You love her
But she loves him
And he loves somebody else
You just can’t win
— J Geils Band
By Randall Grantham
Community Columnist
People often ask me how I got involved in writing this commentary piece. Although it seems like I’ve been here forever, I actually started with another local paper. Before the current owners, The Laker/News was a near-death paper that was maybe four pages in total. So, a group of graphic artists and HOA newsletters publishers that had offices in my building decided we needed a local newspaper that was a better fit for this growing community. They called it In The Loop and it ran for the better part of three years before The Trib did a hostile takeover and then ran it into the ground and out-of-business. (Plus, it couldn’t stand the competition from us.)
When the independent group was ready to publish their first issue in 1999, they wanted to focus on domestic violence and asked me to write an article from a legal point-of-view. I became a contributor to the paper and even wrote a couple after the sale before choking under Mother Trib’s tight rein. I took some time off before being coaxed out of retirement to write a weekly for this paper.
I mention this because this week’s article is also about domestic violence and the potential for some to misuse and abuse very well intentioned laws designed to protect legitimate victims of violence. Two recent cases set me off this time.
One involved a husband and wife. The wife had left the husband (not for the first time) and moved in with a boyfriend. Hubby stayed at the home and stewed, but there was no violence. One day hubby, might have had a drink or two, calls the boyfriend’s house and leaves a message on the recorder for wife questioning the, shall we say, physical prowess of boyfriend.
Wife swears out an application for a DVI saying there were physical threats and gets an injunction not only keeping hubby from coming around her or boyfriend’s house where she was living, but also has him thrown out of their house where he had been living alone since she had left and moved in with lover boy.
Of course when we finally get to the hearing, the judge throws out the DVI, but not before hubby is jailed for violating the injunction by sneaking back into his own empty house so he could have a place to sleep at night. He got off easy.
Another client of mine had been arrested for assaulting her dead-beat boyfriend. She had tried to kick him out of her home. He then made accusations of assault so he wouldn’t have to leave her home and go back to live with his parents. She went to jail and he had a place to crash for the night. He left by the time she got out of jail and no charges were ever filed by the State on the bogus allegations, but the story doesn’t end there.
One night weeks later, cops show up and tell her that she has to leave her home that she owns and shares with her three minor daughters because DB boyfriend has obtained a DVI awarding him sole use of her house.
It’s after business hours and she has no place to go with her kids. All because this guy invented allegations of threats that he swore to, made it look like he had a right to be in the house and totally neglected to mention the fact that there were minor kids living in the home.
This was his second try to get a DVI with THIS girlfriend. His first request the day before had been denied by the court, so he juiced it up some and got a judge to sign it, but nobody can argue with a court order. Especially when the courts are closed for the day. Even the cop who showed up to throw her out of her own home knew it was BS, but a court order is a court order.
The next day, when presented with the real facts, the DVI was changed, boyfriend ran out the backdoor before she and the cops showed up with the new court order and the kids are okay, but only after a lot of damage to her home and property.
Moral? Love stinks.
Randall C. Grantham is a lifelong resident of Lutz who practices law from his offices on Dale Mabry Highway. He can be reached at . Copyright 2010 RCG
