical Approach's Lawyer taking copious longhand notes.
"Mr Normandy, how has The Logical Approach decided to respond to the claim?"
"While we tried our hardest to determine the problem, we weren't able to, nor to recreate it. However, we accept the monitor misbehaved for them, so we're willing to exchange it."
"Is that acceptable to you?" Johnston asked.
"No," Mikki answered. "You see, Mr Normandy, we don't want to have any further dealings with your company. You've shown your repair ineptitude, and the monitor's been so much trouble, we doubt we can expect reasonable service. The CPU unit is already acting funny. We also wish no further dealings with Mr Clavette. He is extremely rude."
"Yeah," Normandy smiled wearily, pushing up his glasses, "he can be like that sometimes. We're all sorry about that."
"Perhaps," Johnston suggested, "you could offer them an equivalent sum, so they could purchase another somewhere else. What's a monitor worth?"
Normandy answered, "About ... um ... five hundred dollars." He glanced at his Lawyer, who nodded, "We could give them a cheque for that much. But there's nothing wrong with the computer; we won't refund for that. That claim's completely unreasonable."
At the silence, Johnston concluded, "I'll set a date for you hearing, say the 16th of March?"
Normandy addressed the couple, "You may reconsider our offer, and accept the
five hundred at any time until the day before the hearing."
16 March, 9.00 AM
"Quite a crowd," Woody said as they emerged from the lift. "Let's see when we're on."
Looking at the noticeboard, Mikki announced, "We're second: ten o'clock."
"There's Normandy. And Hawthorne! That's fantastic! We would've paid for him to show up. And who's that? Another lawyer?"
Gesturing to his left, he added, "There's some spare seats over there, out of the way."
"No, here: I wanna watch them." About the seats, she built a blockade with
her bags. From one, she removed three thick books, packets of biscuits, and
magazines, placing them atop the travel bag. Woody sat beside her, watching the
crowd.
Mikki whispered, "You look nervous."
"You can tell?"
"You've been on that page for ten minutes."
"I feel disadvantaged; no amount of preparation can make up for my inexperience. It's okay for you, you know the tricks." He smiled, "I still can't believe that big straw hat, nor the wooden clogs; very folksy," he spread his arms, "complements my jeans and grungy runners. But I don't know what to expect. The doubt's killing me."
"Like I said, you probably needn't say much. Concern yourself most with watching and learning: listen to their questions and my answers. Lawyers try to establish their opponents as villains, undercutting their integrity, and building a solid pyramid for their clients. But it's easy to block. Every question is an opportunity to say what you want.
"Trust me. I know what I'm doing ... though it'll seem otherwise sometimes. We'll be okay. Remember our rehearsals. Our documentation is bulletproof." She played with his beard.
Soon, she turned to the slender, spectacled young man to her right, proffering an open packet, "Would you like a cookie?"
He twisted around, smiling. "No, but thanks. Actually, I was just eyeing that Capote Reader you've brought."
She handed over the three-inch paperback with a smile. "You like him?"
"Yeah, but I've never seen that one before. Should keep me going a while. Forgot to bring something. Thankyou very much."
"So welcome!" She leaned across Woody to address the person on his left. "Would you like a cookie?"
Deep in thought, nervously burying his face in his hands, he responded stiffly, "No zankyou."
She turned to a woman behind her, "Would you like a cookie?"
"Thanks!"
The Logical Approach crew snickered among themselves at the interchange.
Mikki leaned into Woody again, nuzzling him, "Would you like a cookie?"
"Sure." Munching, he observed, "None of them brought anything to read. I've been watching: Hawthorne's read that court pamphlet about eight times. Normandy and the Lawyer think we're clowns."
"They're cocky. The Lawyer obviously told them it'd be done by morning
coffee, and we'd be slaughtered. Won't they be surprised?"
2.30, 16 March
Entering the large carpeted courtroom, Mikki whispered, "Grab that end of the bench." They arranged their ergonomic chairs around the wooden bench's extreme right end, as far from their opponents as possible, diagonally opposite the witness stand. A few metres ahead was the scribes' box. At intervals along the bench: slender microphones, jugs of water, glasses.
