So Sue Me... (Okay!)
This is going to be a long post...
My wife and I recently had to file a small claims suit against—of all people—the photographer who photographed our wedding. It wasn't enough that Betsy Lee and her assistant interfered with the flow of our wedding by causing delays and distractions, the majority of the prints we were given were marred by discolorations, marks and other blemishes. Hardly professional-quality work. And on top of that she and her husband also disputed which package we had paid for!
All of our attempts to resolve the situation failed. Betsy flat-out refused to reprint all of the bad prints, and a partial refund couldn't be agreed upon. We couldn't believe that a "professional" photographer would try to pull a stunt like this; she just didn't care! We printed some of the photographs off the CD on our little printer and they were much better than the ones she gave us. When I mentioned this to her, her response was, "Oh, maybe I should get a printer like that." This was a "professional" photographer speaking to me. Unbelievable.
Oh, then there was her infuriating and insulting husband. She put him on the phone to deal with me. At that point I was still trying to work things out amicably, but this guy got on with an attitude from the get-go. I don't know what rock she found this guy under; he tried to intimidate me and told me that they'd done all they were going to do for us, that they'd "bent over backwards" for us and that the photos were as good as they were going to get.
(Now, anyone who knows us knows that we are not demanding people, least of all my wife! That this guy would make such insinuations...)
Seeing that we were getting nowhere, and all my buttons having been pushed, I said a few unrepeatable things (I'm not proud of my temper at times) and hung up on the asshole. A few minutes later Betsy called back: "Oh, I just want you to be happy, blah, blah, blah." "Well, how about just reprinting these pictures, then?" "Oh, I could reprint some, but I can't reprint all of them." And on and on it went. At this point I offered to drive the 50-mile round-trip down to their house to show her the prints that we'd printed so that she could see the difference in person. She said that'd be fine, and I was halfway down to St. Augustine when Mel called to tell me that they'd called back to offer a partial refund of $200. I told her to tell them $300 and they had a deal. They accepted, and I turned around and went home.
We had agreed to meet at a restaurant nearby the next week to make the exchange. Betsy was fixated on getting all the prints back, every last one of them. She knew they were bad, and she didn't want us to show them to anyone. But the next day she changed the terms of our agreement: she now wanted both wedding albums back that we'd paid for! All along, they had maintained that we didn't get a parent album—a smaller wedding album given to the parents—with our package, never mind the fact that we had the paperwork to prove that we did! Incredible; this was the deal breaker.
We decided to let the legal system to sort this out. While we could hardly claim that our wedding had been ruined by these people (and it certainly wasn't, I'm happy to say), Betsy Lee Photography had let us down in so many ways that we had to do something about it. To this day I still shake my head in wonderment when I think about what awful prints they tried to pass off to us.
We filed our claim with St. Johns County, where the Lees live, and about three months later attended the pretrial hearing. This is where the judge meets with the participants to determine whether or not the dispute can be settled without actually go to trial. Obviously, it's in the county's interests to reduce its caseload as much as possible by avoiding unnecessary trials. Volunteer "mediators" are on hand to try to resolve the dispute right then and there in an adjoining chamber. The judge made it clear that using mediation was voluntary; however in one case a mediator was assigned by the judge and it looked to me that the people involved had no choice in the matter, probably because both sides were babbling and tensions seemed to be escalating.
The courtroom was filled with a real cross-section of our society—people of all ages, ethnicities—and we waited as each case was called and the participants approached the podium to state their case. Most of the cases involved landlord/tenant disputes or contractors allegedly not fulfilling their contracts or doing sub par work. About half the time the parties involved agreed to mediation, the rest had trial dates scheduled.
I'll never forget the feeble old man, on a respirator and barely able to stand, and probably not long for this world, who was being sued by his credit card company for default on his payments. It just boggled my mind.
When our case was called, we approached the podium and stood right next to Betsy Lee and her husband (hardly a comfortable situation, but we all were civil). Each of us was asked to state our name and what relation we had to the case. I gave the judge a synopsis of what had happened and why we were suing. Betsy's husband told the judge he was representing her, so he did most of the talking for the defense, which was probably just as well for them because the one time she did speak she rambled on and on about some out-of-context minutiae; the judge had to cut her off.
