Jury for Eviction Case at JP court Texas

[Marian Smith]

I hung around even though I was not selected for the jury on an eviction case. The plaintiff was a software guy who owned the house with a partner...his opening statement was something like, this is such a simple case the attorney told me I should represent myself, cut and dried, etc. Turns out he had leased to a single female and had written at the top if the lease "Lease Purchase" and the tenant had moved into a house that still needed a lot of work and had paid for some of the work, had been told a price to buy the house ( but apparently there was no mention of purchase in the lease). Tenant had a lawyer, there was all kinds of testimony (tenant had moved in and cleaned up a trashed foreclosure in lieu of a deposit) and the lawyer seemed to be heading towards an argument that as the tenant thought she was in a buyers agreement the eviction period should be 30 days like a mortgage. I couldn't stay longer but I am curious what happened.

[Account Closed]

@Marian Smith

Law is not Logic, nor is it logical. It is written by people who really probably don't understand the issues of real estate (few are investors, if any). It is modified by case law. Every case has different facts. It is up to the judge or jury to decide what is "fact". Jury's are made up of people who generally aren't smart enough to figure out how to get out of jury duty (yourself excluded of course ;-) and there are very specific Rules of Civil Procedure and local Court Rules that have to be carefully followed all the way through the process or it changes the outcome. My Judge friend told me that "everybody lies in court". His words, not mine.

You can call the court clerk and ask about that particular case. The clerk should be able to look on the screen and see if an eviction was granted or if it was referred on for a foreclosure action. Sounds like the defense attorney was trying to establish an equitable title argument. That would drag the case out for months. The plaintiff should stick to software and let the attorney he apparently didn't hire, to do the eviction. What would have cost him a few hundred dollars might now cost him tens of thousands.