Part 4

June 4, 2014

While London mayor Joe Fontana waits for a judge to render a verdict June 13 in his case, I got great news today about my equally weighty, but lower profile, legal battle with the elusive Matt Rowswell, owner of two London Mr. Lube franchises.

The mayor is charged with breach of trust by a public official, fraud and uttering forged documents. I was at the court house twice last week, the first time during Mayor Joe’s trial, when the place was abuzz with what passes for excitement there.

A judge is now deciding whether to believe Joe’s explanation for making numerous changes to an expense report and then submitting it for payment for something entirely unrelated to its original purpose. Not to jump the gun, but if that doesn’t constitute fraud, I’m not sure what the word means.

In my case, a judge – and I wish I knew which one but I can’t decipher his signature on the Endorsement Record I received in the mail today – ruled in my favour against Mystery Matt.

For those just catching up, the fine folks at Mr. Lube on Oxford at Wonderland botched my oil change in late January, stripping the oil pan plug and causing a gushing oil leak about six weeks later. I needed a new oil pan. Not having one on hand, I had to pay Leavens VW about $600 to install one. Mystery Matt’s second banana, Mike Morrow, offered to pay half the cost of the repair but declined to refund the cost of the original oil change, a whopping $126. So I sued. For more details, read earlier posts, below.

The judgment is for the cost of the repair, the cost of the oil change and $215 in court costs, just under $1,000 in total. The judge did not allow my claim for the cost of a rental car I had for four days whilst my car was being repaired. Fair enough. I also was awarded interest on all of these costs, which isn’t all that important unless Mystery Matt continues his strategy of avoiding me at every turn.  

I won the case because he didn’t respond to the suit within the allotted three weeks. Now that I have a judgment, it’s up to me to wrest the money from Matt and his high-road company, Cardoc Enterprise. I’ll start this week by contacting Mike Morrow and asking for a cheque next week. On the off chance Matt can’t find his cheque book or is out of town taking an ethics course, I would have to follow up with the court and ask for assets to be seized and so on.

That, of course, is a worst case scenario. I’m confident old Matt will happily pay up. There might even be a cheque in my mailbox right now. I’m going to see…