<p>@ younghoss: Who was lts representing? If it was the landscaper, then lts was negotiating on behalf of the landscaper and saying $50. (Remember, the landlord expressly rejected the “bid.”) lts – in that scenario – was saying $50. And, once again, the landlord rejected it with his counteroffer of $25 – the amount that he originally rejected. And there’s obviously been no acceptance.</p>
<p>But if lts wasn’t representing landscaper then how do you get to an acceptance? You can’t tell the tenant you accept an offer that the tenant wasn’t authorized to be soliciting bids for. That’s not binding because the tenant is either just a messenger or she represents the landlord, in which case the “acceptance” you’re talking about is internal noise. The landscaper has not been notified of an acceptance.</p>
<p>So, for your offer-acceptance scenario to work, the landlord had to have communicated an acceptance to lts, the tenant. And for that to mean anything you have to argue that lts was the authorized representative for the landscaper. But for that to happen you have to allow that lts is authorized to negotiate up to $50 or as high as he thinks the landlord is willing to pay – which totally undermines your claim that lts did something wrong or underhanded by raising the landlord’s price.</p>
<p>Your points about offer-acceptance and lts being duplicitous are internally conflicted and – this is important – predicated on a scenario in which the landlord expressly REJECTED the offer.</p>
<p>I just don’t see how the following constitutes an offer and acceptance of a $25 bid by the landlord, unless you’re saying that lts was an agent who is authorized to both make the offer and accept it (and, besides, it was conveyed as $50):</p>
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<p>EDIT: Reading back over this, I can’t make much sense of what I’m saying here. I would submit that that’s largely driven by the futility of trying to make sense out of nonsense, though I’m sure a better mind could make less of a mess of trying to put this plate of spaghetti logic into neat rows.</p>
<p>D’yer Maker - that’s because there is nothing to make sense of here. This is not a situation where legal analysis even comes into play. There was no bid, no offer, no acceptance. There was a conversation among people. The OP just needs to get out of it and let the landlord deal with it. I say do it sooner rather than later - if the tree falls in the interim, then we’ll have to wade through more legalese.</p>
<p>Here we go again talking about removal of a whole palm tree. The op got a bid only on a portion of the tree, the portion beyond her airspace. Could it be she relayed his bid, but for some reason the landlord misunderstood?</p>
<p>Perhaps among the many courses of actions the tenant could possibly take is to consult her landlord to be sure landlord is clear on what the gardeners bid entailed. I just can’t imagine what the gardener thought was $25 work, and the tenant thought was $50 work would actually be $800. Are they on the same page as the expression goes? </p>
<p>My cousin who is a lawyer told me one of the “lawyer jokes” he hears them all, I’m sure. He says it’s an old Chinese curse: “May your life be filled with lawyers”.
To Kluge - I thought the Op was seeking opinions about the right thing to do about the $25 part that the landlord didn’t want to pay(the portion she added to the gardeners bid) We all know sometimes opinions of right/wrong can differ from what one can prove in court. Nevertheless, since you have specifically listed (a,b, and c) items that you feel I am mistaken about law, and my errors could get me in legal trouble, I’d welcome you to document your statemnts a,b, and c to me with a p.m. I’d prefer to keep this public site on track about opinions right/wrong of op’s questions.</p>
<p>Younghoss, I’ve sent you a PM as requested. As to what’s right/wrong here: LTS’s landlord is a dumb jerk. Dumb, because he blew an opportunity to get a job done cheap by trying to get it even cheaper, a jerk because he insulted his tenant in the process. LTS has no obligation to “deliver” her guy for $25, and is wise to back off, leaving the landlord to pay however many hundreds of dollars it will now cost him from whoever he can get to do it. In the process, he’s made it clear to his tenant that he’s cheap and slimy, a fact which she’ll understandably (and reasonably) be guided by in the future. LTS was right to do what she did; the landlord was wrong to do what he did - legally, morally, and practically. Simple as that.</p>
<p>“No good deed goes unpunished” is an apt title for the thread.</p>
<p>Never know what you’ll find on this site but I’ve read this far so will add my 2 cents. Late for school, IMO, made a huge mistake in assuming the landloard’s values were the same as her own. If she wants to mentor the landscaper and teach him how to value his work, great! It should be between the 2 of them.</p>
<p>The guy owns a half million dollar rental in an expensive place, he’s not Donald Trump. Chances are he saved nickles and dimes to make his investment. I can understand his being taken aback by Lateforschool’s approach.</p>