After hearing each side give its version of events, the judge asked us if we'd like to try mediation. The defendants, wishing to avoid going to trial(!), bobbed their heads up and down in affirmation, but, though I was tempted give mediation a shot, Mel stuck to her guns and told the judge that we wanted our day in court. She felt that since we'd not been able to work it out with them outside of court, now that we were in court we might as well go the whole nine yards.
In the weeks immediately following the pretrial hearing, Betsy's husband sent us three threatening letters demanding that, in accordance with some Florida law, we submit evidence to them for "discovery" and that we had 20 days to comply. The evidence they wanted included contact information for the wedding officiant and the florist (of all things); a copy of the wedding video along with the videographer's contact info; copies of receipts from the florist, the wedding venue, etc.; copies of emails exchanged with Betsy Lee herself(!); copies of our receipts from Betsy Lee(!), and on and on. Obviously they were trying to stall us. After doing a little research on the Web, it turned out that the statute Mr. Lee had quoted stated that we didn't have to comply with their request if (a) we didn't have legal counsel and (b) the request was filed without consent or mandate of the court. So, we ignored them.
As a brief aside, it turns out that Betsy's husband is a notary public and notarized one of the letters they sent. Perhaps in an attempt to make it look “official;” the jargon used, along with the county court's address and nomenclature at the top, made it look dangerously like a “spoof” of an official court document. The main problem with all this is that he notarized his own wife's signature, which is a violation of Florida notary law (conflict of interest). I then took it upon myself to send a copy of the letter to the Florida notary office, and we have since heard back that Mr. Lee is now under investigation for this violation, along with another possible violation. The question in my mind is was he unaware of that little part of notary law, or just plain stupid?
Finally, a month and a half after the pretrial hearing, we had our day in court. Swearing "before God" didn't prevent the Lees from trying to submit some questionable "evidence" (and I'm being very charitable here) such as a receipt that neither Mel nor I had ever seen before (the judge didn't permit it) and some statements that, um, departed from reality, such as claiming to have met with our wedding officiant before the wedding to work out logistics (not true) and that Mel had been happy with the prints when she initially received them (again, not true). We objected to a number of the claims they were making in their defense ("Objection, your honor!"), which the judge sustained each and every time.
The whole thing lasted about an hour, which was a far cry from the "day-and-a-half" that Mr. Lee's big-shot "lawyer from Chicago" was going to need (a claim he'd made to the judge at the end of our pretrial hearing). Well, surprise, surprise, there was no lawyer from Chicago, and it certainly didn't very long. Our side got to speak first, then they rebutted, then we went back and forth one last time. Chuck, our wedding officiant, and a friend of mine, took the stand as a witness and spoke eloquently about the problems Betsy had caused at the wedding. The Lees had as a witness their young assistant, who testified that we'd been happy with the work they'd done that day. The fact was I'd been irritated with the photographers at the wedding, but as it was the most important day of my life I'd been in good spirits and was complimentary of them at the time. And of course, we hadn't seen the god-awful prints yet at that point.
When it was over, the judge informed us that she needed more time to review the evidence (the photos and documentation) before returning a verdict, and that we would receive notification in the mail by the end of the week.
Two weeks later, we finally have a verdict: we won! We didn't win the full refund we were seeking, but we won the partial refund (plus court costs) and of course get to keep the wedding albums. A moral victory. I can't say that it was a pleasant experience to have to sue anyone, much less one's own wedding photographer, but as Mr. Lee had "invited" us to take it to the next level back in the beginning stages of the dispute, we felt obliged to take a stand and follow through.
About the whole small claims court experience, I will say this: frankly, it's not worth the aggravation as far as financial compensation is concerned. But if you have to resort to suing someone, do it for the principle of the matter, rather than the money. Of course, it helps to be really, really pissed off, which we were.
The next step for us is to contact the Professional Photographers of America to let them know that we have won a court case against one of their members and are now formally requesting a peer review of Betsy Lee's membership; she may be suspended or expelled from their organization. Supposedly the PPA will pay the settlement.
Next, I will contact the Better Business Bureau again to update their file on Betsy Lee Photography so that anyone considering hiring them can find out a few facts first so as to make a more informed decision. Hopefully no one will ever have to go what we did with them again.
So there you have it, the saga is (mostly) over. Now to get on with our lives. Many thanks to our loved ones for all their support (you know who you are)!
