|
One of my favorite activies is playing poker. For a variety of reason most of the games I'm involve in are pretty serious money, winning or losing a $1,000 in a night while not common is not rare. In general poker games have two types of players; poker players (like me) and gambler who will bet on anything college pro sports, golf, and of course love the action at Vegas. The dark side of poker is that of course gambling addicts are attracted to it and do some very destructive things.
Over the last six months one of the most colorful characters had a string of bad luck (he is also a bad poker player) and started borrowing money from lots of people. I begged off for a while but eventually last Oct. in moment of weakness I loaned him $300, with his promise to pay it back in Dec. I I was not surprised that he didn't pay me back in Dec or Jan.
I was surprised to find out how many other sucker there were out there and he borrowed $500 from one friend and $3-5,000 from another. Nobody know how much he owes to everybody, but I suspect the total is well in excess of $20-30,000. As I've learned people welching on gambling debts is far from unusual and the amount he owes is far less than I've taken from him on the poker table. I feel for my friends since they aren't in my financial position and this will hurt, but we all knew he was addict and those are the breaks.
However, today I learned something even worse. My cleaning lady use to be the home health care work/nurse that took care of his very sick mom and dad, his dad past away last summer and his mom last month. Come to find out that he owes her almost $6,000. She is your classic hardworking first generation immigrant she is pushing 60 and still working hard as cleaning lady nurse making $15/hour to help support the family back in the Philipines. It seems incrediably unfair that sweet woman had to work for several months for free because of his stupid addiction.
I know he owns his own Condo and will get his mom estates (of unknown size) so the guy isn't without assets.
AFAIK nothing is written down and it would be his word against whomever.
My question is there any way that all of us that he owe money to collectively can get together an hire a lawyer. It would seem to me that eventhough all of the contracts were verbal, having a multiple people say he borrowed money and didn't pay us back would be the fairly compelling.
Or is this such a weak case that no lawyer in his right mind would take the it.
|
Threaded Mode
