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In the meantime, besides having to mentally deal with a corrupt government,
and possibly a totally corrupt legal system, I also had to deal with my first
wife, who was not taking this well at all. By then she too was at her breaking
point and so was our marriage, and there wasn't a damn thing I could say or do
about it. I had just lost the business which was our only source of income,
plus lost any savings we had. As far as she was concerned, it was all my fault.
I told her that Art said eventually everything would be all right--the only
problem with that was she wasn't buying that story. Her concern was the present
situation; the hell with the future. How was I going to get us out of this
situation now, not later? From that point on our marriage went on a
rapid decline and eventually ended in divorce court.
On top of all of this, I immediately had to deal with the reality that I needed
to go out and find a job so I could support my children. How I dealt with this
mentally is beyond me, but I guarantee you it wasn't easy. I would have to say
that it was a miracle that I ever kept my sanity. As I said earlier in the
book, I'm not the type of person who would antagonize anyone. If I don't like
you, I'll just stay away from you. I'm not going to say anything about you or
do anything behind your back. As far as I'm concerned, "Have a nice life,
just don't bother me." On the other hand, I'm not the type of person who
takes a lot of grief, either. I don't start any trouble, so I'm not about to
take any, either. If it has to come, I'm going to stand up for myself and
handle it, regardless of the source. My problem with this situation was that
the legal system doesn't allow you to fight for yourself in court; you have to
go out and find an attorney. In this case, I had to allow Art James to do my
fighting for me, and I had no other choice than to believe him. That's the way
the legal system operates.
Before I go on to the next episode, I want you to remember that, at this
point in time, Art had supposedly filed an appeal in the Perrysburg case. He
filed a lawsuit against the Rossford jackasses which wasn't worth the paper it
was written on. Now he was supposedly filing an appeal in that case also. In
reality, he hadn't done a damn thing for me--it was all for the government.
The reason I'm mentioning this is that, besides demonstrating just how
crooked Art, the government and the legal system had been, I also want to
establish that this was not by accident. It was not that Art was incompetent.
Someone was either paying him off or they had something on him. There's no two
ways about it. He was in someone's pocket, and it sure as hell wasn't mine.
Keeping this in mind, I'll go on to the next issue, which ended in another
lawsuit against my ex-employer. But this time Art prevailed and obtained a
$40,000 judgment for me. Believe it or not, this case also ended up in the
Court of Appeals. Just before I was scheduled to return to work under a federal
court order my ex-employer’s attorney made Art an offer. I could take the
$40,000 and not come back to work. If I showed up for work they would file an
appeal and tie the money up for years.
Art and I discussed this offer at great length. I told him I wanted the job
because I needed a steady income to support my children; he knew what my
financial condition was. Before I made my decision, I asked Art several key
questions. The first was: Would the $40,000 help him win the case against
Rossford? The second question was: Could my employer prevail if they appealed
the judgment? Art said money was not the key issue. As far as the $40,000
judgment, he didn't think they stood a chance of getting it overturned. Once
again I took Art's advice and went back to work and let the company appeal the
judgment. It should have been money in the bank--at least that's what I was led
to believe by Art.
After I had gone back to work at Cleveland Metal & Abrasives where I was
treated daily like an unwanted stepchild, the workers found out that our
competition was about to purchase Cleveland Metal. It scared them. Everyone in
the plant was concerned that they would soon lose their jobs after the company
was purchased. Everyone in the plant knew that I had taken the company to court
and won. They also knew that I paid a hell of a price for coming back to work.
The company gave me every dirty job it could think of in an effort to get me to
quit, but there was no way that I ever would. I took everything they could dish
out and smiled about it. After they made every effort they could dream up to
break me and failed every time, they finally gave up and left me alone.
I wasn’t sure how my persistence in standing up to the company came across
to the other workers, but when it came time for the company to be sold they
chose me as their spokesperson. They asked if I would find an attorney who
would negotiate with the new owners to keep the plant open, thus protecting
everyone jobs.
My first suggestion was to allow our union to do the negotiating for us, but
for some reason they were not comfortable with that. Although I had
reservations, I told them I would attempt to find someone to help us. The first
person who came to mind was Art James. But I thought to myself. "Wait a
minute. So far Art hasn't been able to settle anything for me out of court, and
so far everything he did took years to get results." We didn't have that
kind of time. I decided to look elsewhere.
After I had made several calls, I was referred to Dennis Strong. I called
him at his office and explained our situation, asking if he thought he could
help us. Dennis agreed to meet with us. He also said he would do a little
research before the meeting. I took the time to explain that Art James had sued
the company for me and had received a $40,000 judgment which was now in the
Appeals Court.
Shortly after this conversation, we held our meeting with Dennis and the
employees. After Dennis answered whatever questions there were, he agreed to
represent us for a fee in negotiations with the new owners. As the meeting was
about to conclude, Dennis made the statement that he didn't think that I should
be their spokesperson since I had sued the previous owners. He said I hadn't
cost the company that much money, but I interrupted and said that $40,000 might
not be much to him, but it was to me. Dennis replied that I hadn't really won
$40,000 because we had lost the appeal, and the amount had been greatly
reduced. Furthermore, I had already received payment.
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