My wife and I recently had to file a small claims suit against—of all people—the photographer who photographed our wedding. It wasn't enough that Betsy Lee and her assistant interfered with the flow of our wedding by causing delays and distractions, the majority of the prints we were given were marred by discolorations, marks and other blemishes. Hardly professional-quality work. And on top of that she and her husband also disputed which package we had paid for!
All of our attempts to resolve the situation failed. Betsy flat-out refused to reprint all of the bad prints, and a partial refund couldn't be agreed upon. We couldn't believe that a "professional" photographer would try to pull a stunt like this; she just didn't care! We printed some of the photographs off the CD on our little printer and they were much better than the ones she gave us. When I mentioned this to her, her response was, "Oh, maybe I should get a printer like that." This was a "professional" photographer speaking to me. Unbelievable.
Oh, then there was her infuriating and insulting husband. She put him on the phone to deal with me. At that point I was still trying to work things out amicably, but this guy got on with an attitude from the get-go. I don't know what rock she found this guy under; he tried to intimidate me and told me that they'd done all they were going to do for us, that they'd "bent over backwards" for us and that the photos were as good as they were going to get.
(Now, anyone who knows us knows that we are not demanding people, least of all my wife! That this guy would make such insinuations...)
Seeing that we were getting nowhere, and all my buttons having been pushed, I said a few unrepeatable things (I'm not proud of my temper at times) and hung up on the asshole. A few minutes later Betsy called back: "Oh, I just want you to be happy, blah, blah, blah." "Well, how about just reprinting these pictures, then?" "Oh, I could reprint some, but I can't reprint all of them." And on and on it went. At this point I offered to drive the 50-mile round-trip down to their house to show her the prints that we'd printed so that she could see the difference in person. She said that'd be fine, and I was halfway down to St. Augustine when Mel called to tell me that they'd called back to offer a partial refund of $200. I told her to tell them $300 and they had a deal. They accepted, and I turned around and went home.
We had agreed to meet at a restaurant nearby the next week to make the exchange. Betsy was fixated on getting all the prints back, every last one of them. She knew they were bad, and she didn't want us to show them to anyone. But the next day she changed the terms of our agreement: she now wanted both wedding albums back that we'd paid for! All along, they had maintained that we didn't get a parent album—a smaller wedding album given to the parents—with our package, never mind the fact that we had the paperwork to prove that we did! Incredible; this was the deal breaker.
We decided to let the legal system to sort this out. While we could hardly claim that our wedding had been ruined by these people (and it certainly wasn't, I'm happy to say), Betsy Lee Photography had let us down in so many ways that we had to do something about it. To this day I still shake my head in wonderment when I think about what awful prints they tried to pass off to us.
We filed our claim with St. Johns County, where the Lees live, and about three months later attended the pretrial hearing. This is where the judge meets with the participants to determine whether or not the dispute can be settled without actually go to trial. Obviously, it's in the county's interests to reduce its caseload as much as possible by avoiding unnecessary trials. Volunteer "mediators" are on hand to try to resolve the dispute right then and there in an adjoining chamber. The judge made it clear that using mediation was voluntary; however in one case a mediator was assigned by the judge and it looked to me that the people involved had no choice in the matter, probably because both sides were babbling and tensions seemed to be escalating.
The courtroom was filled with a real cross-section of our society—people of all ages, ethnicities—and we waited as each case was called and the participants approached the podium to state their case. Most of the cases involved landlord/tenant disputes or contractors allegedly not fulfilling their contracts or doing sub par work. About half the time the parties involved agreed to mediation, the rest had trial dates scheduled.
I'll never forget the feeble old man, on a respirator and barely able to stand, and probably not long for this world, who was being sued by his credit card company for default on his payments. It just boggled my mind.
When our case was called, we approached the podium and stood right next to Betsy Lee and her husband (hardly a comfortable situation, but we all were civil). Each of us was asked to state our name and what relation we had to the case. I gave the judge a synopsis of what had happened and why we were suing. Betsy's husband told the judge he was representing her, so he did most of the talking for the defense, which was probably just as well for them because the one time she did speak she rambled on and on about some out-of-context minutiae; the judge had to cut her off.
