You have no lease to his apartment.
That's what you do as a grown up.
You didn't do that.
That's not true.
He held the apartment for you for six weeks for no money.
You're a hustler, madam.
I am not a hustler.
- [Judge Judy] We are done. - [Kathleen] No.
- I'm not going to do that. - We're done.
- [Judge Judy] Yeah. You are. - No.
- [Kevin] This way. - I won't go, no.
[announcer] This is Judy Justice.
[theme music playing]
[announcer] Kathleen Ganley is suing apartment owner Elie Benaron
for moving expenses, hotel costs, and storage fees.
[Kevin] Court come to order.
All rise.
Have a seat, please.
- Hello, Judge. - How are you?
Case number 1163, Ganley versus Benaron.
- Thank you. - You're welcome.
[Judge Judy] Ah, Ms. Ganley, interesting story.
You were moving from Arizona to California?
Correct.
[Judge Judy] And you had a friend.
I assume this was the mutual friend?
I have a very good friend, a friend of his is also...
- [Judge Judy] Who is this? - [Kathleen] This is my sister.
[Judge Judy] You knew the defendant through a mutual friend.
Exactly.
You were moving from Arizona to California with a son who was how old?
Fifteen.
And according to you, you want them to go to a good school.
And you found out through this mutual friend that the defendant
had an apartment in California,
in an area where you wanted to live.
You came to look at the apartment.
And you came to look at the apartment, I believe in June of this year.
Correct.
- [Judge Judy] And you like the apartment. - Yes.
And you settled on a rent.
Yes.
[Judge Judy] You negotiated the price of the rent.
He wanted more. You wanted to pay less.
How much was he asking?
- How much... - He was asking, I believe, 3,750.
Is that what you were asking, sir?
No. I said I was asking 4,500.
And I said because she's a friend...
[Judge Judy] No, no, no, just a second.
You were asking 4,500.
I was asking 4,500 for the apartment,
but because through a friend, I said I'll give it to you for 4,000.
Had you rented the apartment before?
- Yes. - [Judge Judy] To whom?
To a lady who moved to Utah.
[Judge Judy] How long had she been in the apartment?
Three years.
When did she leave?
Three, four... two months before this incident.
So she left relatively, so maybe in May?
Yeah.
[Judge Judy] And how much was she paying in rent?
Thirty-eight.
And you agreed with the defendant you wanted four,
she says 3,700. I'm not sure I believe her.
You're finally fixed on 3,500, correct?
Yes.
[Judge Judy] Which is according to you $300 less
than you were getting from your previous tenant.
- Correct. - [Judge Judy] Who had been there,
well, that was nice of you, $3,500.
And you were supposed to provide him with security deposit?
How much?
Thirty-five hundred. So the total would've been 6,000.
- I'm gonna do this my way. - Okay. Sorry.
[Judge Judy] You were supposed to provide him with security deposit.
When you saw the apartment in July because now you are,
if you wanna take the apartment,
you want him to stop showing the apartment?
This is before...
this is before I got to LA, yes, to depart...
You went to see the apartment...
[Kathleen] In June.
[Judge Judy] ...for the first time in June.
Yes.
And in June, you said you'd take it.
[Kathleen] Correct.
[Judge Judy] So you clearly wanted him
to stop showing the apartment to other people.
He--we were done, yes.
[Judge Judy] Great.
And how much money did you give him in June then?
We--and I have the text messages here.
[Judge Judy] That's a--just a second.
- [Kathleen] Well... - That's a number.
In June I gave him nothing.
[Judge Judy] So in June you gave him nothing.
June what, did you come looking at the apartment?
- Because this is what it all comes down. - Okay.
[Judge Judy] This is what the case all comes down to.
Okay.
So that people aren't wondering out there what this case is all about.
- You... - On the evening of June 1st...
[Judge Judy] I'm speaking.
I thought you asked me the date, I'm sorry.
[Judge Judy] No.
This is what the case is all about.
In case anybody is wondering what the case is all about.
