I'm in more than a bit of a situation right now, my ex-landlord and I came to a settlement that he was very unhappy with after his attorneys advised him to take whatever was offered when he committed perjury after 3 questions into cross examination. I was countersuing for harassment, his unwillingness to make reasonable repairs, and his constant presence in the backyard of the dwelling he did not live in specifically due to my letting him know that it made me uncomfortable.
In short, I still don't see why my attorney sold my wife on settling, especially since she was the person who drove me crazy about the apartment. The landlord and I had good relations prior to my asking for rights I didn't really want to ask for, the apartment served my needs fine without 311 needing to be called (although I did have serious problems getting him to provide heat in the winter and exterminators in the summer.)
Recently I suffered from an illness that kept me from making payment on the deal by the due date. The attorney notified my wife and I that they had levied judgments against us and that we were due in court in just over a week to determnine whether we owed over 40k in legal fees that my landlord incurred. We asked what happened to the Notice to Cure that was clearly written in the stipulation and he responded that one of his paralegals had left a message with me the day it was received by fax. I provided him with phone records, text records and internet records that proved that my phone was on throughout the day and that no one had contacted us from his office. In fact, my wife had called in early March after my illness required hospitalization to see if damage control was needed and the lawyer said that "he hadn't heard anything."
My wife is 7 months pregnant, I'd been unemployed and we'd been living at our in-laws. Not only are there judgments against us (I had submitted control of my voicemail and email to my wife in late January) but our attorney is flat out lying to us. Phone records can still be produced if he wanted them to be, yet he said that despite the overwhelming evidence that we were never notified of the notice to cure that his paralegal had "called me and left a voicemail."
We found out about this last Friday and today is Wed, I've been living on couches since I came back from the city on Friday (I was at interviewing) and so basically, I'm homeless. I'm also basically separated because if I am responsible for a 50k judgment against my wife, that'll be it. I doubt I'll even get to meet my son. It kills me to think that a) we specifically gave her access to my phone and email to prevent situations like this (late payments, missed opportunities) and that I'd paid my attorney over 7k in this matter and now he's lying about letting us know about a notice to cure.
Does our attorney have any liability for not passing on that Notice to Cure to us? How about for flat out lying over email to us?
Does anyone know any way that we can get the settlement arrangements put back together? If necessary, I will pay off the rest of them by cashing the rest of my savings. If not, we are in such serious trouble that this would be the most trouble I've ever been in. I am getting letters from my doctors stating that I was incapable of being held responsible for my actions, but will that be enough? I'm not terrified for myself, I'm terrified for my wife who I met at the attorney's office yesterday and who looked exhausted, paler than milk and generally not in the health that she was in on Friday before our lives were upended. We just survived a major blow to our marriage when I was hospitalized, this is the worst thing that could possibly happen.