<p>I am sorry that I haven’t had time to revisit this - had to catch a flight yesterday; got delayed and stuck in an airport, arrived very late last night to my destination, and am in 12 hours of meetings today and tomorrow. I have NOT sent the email yet; the way my schedule is going it will be another day before I can even turn my attention back to it.</p>
<p>I am interested in reading the feedback though - and I’ll say this much, briefly, post #66 says it all, far better than I ever could. </p>
<p>UCgradmary, he may not be Trump, but, trust me when I tell you, there is a HUGE difference in the economic position re landlord vs. the landscaper. HUGE. And this is a very difficult job, given the tropical environment. As far as him saving nickles and dimes, I’m sort of scatching my head, wondering why my rent checks for May AND June - which were delivered to him personally, on time, on the 1st of each of those months - as of yesterday morning, still had not been presented to my bank for payment. I haven’t had time to log into my bank account this morning, but, someone who is so well positioned financially that they do not need to worry about depositing my rent checks in a timely manner (and you can just imagine the amount of money involved, given the property - AND I bank at a tier one institution, there’s a branch on every corner so it’s not like it’s difficult to process the checks) AND doesn’t want to pay a landscaper a reasonable price for a very difficult, hot, and potentially dangerous job, there’s something seriously not right…</p>
<p>“Cheap and slimy” says it all. I will come back to this later tonight or tomorrow though as I am interested in reading the rest of the thread. Thanks, Kluge, for articulating my point of view far better than I was able to…</p>
<p>After reading all postings, and pm from Kluge I have to think now that there was no contract between gardener and landlord. Many disagreed with me on that point, and they were probably right.
Nevertheless, I think all will agree tenant chose to put herself in an awkward position by essentially volunteering to be a go-between rather than just passing on contact info. I also think it was wrong of tenant to choose to modify(up by $25) the bid from the gardener. I have to believe the garderner had no objection to tenant passing on his bid to landlord, [ I just can’t picture him saying- “please don’t tell the property owner!”] but I don’t think she should have added the extra money because she felt gardener had underbid. If she felt so strongly, she could have talked to the gardener that she felt $50 was more in line, and then let gardener place his bid directly to owner as he saw fit, rather than her adding to his bid and passing it on to owner as if $50 was his bid. As I understand it she later told landlord that gardeners bid was actually only $25, that she had added $25.
Without her addition(although well intentioned) the portion of the job the gardener agreed to do would likely be done and paid for. I get the impression the portion he bid on was only a small portion of the whole job that ought to be done.
Another aspect is still curious to me though. If the gardener thought $25 was fair, and the tenant thought $50 was fair, the part about the landlord having paid $850 for similar work puzzles me. There is such a huge difference there, it just makes me wonder- was the landlord clear that the gardener bid only on the portion beyond the airspace of the property? His previous costs of $850 sound much more like cutting and removing a whole tree. I’ve cut fallen trees myself and hired some done, and I know that if I only cut the portion laying across a sidewalk for example, that cost and labor is minimal compared to cutting up and removing the whole tree. There were times I could have made 2 cuts, and have debris loaded in 15 minutes, if I was doing only a couple limbs. For that, $25 would not be underpaying. I might be outraged too if a job truly worth $850 earned only $25 or $50 due to the tenants meddling with the bid process. I’m not however, because I just don’t have the impression the portion the gardener was going to do was valued at $850. I have to believe there wasn’t a meeting of the minds. (A phrase Kluge will enjoy!)</p>
<p>“Gosh thats funny, Opie. You must really crack them up in study hall.”</p>
<p>Unbunch your undies, learn to smile. We’re all going to die in the end. </p>
<p>I think you’ve been trying to prove the whole thing is actionable or even parts of it. I disagree. Anyone can sue for anything, winning though is a bit tougher. There’s absolutely nothing here that would win anything for the landlord.</p>
<p>^ No kidding. I thought the most teeth-grinding statement in that entire article above was this one, which I’d heard reported on the radio earlier this week:
He rejected a settlement offering him $12,000 for this pair of pants. What, is this judge-plaintiff aprt of some legal club that works to keep each other in business or something?</p>
<p>The plaintiff in this case, IMO, is suffering from some sort of personality or mental disorder. No rational person would suffer the criticizm that he has to push forward such a case. His testimony in the case exposes a pathetic individual who sees himself as a repeated victim - in his divorce, in his job history, and so on.</p>