Ms. Ganley is suing the defendant for $10,000
because he reneged on an agreement to rent her an apartment.
That's what you're suing him for, for your moving costs and everything else.
- That's what you're suing for. - Correct.
[Judge Judy] You saw the apartment June 1st,
you gave him no money.
Correct.
[Judge Judy] You signed no lease.
Correct.
You were moving into the apartment on what date?
July 15th.
[Judge Judy] Between June 1st and July 15th,
how much money had you sent him?
$1,000.
On what date?
The date that I sent the money was two days after he requested it
and it was July 12th was one.
Well, usually when you go and see an apartment, Ms. Ganley,
and you're not a child.
Correct.
I haven't rented an apartment in a long time.
But I have a pretty fixed memory.
You go and look at an apartment, you say, "I like it."
You go with the person who was renting the apartment,
you sign a lease, you give them a check,
you give them the date when the lease is going to be signed.
And then you have a signed lease,
and he has his security deposit,
first month's rent, sometimes they require last month's rent.
In this case, what were you supposed to give him?
A month's rent?
And how much security?
At the-- may I just tell it from the beginning?
- No. - [Kathleen] Okay.
Well, we didn't speak on...
[Judge Judy] Just a second.
You came and looked at the apartment.
And because he was a friend of a friend...
We talked about the rent.
[Judge Judy] ...of a friend, of a friend, of a friend, of a friend,
you gave him no money and you asked him...
you expected him to take his apartment
out of circulation until you got there on July 15th.
Even though he gave you a rent that was less
than what he was getting from his previous tenant.
That's a pretty good deal.
I asked you for a number.
How much money were you supposed to give him for the apartment?
How much security?
He requested zero security deposit when I met him.
I asked you...
He told me in July to, uh, that a $3,000 security deposit.
Three thousand dollars and your month's rent.
Correct.
Which was 3,500.
Correct.
[Judge Judy] So 6,500 altogether
and you had already given him $1,000.
Correct.
So you owed him $5,500 that he agreed.
Nice guy,
so far, really nice guy,
gave you a cheaper rent
than what was the going rate that you understood
'cause you moved into Beverly Hills.
He was giving you less rent
than what he was getting from his former tenant.
He held the apartment for you for six weeks for no money.
Thousand dollars, no money.
By the way, he gave...
He was ready for it.
[Judge Judy] Just a second, just a second.
He gave you the thousand dollars back by the way.
Yes.
[Judge Judy] Did you cash that check?
Yes, I did.
Oh, then you're one and done.
When you went to Wells Fargo
and got the check for $5,000,
you went there knowing that you owed him 5,500.
Correct.
Ms. Ganley, you're a hustler.
[theme music playing]
[announcer] Kathleen Ganley, claims apartment owner,
Elie Benaron, owes for moving expenses and hotel costs
after refusing to rent his apartment after she paid him a deposit.
Now, I'm not finished yet.
Then, according to you, you got there with your son from Arizona
with a U-Haul and a mover
and you had with you
a cashier's check for $5,000.
Now, when did you get
that cashier's check for $5,000?
July 14th.
Where did you get the cashier's check for $5,000?
Wells Fargo in Arizona.
[Judge Judy] Is that where you have your bank account?
Yes, it is.
And when you went to Wells Fargo
and got the check for $5,000,
you went there knowing that you owed him 5,500.
Correct.
Your excuse for that is,
that you were going to pay him the rest by some Zelle account.
- Which is how he had requested it. - [Judge Judy] No.
Show me how he requested.
On July 14th,
show me how he requested payment by a Zelle account.
- I want you--that's a simple... - He didn't request in on July 14th.
...simple, simple, simple.
[Kathleen] He didn't--he didn't request it then.
[Judge Judy] Ms. Ganley.
- Listen, you're a hustler. - No, ma'am, I'm not.
[Judge Judy] You're a hustler, you're a hustler.
- No. - [Judge Judy] What you could've done
very easily was the day before you were there.
You got there on July 14th.