After hearing each side give its version of events, the judge asked us if we'd like to try mediation. The defendants, wishing to avoid going to trial(!), bobbed their heads up and down in affirmation, but, though I was tempted give mediation a shot, Mel stuck to her guns and told the judge that we wanted our day in court. She felt that since we'd not been able to work it out with them outside of court, now that we were in court we might as well go the whole nine yards.
In the weeks immediately following the pretrial hearing, Betsy's husband sent us three threatening letters demanding that, in accordance with some Florida law, we submit evidence to them for "discovery" and that we had 20 days to comply. The evidence they wanted included contact information for the wedding officiant and the florist (of all things); a copy of the wedding video along with the videographer's contact info; copies of receipts from the florist, the wedding venue, etc.; copies of emails exchanged with Betsy Lee herself(!); copies of our receipts from Betsy Lee(!), and on and on. Obviously they were trying to stall us. After doing a little research on the Web, it turned out that the statute Mr. Lee had quoted stated that we didn't have to comply with their request if (a) we didn't have legal counsel and (b) the request was filed without consent or mandate of the court. So, we ignored them.
As a brief aside, it turns out that Betsy's husband is a notary public and notarized one of the letters they sent. Perhaps in an attempt to make it look “official;” the jargon used, along with the county court's address and nomenclature at the top, made it look dangerously like a “spoof” of an official court document. The main problem with all this is that he notarized his own wife's signature, which is a violation of Florida notary law (conflict of interest). I then took it upon myself to send a copy of the letter to the Florida notary office, and we have since heard back that Mr. Lee is now under investigation for this violation, along with another possible violation. The question in my mind is was he unaware of that little part of notary law, or just plain stupid?
Finally, a month and a half after the pretrial hearing, we had our day in court. Swearing "before God" didn't prevent the Lees from trying to submit some questionable "evidence" (and I'm being very charitable here) such as a receipt that neither Mel nor I had ever seen before (the judge didn't permit it) and some statements that, um, departed from reality, such as claiming to have met with our wedding officiant before the wedding to work out logistics (not true) and that Mel had been happy with the prints when she initially received them (again, not true). We objected to a number of the claims they were making in their defense ("Objection, your honor!"), which the judge sustained each and every time.
The whole thing lasted about an hour, which was a far cry from the "day-and-a-half" that Mr. Lee's big-shot "lawyer from Chicago" was going to need (a claim he'd made to the judge at the end of our pretrial hearing). Well, surprise, surprise, there was no lawyer from Chicago, and it certainly didn't very long. Our side got to speak first, then they rebutted, then we went back and forth one last time. Chuck, our wedding officiant, and a friend of mine, took the stand as a witness and spoke eloquently about the problems Betsy had caused at the wedding. The Lees had as a witness their young assistant, who testified that we'd been happy with the work they'd done that day. The fact was I'd been irritated with the photographers at the wedding, but as it was the most important day of my life I'd been in good spirits and was complimentary of them at the time. And of course, we hadn't seen the god-awful prints yet at that point.
When it was over, the judge informed us that she needed more time to review the evidence (the photos and documentation) before returning a verdict, and that we would receive notification in the mail by the end of the week.
Two weeks later, we finally have a verdict: we won! We didn't win the full refund we were seeking, but we won the partial refund (plus court costs) and of course get to keep the wedding albums. A moral victory. I can't say that it was a pleasant experience to have to sue anyone, much less one's own wedding photographer, but as Mr. Lee had "invited" us to take it to the next level back in the beginning stages of the dispute, we felt obliged to take a stand and follow through.
About the whole small claims court experience, I will say this: frankly, it's not worth the aggravation as far as financial compensation is concerned. But if you have to resort to suing someone, do it for the principle of the matter, rather than the money. Of course, it helps to be really, really pissed off, which we were.
The next step for us is to contact the Professional Photographers of America to let them know that we have won a court case against one of their members and are now formally requesting a peer review of Betsy Lee's membership; she may be suspended or expelled from their organization. Supposedly the PPA will pay the settlement.
Next, I will contact the Better Business Bureau again to update their file on Betsy Lee Photography so that anyone considering hiring them can find out a few facts first so as to make a more informed decision. Hopefully no one will ever have to go what we did with them again.
So there you have it, the saga is (mostly) over. Now to get on with our lives. Many thanks to our loved ones for all their support (you know who you are)!
posted by The Squeaky Pig at 6:25 PM
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