Judge Marilyn Milian Rules: John The Diver

Judge Marilyn Milian of The People’s Court wears incredible hoop earrings, always has awesome nails, speaks Spanish frequently and reminds everyone she lives in Florida, and is generally the baddest. She’s like all of your friends, only she has her own television show and you can learn a lot from it, even if she doesn’t have jurisdiction in your area. Let’s look at a recent ruling.

Plaintiff Johnathan is suing defendant Mary, his former landlord, for $2,748.97 in damages to his property, a lost watch and clothing, and pain and suffering. (Ha! Marilyn is not soft. Pain and suffering is part of life!)

The Accusation: Dude goes to some diving academy to learn how to be an underwater welder and the school hooks him up with a room rental in Mary’s house for the duration of his schooling which seems radically brief. Like three months? Plus there is no lease agreement which always drives Marilyn NUTS! She’s constantly saying how even in her 20 year marriage she makes her husband sign shit. Anyway, over the course of his stay, Mary, the landlord, freaks out a few times because Johnathan has friends over, even though she doesn’t stay there in her room for more than a few days a month. So she’s like not actually living there. Chill out, Mary! College students, you know? Johnathan has all these reasonable lies like “only four people came over to study at 10:30 one night.”

Marilyn, by the way, interrupts excitedly to tell Mary, the defendant, that she’s super excited to hear her side. Us too!

Anyway, supposedly Mary moves his furniture out to the yard or something more than once? Because she freaks out easily? But they resolve it? Then, on finals night, the night before Johnathan moves out, because she has HAD ENOUGH of people, Mary masking-tapes a “No Tresspassing: Keep Out” sign on Johnathan’s door. DUN-dun-duuuun!

BUT WAIT: The next day Johnathan sees that his laptop is all smashed! And he calls the police.

The Defense: Mary says some other two guys are staying in a room in the house that is taped off or locked or clearly not available? It is NOT clear. But then cops came and blah, blah she says she’ll deal with this after Johnathan finishes finals, but then she doesn’t and instead moves his stuff again. Then Marilyn holds up the broken laptop and screams “THAT’S WHY YOU HAVE TO HOLD ONTO YOUR URGES AND WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT DAY!” True dat! Then Mary says everyone is “big liars” and “my house, it was like a big hotel… they were drinking and they were partying and they had girlfriends there.”

AND THEN! Mary says the dudes killed some bushes by “urinating on them.” That is terrible.

The Verdict: Mary, you can’t keep doing this. You need to rent to an older person. You have an unrealistic expectation of what your obligations are. You are saying “THIS IS MY HOUSE” when you rented it out, which means it wasn’t.

*YELLING!*

Mary does not have the right to be in there the night before finals to make their night impossible. It’s not a $3,000 case, but dude gets $600 for the depreciated value of the computer and something-or-other else.

Judge Marilyn Milian Rules, at Looking Awesome: Her nails were black this episode, but in a shiny way. Maybe there was some shimmer to the polish? Same with her hoops: yellow gold and shimmery, but not necessarily rhinestoned (because we have seen when the woman wears rhinestone hoops and it is glorious.) Best guess is the metal was faceted.