When you went to Wells Fargo and got a cashier's check,
you get a cashier's check for $5,500 that is as good as cash, like that.
Instead, you talked him down with the rent,
little bit, little bit, little bit, little bit, little bit.
[Kathleen] May I show you the text?
[Judge Judy] You owed him, you owed him-- yeah, maybe I'm wrong.
You owed him, it's his apartment.
He wants to rent it.
He is in a position of wanting to rent his commodity.
He had somebody
who was ready, willing, and able he thought to rent that commodity.
It's not that he had somebody else in the wings to rent your apartment.
He was renting his apartment to you.
You were, in my view,
trying to get away with the 500 bucks then...
[Kathleen] Uh-hmm.
...at that moment.
Why would I drive a U-Haul
and pay all that money there to try to save $500?
- I'd love to show you... - Just a second.
I would love to see.
Kevin, I would love to see that on or about July 14th,
he said to you, "Give me a cashier's check for 5,000
and pay the rest by Zelle by,
by some other commodity."
It doesn't make sense.
Here's the--this is the date.
[Judge Judy] What's the date?
That he requested the deposit.
No, no, no. What's the date when he told you...
July 6th is when he requested the deposit.
- [Judge Judy] Just... - By Zelle.
[Judge Judy] Just a second.
July 6th he requested the deposit by Zelle.
Did you send it?
I--Zelle only allows you to send...
[Judge Judy] No, no, no, don't tell...
I sent the max possible on a day.
Zelle only allows you to spend $500.
Who gives--who gives
a rat's behind what they said to you?
Just like you went into Wells Fargo
on the 14th of July,
just like you went into Wells Fargo on the 14th of July.
On July 6th, when he sends you,
"Please send me the deposit,"
you go into Wells Fargo,
you get a money order, a bank check.
You put it in a FedEx
and you send it to him.
You saw the apartment June 1st.
July 6th, he said, "All right, time to get off the dime.
I'm holding the apartment.
It's now a month, please send me the deposit."
So you say, "Well, I'll give him a thousand dollars,
I'll give him five hundred dollars."
That's what he was asking for.
But then July 14th,
when you went there,
you were still 500...
I'm not interested in looking at anything
except that he said to you
when you got there July 15th,
"Give me a cashier's check
and a Zelle payment for $500."
That's what you decided to.
I sent him a text and he responded with an emoji of thumbs up.
It's, it's a--he responded to the text saying that's a...
You're a hustler, madam.
[Kathleen] I'm not a hustler.
[Judge Judy] And you are not getting $10,000 from this man.
And you won't-- and you won't look at the evidence?
I'm absolutely going to look at the evidence.
I'm telling you that you're a hustler.
- Okay, well, here's the evidence. - [Judge Judy] I'm telling you,
- you're a hustler. - Well, you're wrong.
- Sir. Okay, I'm sorry. - Kevin, you can get it.
I'm telling you, you're a hustler...
[Kathleen] Please show her that.
...because, because on July 14th, when you went to Wells Fargo,
I as a normal person, knowing that he wanted a deposit,
on July 6th, I say, "You know what?
I'm going all the way there.
I'm packing up my son, I'm packing up my U-Haul,
Wells Fargo is where I do my banking. They also have Wells Fargo here.
So you didn't take out your last dollar, I'm going to get a bank check.
So he knows he has the money,
'cause now he's been waiting for it for six weeks.
And I'm gonna give him a bank check for $5,500 'cause that's what I owe him."
You didn't do that.
You gave him $5,000.
And I have to say to myself,
why would you do that?
Why would you do that? It's like saying, "I have $5,000 in cash.
And I'm gonna give you $5,000 in cash.
And I'm going to give you $500 in a note
that I'm not getting right then and there.
But I'm gonna move my things into the apartment,
and then I'm there.
And then when I have the other $500,
I'm gonna give you the other $500."
And in addition, what he said,
"Listen, if this is the way I'm going to do business with you,
you gave me 5,000
in a cashier's check, it's $500 short."