The court official showed Normandy and the Lawyer to the other end of the bench.
Woody observed, "They still look pissed at us declining to reschedule when the first case went past lunch." Mikki smiled behind her folded hands.
As both parties settled in, the silver-haired, black-robed figure in the Magistrate's box idly swivelled back and forth in his chair. Mikki whispered, "He's delightful. Very fair."
From the front of the room, the court official sternly announced the commencement of the hearing.
The Magistrate read the claim aloud, then asked, "Would you explain how your claim arose?"
"Well," Mikki began slowly, peering out from beneath her hat brim, "it began in November the year before last when Woody here bought a computer. By January, the monitor'd developed this awful jerking," she demonstrated, horizontally yanking a piece of paper, "making it totally unusable. The jerking got worse, and other problems appeared, so by July we couldn't work at all!"
Pausing for several seconds, she continued, "We both need the computer, so we took it in. The Logical Approach service attendant was rude, and he didn't even wait for us to describe the problem. They kept the monitor three days, and found no faults.
"Of course, the problem was always intermittent. It acted up again soon after, but September was the earliest we could next take it in. By then, the jiggling, when it was there, was even worse. When we returned on the specified day to collect it, nobody in the shop even knew where our monitor was, and there was no record of its being booked in!" she said slowly. "They were going to tell us they didn't have it when we pointed out 'Mal', who took our monitor in. They said he didn't even work there!"
She paused, noisily turning pages of her books of notes. The Lawyer continued his frenetic writing.
"'Mal' showed them to the monitor, which they kept in the shop another four days. During that time, Bryce Hawthorne, the technician, told us he'd recreated the problem, and soldered a chip. He said if it recurred, he'd get a new board which would take two days to order from Sydney." She looked up to face the Magistrate, "He was very nice to us, the only one in the store who was. When we collected it, Mr Normandy said those monitors had been 'problematical'."
Ruffling through her notes, she continued, "For a while, everything was okay, but in October, the jiggling returned still worse, and we again contacted the shop: the start of our unfortunate association with Mr Clavette, the Managing Director and major shareholder."
"We'd just written him of the endless problems, and when we met him, he was dreadfully ugly. We asked him to provide a loaner monitor, but do you wanna know what he said?" The Magistrate nodded mildly, "He said he would have, if we hadn't 'beat him over the head with Consumer Affairs', but since we'd contacted them, he'd be 'doing the absolute minimum required'." The Magistrate noted this on his pad.
"Next," she went on, "after twenty one days, and eleven faxes saying our monitor had been due back from Sydney 'in the next few days', we'd had enough. We lodged the notice of sale recision, on grounds of inadequate service and goods of unmerchantable quality. The very next day," she said slowly, "they called saying they would deliver our monitor right then, as it had just returned from Sydney. In light of our recision the day before, we refused to collect the monitor. They still haven't advised us how to effect the exchange, so here we are." She smiled at the Magistrate, and the opposition.
"Please take the stand for cross-examination," the Magistrate said.
Mikki sat in front of the microphone, leaning forward, swinging her legs happily. The Lawyer began, "Please explain what you meant in your letter to Mr Clavette, on November 20th, stating there'd been a policeman present in the foyer of The Logical Approach the afternoon you gave notice of recision?"
"Sure!" Smiling sweetly, she lifted up the brim of her hat to see the Lawyer. One of her pigtails hit the microphone as she turned her head, "Woody's daddy's a cop, and happened to be there that day. He told us he heard them trying to find our monitor from Sydney. They were in such a panic 'cause they were trying to find it "
"Okay. Thank you," the Lawyer interrupted. "No further questions, your Honour. I call Mr Ken Normandy."
After Normandy had been sworn in, the Lawyer asked him for his account.
"Despite many repeated tests," Normandy said, "we could not recreate the fault, nor find any underlying reasons for such a fault. As far as we could tell, the monitor was in perfect condition. We even brought in independent consultants, at our expense, to further diagnose the system."
