What you say is true. The LSUC got control of it in May, 2007. But I don't think Geneva was at all interested in going there. Each to her own. Not too sure how she's going to be able to afford a lawyer though. Too bad, If she did have a valid complaint against the paralegal, the Law Society would almost certainly order the paralegal to cover the costs created by his/her negligence.

Stopping those 25 calls a day would be duck soup; it's the default judgment she has to be worried about now and the accumulating post judgment interest. I would highly recommend using the "Jackson Method" (patent pending) as opposed to relying on the law [for stopping the calls] as it's not enforced.

For those who are interested in filing a complaint against a paralegal here's the info.

http://www.lsuc.on.ca/paralegals/

Ray

You need to hire a paralegal to assist you. If your former paralegal didn't represent you properly, you can report them to the Law Society of Upper Canada.

If you defaulted on a settlement agreement, you were required to be sent a notice giving you 15 days to remidy the default, before they could sign default judgement against you.

A paralegal should also know the law on how to stop to stop collection calls.

OK, but a lawyer charges 300 or 400 bucks an hour and can't do much more for you than you can do for yourself.

Anyhow, think, about my last remark concerning a new bank account.

Ray

we never got as far as trial only settlement conference. I assume my paralegal was lazy and didn't want to deal with this matter anymore. Which is why he recommended to settle the matter before trial. As far as rental tribunal its too late as I haven't lived in the house for over two years. As I said this is a long going battle. You get what you pay for I suppose. The funny thing is that the settlement is way less than the defaulted judgment. almost $2000.00 more than originally agreed upon. As well I also provided them provisions to take the monthly payments out of my account in which they did not. They blatantly ignored my direct payment information Im thinking I might have to hire a lawyer on this as I don't think this is something I can deal with on my own. I just want the damn phone calls to stop.

"The settlement was reached between my paralegal and CRM alone. I was not involved and I did indeed try on several occasions to contact my paralegal via email to no avail. I found out the terms of settlement three months after I became in default and now am facing garnishment."

Sorry, I'm still at a bit of a loss to understand what happened.There was an agreement reached between the landlord and the paralegal. You mean an agreement in writing. The paralegal is "you" under the law of principal and agent.The acts of the agent are the acts of the principal. Good heavens, I dunno why that written agreeemnt wasn't given to the court clerk before the date of trial. Didn't you know what the trial date was? Obviously, something more than an email would be in order if you didn't hear something well befor ethe trial date. Maybe the paralegal needs to be charged or sued.

In any event, if you've got or can get a copy of the agreement give that to the court to make a motion for a retrial. If you can't get something in writing, then try to get the idiot you hired as a witness.

If conditions were as bad as you say, when you make a motion, you can also file for leave to make a counterclaim to recover money due to the deplorable conditions. Usually, that has to be done through the Rental Tribunal but the Court might make an exception. Note that you are not allowed to use deplorable tenancy conditions as an excuse to stop paying rent. Unfortunately, that is not the way it works. If things were in a state of disrepair, you would have to have applied to the Rent Tribunal for a rent rebate/abatement or to have rent held in trust until repairs were made. You will found legally responsible for all the rent until you either get an eviction order or until 60 days after you give written notice of moving, If a tenant stops paying rent for whatever reason and the landlord turns off the utilities to get rid of them, the courts generally won't be very sympathetic to the tenant.

I'm also not sure whether you're referring to a garnishment of wages at the source or an attachment of a bank account. You should never give anyone a blank cheque. You could well find the money all gone at one time. Make sure you only keep enough money there to cover the preagreed amount at ant given time and open up a second bank account with a different bank, not just a different branch.

Ray

We did indeed go to a pretrial settlement conference. No reasonable settlement at the time could be reached. About three months later my paralegal called me and suggested I take the offer CRM was offering. Under the circumstances I did not want to take the offer. I did owe my landlord a months rent and not the five they were indeed asking for. This landlord left me with no electricity, water and the home was a health hazard, mold asbesto's, sinking foundation etc. I took pictures thank god. This landlord is not a big rental company as you think it is one person who happens to own a couple of rental homes. I had the proof of the conditions in which we were living in and was prepared to fork out the cash to fight this completely. The settlement was reached between my paralegal and CRM alone. I was not involved and I did indeed try on several occasions to contact my paralegal via email to no avail. I found out the terms of settlement three months after I became in default and now am facing garnishment. YEAH me. note the sarcasm. This company is a complete nightmare. I did as well fax in a copy of a blank check and gave them authorization to debit my account the monthly payments higher than was agreed to I may add in which they have ignored. Instead they are content to proceed once again with a garnishment. The phone calls are incredibly annoying it has gotten to the point I don't answer my telephone anymore. They not only call me at home literally 25 times a day they call my husbands employer. Im at a loss at what to do in this instance. And I'm not too sure if it is worth my time to hire a lawyer to handle this or just accept the garnishment

I'm a little confused why you wouldn't, in turn, have taken your paralegal to court and sued him/her for gross negligence. [I assume from what was said that you never attended court with them.]

Also, if you were sued and it went to court, in Ontario, there's a mandatory pretrial conference. Thus, if either you or your paralegal attended, you would have obtained a copy of the settlement. The only way then that your landlord (who must be a large corporation if they are using CRM) could have obtained a default judgment is if the agreement wasn't lived up to. Why would you not have asked for the results of that agreement immediately after it was reached?.

The facts presented appear inconsistent and there are too many undisclosed variables to understand what options are open to you. However, suffice it to say that (1) if a judgment was rendered against you that you were not able to defend through no fault of your own AND (2) you can present to the court a basis of what your defence is or would have been to refute the claim, then (and only then) you can make a motion to have the default judgment overturned.

The motion application consists of Forms 15A and Forms 15B, the latter of which is an affidavit of service. The price used to be $40 - I'm not sure if it still is.

Note that one acceptable reason to have a motion overturn the judgment is that the amount awarded was significantly more than what you really did owe. But note: if you are dealing with a large rental corporation, they turf people all the time for rental payment issues and so there's probably no error in the judgment amount. Also note that if you submit a motion without a demonstrating a valid defence of the charge, the motion will be rejected and you will have wasted your $40 and several hours of time. Nonetheless, if you show up and explain to the judge what happened and your financially stressed, you're likely to get easy payment terms, maybe even with no interest. Depends on who you get that day.

Here's a pamphlet regarding how to file a motion in Ontario Small Claims Court.
http://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/courts/guides/MotionsOrdersJan08EN.pdf

The 25 calls a day. You get to talk to a collection agent 25 times a day! Some people get to have all the fun; why not me?

Ray

A brief history on how I came to deal with CRM. I was sued last year by a former landlord. We took it all the way to court, my paralegal eventually requested I settle for half of what the claim was. Against my better judgment I did. So things were signed by my paralegal and CRM a settlement was agreed upon. However nobody bothered to send me copies of the settlement, when it was supposed to take effect, etc. I did finally receive them after default judgment was made and now am pending a wage garnishment CRM has gone above and beyond harassment. They call me anywhere between 20 -30 times a day five to six times a week. Sometimes its a matter of seconds in between calls. i would have loved to have fought this one to the death so to speak however due to bad advice I didn't . CRM has done some pretty shady things when it came to this account. This has been a year long battle. The first time around they sued, without warning ( they neglected to use my correct address) and won judgment, I found out this happened because my husbands employer was nice enough to let me know his wages were being garnished . I put a stop to it hired somebody went back to court got as far as settlement conference and thats when my paralegal told me to take the deal. Now to date I am default, harassed and drained emotionally. The default judgment is now double what we agreed on. Any advice would be appreciated