So for the past two days (Wednesday and Thursday), I had the privilege (?) of serving on a Baltimore jury. Thankfully, it was a civil rather than a criminal trial (despite my interest in all things morbid, I did NOT want to serve as a juror in a murder trial).
And guess who wound up being the jury foreperson? Yeah, that's right...me. (One woman didn't show up at all on the second day and the original foreman showed up 15 minutes late. By then the judge had already installed the two alternates as jurors and made me the foreperson so he had to be an alternate.)
Basically the case was about two properties that the city had condemned. They were side-by-side rowhouses (click and scroll left in the street view to see the actual properties I'm talking about--they're the two two-story red houses) that were essentially just shells (no roof, all the windows and doors had been bricked up, the bricks of one was beginning to buckle). The first day they put us on a bus and took us over to the neighborhood to see the properties. We obviously couldn't go inside but we got a sense of their condition and the state of the neighborhood (Poppleton).
The property owner had owned these properties for 25 years and just never did anything with them--he just let them rot. The city had assessed the value of each at $17,520 for a total of a little over $35,000. The property owner's appraiser had assessed each one at $112,000 for a total of $224,000. Why? Because the University of Maryland is building a biotech park within 2 blocks of the property and they reasoned that the scientists would need housing. What was across the street from the properties? The Terraces housing project. Yeah, I'm sure all those biotech scientists will be flocking to buy your crappy dilapidated houses. For taxation purposes, the city had assessed the properties as each being worth $9,000 so offering him more than $17,000 was extremely generous, I thought.
Which is what I said when we began to deliberate. There was a little bit of dissension in the beginning. Two people started wondering what the city wanted the properties for and began sort of ascribing an evil intent to the city. Luckily another guy stopped them and pointed out we had no way of knowing what, if anything, the city wanted to do with the property and we weren't there to decide that. Some people were thinking we should give him $20-25,000 for each property. But then the kid (he was probably in his twenties--but he looked like a kid with his pants hanging off his ass and his angled baseball hat) mentioned that he was from Poppleton and that people like this property owner were one of the reasons his neighborhood looked like it did.
And then people started getting mad. I know there are houses in my neighborhood that look like these two do and they certainly wouldn't be worth anywhere CLOSE to 100,000. And I would argue that my neighborhood (Ridgely's Delight) with its close proximity to Camden Yards and the University of Maryland would give shells more value than the UMB biotech park and the housing project.
The property owner's lawyer didn't do him any favors either. He was definitely going for the charming old man thing (nice seersucker suit--what is this To Kill a Mockingbird?) but it didn't quite work. Their appraiser originally came up with a combined total value of $200,000 but that apparently wasn't enough. The LAWYER went out and found these two other "comparable" house sales for the appraiser to look at and on the same day as the first report came up with another one for $224,000.
And one of these "comparable" house sales was actually a group of about 5 rowhomes that had been sold as one property for over a million dollars (and was bought by the biotech park development group).* The appraiser took the sales price and divided it by the square footage of these houses and came up with a price for each square foot. He then applied that to the property owner's houses. Did he think we were retarded?
*There was one weird and shady thing about that though. Earlier, ON THE SAME DAY, there was another deed in the public records showing a sale between the same buyer and seller for the same group of 5 houses but for $250,000. WTF?
Anyway, we rather quickly decided to side with the city (there was even some discussion of not giving him anything) and I think we all felt good about our decision.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dad update.
Well, I cancelled my diving trip last weekend and instead organized a crab feast (we have an annual crab feast to celebrate my brother Colin's birthday and my sister-in-law Gloria's birthday. My mom was definitely not up to doing it so I said if we could use their house, we would take care of everything--she wouldn't have to do anything). I sprung for the crabs [$135 for three dozen extra larges...and they were totally worth it] and the beer and my brothers and sister-in-laws brought everything else. It ended up being a lot of fun and it definitely seemed to lift my father's spirits--he actually laughed!
Anyway, I spoke to them yesterday after they got back from the cardiologists. The latest thing is they think that he might have hardening of the pericardium (the membrane that encases the heart). They're going to run some tests next week. If that is what it is then it means another major heart surgery (they'll remove the pericardium). Dad sounds really hopeful about this but after spending a lot of time with him over the past few weeks, I really don't think he'll survive the procedure (I'm basing this on my vast medical knowledge, of course). Hopefully, I'm wrong.
So for the past two days (Wednesday and Thursday), I had the privilege (?) of serving on a Baltimore jury. Thankfully, it was a civil rather than a criminal trial (despite my interest in all things morbid, I did NOT want to serve as a juror in a murder trial).
And guess who wound up being the jury foreperson? Yeah, that's right...me. (One woman didn't show up at all on the second day and the original foreman showed up 15 minutes late. By then the judge had already installed the two alternates as jurors and made me the foreperson so he had to be an alternate.)
Basically the case was about two properties that the city had condemned. They were side-by-side rowhouses (click to see the actual properties I'm talking about) that were essentially just shells (no roof, all the windows and doors had been bricked up, the bricks of one was beginning to buckle). The first day they put us on a bus and took us over to the neighborhood to see the properties. We obviously couldn't go inside but we got a sense of their condition and the state of the neighborhood (Poppleton).