I don't want to start with a tenant like this right away.
No, that's what we agreed to ahead of time.
[Judge Judy] I know, I--here's your thousand dollars back that you gave me,
you took the check, and you cashed it
and that was...
finished.
He said, "I don't want you as a tenant."
You have a signed lease by both of you?
I have a signed--no.
[Judge Judy] No. So you have no lease.
So you see, if you're in Arizona
and you wanna send him his deposit that he wants over,
and people do that all the time,
they buy property in the mail, they buy property over email,
they have DocuSign,
you can do all that between June 1st And July 15th.
You chose not to do that.
You're not entitled to any money.
- That's not true. - He's not responsible
for your having to find another apartment which costs you more money.
You're a grown woman.
And if you saw an apartment that was a bargain,
you hop on it.
[theme music playing]
[announcer] Kathleen Ganley has accused apartment owner,
Elie Benaron, of refusing to rent his apartment after she paid a deposit.
Elie says he changed his mind and refunded her deposits.
[Judge Judy] Now, on what date did he send you the lease?
- He sent me... - [Judge Judy] Just a sec.
I'm gonna go to you. On what date did you send her the lease?
July 10th.
You sent her the lease on July 10th?
- 10th. - [Judge Judy] Did you send it by email?
By email and I told her to respond with the--
sign the lease and send it back.
Or at least acknowledge she got the lease.
- I didn't hear from her. - You have all the text there.
[Judge Judy] So, can I see
the email that you sent her with the lease, do you have it with you?
I have it on my phone. Can I pull it off with my phone?
Yes.
So when you got the lease,
you changed it.
I made an edit as I said in the text to him there.
- So you changed it... - [Kathleen] Yes.
- ...and initialed it. - [Kathleen] Yes.
And he didn't send it on July 10th.
- When did he send it? - [Kathleen] I gave him my email
on July 13th.
[Elie] Sorry, apologize July 13th, yes.
- Here is the email, here is the text. - [Judge Judy] Uh-hmm.
And I'll open it for you.
[Kathleen] In the evening,
the day before we were loading to move.
And I wrote, please acknowledge receiving it, never heard from her.
We spoke on the phone, sir.
You're not entitled to any money.
- That's not true. - [Judge Judy] Well, I'm telling you
- that you're not entitled to any money. - But you haven't heard my story
or seen the evidence.
- What I'm... - [Kathleen] I have not.
What I'm telling you, madam, is the following.
You have no lease to his apartment.
- We had a view of the contract. - [Judge Judy] You have--no, no.
You had no lease to his apartment.
And you accepted
in satisfaction of having no lease,
a thousand dollars which is what you gave him and you cashed it.
And he's not responsible for your having to find another apartment
which cost you more money.
You had a responsibility.
You're a grown woman.
And if you saw an apartment that was a bargain,
you hop on it.
Say, "I want my lease. I wanna sign it.
I wanna give you the money that... right now for it.
So I know it's mine and I know it's held."
That's what you do as a grownup. You didn't do that.
You had the perfect opportunity to get a cashier's check
for $5,500 the day before you went there.
And you didn't. And you modified the lease
before he signed it. So you had no lease.
You had no written lease when there was supposed to be a written lease.
This wasn't a verbal, month-to-month tenancy.
This was not a verbal month-to-month tenancy.
[Kathleen] No, it was not.
- [Judge Judy] Right. - It was a 12-month lease.
[Judge Judy] That's--a lease for a year or more has to be in writing.
- Not... - [Judge Judy] And I'm telling you,
you did not have a written lease
with him and you fail to fulfill the terms of the lease
by not bringing a sufficient amount of money with you.
- Your case is dismissed. - [Kathleen] No, ma'am.
- We are done. - No. I...
- [Kevin] Court is adjourned. - [Judge Judy] We are done.
If you'd just humor me to hear the story, please.
- We are done. - [Kathleen] No, I'm not going to do that.