That's a lie, Mikki wrote to Woody.
"And what action did you take?"
"Well, as a precaution, we soldered the monitor chip in September. This is standard procedure when we find no fault. And in October, still no problem was evident, so we sent it to our wholesaler. They sent it back to us, and then to the manufacturers."
"And what about the CPU unit?"
"Same again; we found absolutely nothing wrong."
"Thank you. Your witness," said the Lawyer.
Mikki fussed over her papers and notebooks for several minutes, apparently unable to find what she wanted.
"Do you want to cross examine the witness or not?" demanded the Magistrate, checking the clock.
"Mr Normandy," Woody began, a brief eye contact with Mikki told him she was in performance mode, and he had permission to proceed, "You mentioned that our monitor had been with the wholesaler and then the manufacturer. Would you please explain where you sent the monitor, giving exact dates."
"I'm not exactly sure. Mr Clavette handled that."
"But didn't you just say you were the service manager? Isn't that your job?"
"Mr Clavette handled it himself."
"Well, why isn't he here?" Woody demanded. The Magistrate circled a note on his pad.
"I don't know the details," said Normandy, "except that the manufacturers had it by November 4."
"You're sure they had it by the fourth?"
"That's what Mr Clavette told me."
"Well, we have a letter here from the manufacturers stating the first they set eyes on it was the seventeenth, the eighteenth day of the repair saga. That contradicts what you just said, and Mr Clavette's letter. Mr Clavette explicitly says here he was expecting it back from the manufacturers by the end of that week, but in fact it hadn't even been sent. We'd like to offer these as evidence."
The court official took the papers, with appropriate sentences highlighted, to the Lawyer. He assented their validity, and turned to Normandy, wearily shaking his head. The official took them to the Magistrate.
"That leaves the previous eighteen days unexplained," Woody continued, "so could you tell us, Mr Normandy, where the monitor was during this time, and why the manufacturers had not received it?"
"I don't know," Normandy, stunned, shrugged and shook his head at the Lawyer, "Really. It's normal procedure in the computer industry for repairs to go through the wholesaler, not the manufacturer. I suppose Mr Clavette assumed you knew that."
"Don't you think it was misleading of Mr Clavette to assume we'd made the same assumptions he had?" Mikki asked.
The Magistrate interrupted, "I'll decide whether it's misleading." He turned to Normandy, "But Mr Clavette did say he was expecting it back from the manufacturers. To me, that would mean he'd actually sent it to them."
The stenographer and the court official looked up briefly from their work, smiling at each other.
"And could you just confirm whether you normally solder chips that display no fault?" Mikki asked.
"Yes. It's standard."
"We're done," said Mikki.
The Lawyer rose, "I'd now like to call Mr Bryce Hawthorne, your Honour."
Normandy resumed his seat; Hawthorne was shown in from the waiting room and sworn in.
"Mr Hawthorne," the Lawyer began, "how did you go about assessing the monitor, and what action did you take?"
"I ran a series of tests, using special diagnostic software." Sipping water, he continued, "There was nothing wrong, so I didn't fix anything. I called them and said the problem might be electrical interference from another appliance or wiring in the wall, and to move the monitor away."
Interrupting, the Lawyer glanced sharply at Hawthorne, "Would you please read this statement?" Handing Hawthorne a sheet, the Lawyer said, "This is a service report he wrote in September."
Hawthorne blankly stared at the report a moment, then stumbled through the first paragraph, looking to the Lawyer for assurance.
He's never seen it before, Woody wrote to Mikki.
"Okay, that's enough. I'd like to submit this as evidence, your Honour." The Lawyer resumed his seat.
"Mr Hawthorne," Mikki began, "could you please tell us again, what did you do to repair the monitor?"
"Nothing."
The Lawyer briefly held his forehead in cupped hands, elbows on the bench.
"That contradicts Mr Normandy," Mikki said. "We'd also like to submit this service receipt from September as evidence. I think that's your handwriting, Mr Hawthorne? It says soldered chip'."