The property owner had owned these properties for 25 years and just never did anything with them--he just let them rot. The city had assessed the value of each at $17,520 for a total of a little over $35,000. The property owner's appraiser had assessed each one at $112,000 for a total of $224,000. Why? Because the University of Maryland is building a biotech park within 2 blocks of the property and they reasoned that the scientists would need housing. What was across the street from the properties? The Terraces housing project. Yeah, I'm sure all those biotech scientists will be flocking to buy your crappy dilapidated houses. For taxation purposes, the city had assessed the properties as each being worth $9,000 so offering him more than $17,000 was extremely generous, I thought.
Which is what I said when we began to deliberate. There was a little bit of dissension in the beginning. Two people started wondering what the city wanted the properties for and began sort of ascribing an evil intent to the city. Luckily another guy stopped them and pointed out we had no way of knowing what, if anything, the city wanted to do with the property and we weren't there to decide that. Some people were thinking we should give him $20-25,000 for each property. But then the kid (he was probably in his twenties--but he looked like a kid with his pants hanging off his ass and his angled baseball hat) mentioned that he was from Poppleton and that people like this property owner were one of the reasons his neighborhood looked like it did.
And then people started getting mad. I know there are houses in my neighborhood that look like these two do and they certainly wouldn't be worth anywhere CLOSE to 100,000. And I would argue that my neighborhood (Ridgely's Delight) with its close proximity to Camden Yards and the University of Maryland would give shells more value than the UMB biotech park and the housing project.
The property owner's lawyer didn't do him any favors either. He was definitely going for the charming old man thing (nice seersucker suit--what is this To Kill a Mockingbird?) but it didn't quite work. Their appraiser originally came up with a combined total value of $200,000 but that apparently wasn't enough. The LAWYER went out and found these two other "comparable" house sales for the appraiser to look at and on the same day as the first report came up with another one for $224,000.
And one of these "comparable" house sales was actually a group of about 5 rowhomes that had been sold as one property for over a million dollars (and was bought by the biotech park development group).* The appraiser took the sales price and divided it by the square footage of these houses and came up with a price for each square foot. He then applied that to the property owner's houses. Did he think we were retarded?
*There was one weird and shady thing about that though. Earlier, ON THE SAME DAY, there was another deed in the public records showing a sale between the same buyer and seller for the same group of 5 houses but for $250,000. WTF?
Anyway, we rather quickly decided to side with the city (there was even some discussion of not giving him anything) and I think we all felt good about our decision.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dad update.
Well, I cancelled my diving trip last weekend and instead organized a crab feast (we have an annual crab feast to celebrate my brother Colin's birthday and my sister-in-law Gloria's birthday. My mom was definitely not up to doing it so I said if we could use their house, we would take care of everything--she wouldn't have to do anything). I sprung for the crabs [$135 for three dozen extra larges...and they were totally worth it] and the beer and my brothers and sister-in-laws brought everything else. It ended up being a lot of fun and it definitely seemed to lift my father's spirits--he actually laughed!
Anyway, I spoke to them yesterday after they got back from the cardiologists. The latest thing is they think that he might have hardening of the pericardium (the membrane that encases the heart). They're going to run some tests next week. If that is what it is then it means another major heart surgery (they'll remove the pericardium). Dad sounds really hopeful about this but after spending a lot of time with him over the past few weeks, I really don't think he'll survive the procedure (I'm basing this on my vast medical knowledge, of course). Hopefully, I'm wrong.
Some people are emotional eaters. Turns out I'm more of an emotional consumer of goods. In the past week, I've shelled out about $2,000 on various crap, mostly scuba gear (even though I'm leaning towards postponing next week's dive trip for a few months).
The doctors have decided that my father does not have congestive heart failure after all but don't know why his abdominal cavity keeps filling with fluid that can't be dialyzed off. They did an ultrasound of his liver, expecting to find a tumor--no tumor. Great news, right? Well, not really. A diagnosis would give them some idea of a treatment. So, they released him from the hospital last week even though he still feels terrible. And he's back to not eating anything so he's getting weaker and weaker. Sunday night he fell and had to lie on the bathroom floor until my brother could drive over and help him up (my mom's not strong enough to do it by herself).
I'm just trying to hold it together though it's hard to motivate myself at work. I mean, doing the mindless stuff like coding a manuscript is actually a bit of a relief but trying to edit some poorly written article by someone whose first language is not English is agonizing.
And I'm worried about my mom as well. I call her every day now and she always sounds so exhausted and despairing. Well, when she's not angry with him--"He just sits there like Eeyore, staring at the floor and sighing and I am sick of it!" (I realize that this is coming from fear and frustration at not being able to do anything to make him feel better.)
I haven't really been talking to anyone outside the family much . . . not even my coworkers (aside from talk about work). Yeah, I know that's probably not healthy. I just remember 5 years ago, after his heart attack and surgery, one of my coworkers asked me how my dad was doing. I guess I went overboard with the details because he looked at me after I stopped talking and said "Well, I guess we all have our burdens to bear" and walked away. Yes, the guy was a known asshole but I still felt stupid. I don't know. I just feel like this walking black hole of doom and that, possibly, I'm contagious.
