taking on Linda Flanagan a criminal renting houses in the Hampton Bays

Last summer my family went and spent a five days in a beach house in the Hamptons.   Now I'm not talking about P-Diddy in white-suits Hamptons and more like stressed out father in sandals with socks with too much sun-tan lotion on his nose Hampton Bays

We rented a house at 5 Baywoods Drive in the Hampton Bays through vacationhomerentals.com for a long weekend and after some negotiation got the owner an Irish woman named Linda Flanagan to come down from $2800 to $2300.   When I got the contract it included a $150 cleaning fee which had not been discussed plus a $500 security deposit which the contract clearly stated would be returned promptly after departure of the house as long as there was no damage..    The long weekend went well, everybody enjoyed themselves and a few days later I called the owner to get my $500 security deposit back.   She told me that she would send out a check later that day and we left on good-terms with me walking away thinking that renting this particular house again next year would be something we should consider.

After about a week when the $500 security deposit didn't show up, I emailed Linda Flanagan who said the check must have gotten lost in the mail because she definitely sent it.   I asked her to send a new one and she ensured me she would.  Another week passes and still no check, I call few times and send a few messages which all go unanswered.  Now I might be called a conspiracy theorist but the $500 she had not returned is the exact amount of money I was able to negotiate off of her original asking price, all of a sudden it dawned on me that she was going to get $2800 for the four days one way or another and this was probably her shtick figuring that nobody would go through that much trouble to get back $500.     After a few months of this run-around, I try to get smart and start calling from different phone-numbers as I was sure she had my cell-phone number programmed into her phone and was just dodging my calls.   Most of the time she would answer when I called from an unknown number but as soon as she realized it was me, she would hang up the phone.

After making more than 30 phone calls and sending more than 20 emails, I decided I needed to bring in some muscle so I got one of my lawyer buddies to write up a lawyerly letter threatening a lawsuit.   The threat of a lawsuit initially seemed to scare Miss Flanagan as she promised my lawyer friend that she would send me a new check but to no ones surprise this check never showed up.

After this I decided the scare tactic wasn't enough and went through the proper-channels and decided to file an actual lawsuit in the small-claims court in Brooklyn.  This involved spending a few hours to file the initial paper-work and then spending a full evening a few weeks later in small-claims court when the case was heard.    I wasn't surprised when Ms Flanagan didn't show up to the court case and I won the case easily although the judgment was only for $530 which included the $500 initial deposit, $15 in court fees and $15 in interest although I had asked for $1000 which included 'pain and suffering'   Now I understand that Pain and Suffering is a tough case to prove but my thought was that IF she only paid me back the $500 than she had me jump through all these hoops to only get back the money that was owed to me.   I argued in front of the arbitrator (they don't give you a judge in small-claims court) that by not punishing her more harshly that there then would be no incentive for her to ever pay anybody back their deposit knowing that the worst thing that would happened was that she would be forced to pay back the money that is owed plus a minimal fee.

A month after the judgment was ordered, I still had not received a check and the paperwork supplied from the court suggested that if payment has not been made after 30 days that the plaintiff should contact a NY Marshall.   So after I spent hours on the phone, hours of my life standing on line and hours of my life at small-claims court which is about the most depressing place in the world and still no court or agency has really been able to help me with anything.

So I contact the Marshall and they informed me if I had either her bank information or her social-security number which obviously I did not.  The problem they said was that without a bank-account number they could not freeze it and without a social security number they could not garner her wages.    In other words there really is nothing the marshall can do, now I would have assumed that the Marshall's office would have tons of bank-tracking data machines, sophisticated spying equipment, double-agents and tons of feet on the ground but nstead they have a lady who answers the phone.

Now in her defense she did suggest that if I was willing to do some significant legwork that I would be able to get either a bank account number, I'm a spiteful person and although I realize that my time is worth more than the $500, I told her I was interested.   She told me that if I got a court order, a bank would be required by law to release information about whether or not she has an account at that particular bank.  The issue of course is that if you don't know what bank she uses you are basically stuck.   The lady at the marshall's office suggested I go to her house and walk around the neighborhood to find out which banks are in her neighborhood as she would most likely have an account at a bank close to her house.   I would then go back to back to the Brooklyn court-house and request an information subpoena for every bank in her neighborhood and have somebody else (I can't do this as I am the plaintiff) deliver these subpoenas to each bank to find out if Linda Flanagan has an account there.   The banks would be obliged to contact me within a month with information about possible accounts held in her name.   Now if I could find the needle in the bank haystack and find a bank with an account for Linda Flanagan I would then go back to the Brooklyn courthouse and sign a number of exception forms as only certain wages could be restrained but than they could go through the process of freezing her account.

So if I'm willing to dedicate a few more days of my life, I can probably find the bank and assuming their are enough non-exempt funds in there, the Marshall's can go after her with  guns blazing..somehow I'm not sure this is worth the $500.  

So instead I will go to the airwaves and will not stop until Linda Flanagan returns the $500 owed to me.