The court official took it over for him to view. "Um ... yeah, that's my writing." The Magistrate resumed his notes.
"Mr Hawthorne, you said you couldn't recreate the fault?" Woody asked.
"That's right."
"Do you remember calling us at 4.30pm on 15 September last year, to confirm you'd recreated the problem by bending the board? You hoped soldering the chip would fix it. If not, you said, you'd get a board from Sydney. Right?"
"I called, but didn't say that."
"But Mr Hawthorne," Mikki called out, "Yes you did! You also said you had a chiropractic appointment that afternoon. For your back. Remember?"
Hawthorne paused, "Well, yeah, I did see a chiropractor about then." The Lawyer scanned his notes, hoping for some ammunition.
The Magistrate swung around in his chair, observing the prosecuting couple; the stenographer and court official grinned at them.
"And you reckon you also told us to move the monitor away from 'electrical interference'?" asked Woody.
"That's right. I talked to the lady's 'friend'. No, wait " he looked down into his lap, "That wasn't you. He had an Asian accent."
Rolling his eyes, the Magistrate randomly swivelled, meeting Woody's rolling eyes. He placed his pen down. "No further questions?" he asked. "Thankyou Mr Hawthorne, you may leave," he said. He asked the couple, "Is there any more evidence you'd like to present."
"Well, we got lots of extra material," Mikki said, spilling her folder over the bench, "what kinda of stuff did you want?"
The court official whispered, "Whatever else you want to add to your case."
"Lemme see," she hummed, "I gotta look. We've got so much stuff here!"
After a significant time, she announced, "No, I guess that'll do."
The Magistrate began his summing up, reviewing the arguments from The Logical Approach, their finding no fault after repeatedly testing the monitor, and their offer of $495 for an exchange. "I don't know what to make of Mr Hawthorne's testimony. He seemed confused. I'm going to discount it entirely. We also have Mr Normandy, the service manager, who said he'd sent the monitor to the wholesaler, but didn't know where it'd gone from there. He couldn't account for why Mr Clavette had said he was expecting the monitor back, without having sent it! It would've been good if Mr Clavette had shown up today.
"First, let me say that the claimants were never going to get both refunds, for the word processor and the computer, only one or the other. But my decision will be unusual, in that I'll be awarding the maximum allowable under the law. While we've seen no evidence concerning the state of the CPU unit, I sufficiently doubt The Logical Approach to warrant ordering them to pay the full price."
He turned to Normandy, "I presume the word processor is of no value to you?" Normandy shook his head.
"Claimants are to return the computer within 24 hours."
"But my client is still offers $495 for a new monitor," interjected the Lawyer.
Ignoring him, the Magistrate glanced at the clock: five thirty. Packing up, he started to speak, but Mikki asked, "Did we win?"
"Whaddya mean?" All eyes focussed on her.
"It's just that out there they said the loser pays for court fees."
"Oh yes," said the Magistrate, "Logical Approach pays $1770, plus $70 court
fees. All rise. Case dismissed."
The Lawyer, Hawthorne, and Normandy, talking in the carpark, scattered as Woody and Mikki approached. The Lawyer sped away in his BMW, talking on his mobile phone. Hawthorne and Normandy sedately exited the carpark in Normandy's Ford. Normandy, serious-faced, declined to return Mikki's wave; Hawthorne smiled.
"I don't recall any other day from which I've learnt so much," Woody said as their battered old VW wagon warmed up. "They brought their own rope, noosed their own necks, and you made them leap repeatedly." He kissed her, "I'm very proud of you. This is your victory."
"Yep," she grinned, "the Consumer Guerrilla, champion of justice, strikes again!" Stretching to her five feet mightiest, she assumed her superhero pose: "That'll teach them to mess with me!"
She laughed, "I wouldn't wanna be Clavette when Normandy gets back!"
Smiling, Woody said, "Actually, it's the Lawyer I pity. The poor bloke: head of his firm, boasting for the last two months about the Sure Thing, he'll forever be The Lawyer Who Lost at Small Claims, to a tiny Yankee poet."