- [Judge Judy] Yeah. You are. - [Kevin] Sir, step this way.
- My phone, yeah, my phone. - Well, then there's a breach of contract,
right? Because you told me we were gonna hear--
you were gonna hear the case.
- [Judge Judy] I heard my case. - [Kathleen] You did not hear...
- Ma'am, ma'am. This way. - [Kathleen] No. I won't go, no.
- [Kevin] The case is over. - I'm not going.
- Case is over. - I said I never got to speak,
I'm not going.
Well, I was very disappointed that I didn't get to explain
the sequence of events.
I think she made the right decision. Judge Judy knows what she's saying.
So I'm extremely disappointed with her decision there.
When people born and, uh, they're a gift to the world, she was the opposite.
We started communicating again in July.
I reached out to him.
She tried to get in with no money and then not to pay the rent.
- I was assuming. - The deposit was not requested until--
the amount was never mentioned until the 10th of July.
The straw that broke the camel's back, the $500. She did a mistake.
I don't think he changed his mind, we hadn't talked about it.
No, no, she say, "Here is 5,000 and I'll give you later another 500."
And I said, "I'm not accepting later 500."
We have a chain of communications, he knew I was coming.
She is a hustler.
[Sarah] So I'm just curious,
would you have felt any different about the plaintiff being a hustler
if she had not cashed that thousand-dollar check
that he had refunded her for what she had paid towards her deposit?
I would still have thought that she was a hustler.
But accepting the check back from him,
I mean, if the check was given to secure...
- her argument was given... - [Sarah] Uh-hmm.
...to secure the apartment,
even though it wasn't the full amount that was necessary
that he asked for the beginning of July...
- [Sarah] Uh-hmm. - ...and she ignored him.
But since she took the check and cashed the check
that says to me, his obligation to her is finished.
The fact that she had to go and find another apartment
could have been very easily rectified.
This is a man.
He's a landlord.
He has a commodity from which he makes money,
which probably costs him maintenance and taxes
that he has to pay for every month that the apartment lays fallow.
- Uh-hmm. - He agreed because of a friendship
with a mutual friend to rent this woman an apartment
- for less than it's going rate. - Yeah.
And he held it for a month.
- For no money. - [Judge Judy] Really for no money.
She got the lease, she made a-- an alteration on the lease,
she never sent it back.
She never acknowledged that she had it.
The day before she left Arizona, she went to the bank
knowing that she owes him $5,500.
And she took out a check for 5,000.
- And paid for a check for 5,000. - Weird.
You know, I've been in this business and heard these landlord and tenant things
long enough to know, once she moved her things
into that apartment,
that $500 security deposit...
- Gone. - [Judge Judy] ...he was never gonna see.
He might have hounded her for it for a couple of months
and then he would have said, "Forget about it."
And she knew that, she knew that.
That's what makes her a hustler.
That check for $5,000,
that cashier's check instead of $5,500
says to me hustler.
There.
[Judge Judy] And the icing on the cake is, he said,
"Listen, I don't want you as a tenant in a place that I really wanna rent.
And you're here.
And all your stuff is here.
So it's very easy for me to let you move in.
But I know I'm a smart man.
If I take this $5,000, I'm gonna have trouble with you
ongoing complaints...
rent, more complaints.
What do I need this for?
Here's your thousand dollars.
I take it. I cash it.
Go find a motel,
stay in it until you find an apartment."
You're probably not going to find an apartment in Beverly Hills for $3,500.
That's a two-bedroom apartment, which is what he had.
So, when you do the wrong thing,
courts aren't gonna stand up for you.
She did the wrong thing.
- He did the right thing. - [Sarah] Uh-hmm.
- [Judge Judy] I think... - Yeah.
[Judge Judy] ...that he did the right thing.
He bent over backwards to accommodate this lady
because of a friendship from...
with a mutual friend. And she was trying...
to get a little bit extra.
Well, it came back and it bit her in the behind.
And I was more than happy to be accommodating.
[Sarah] Yeah.
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[theme music playing]