from my client lease that property beginning in two thousand and two and the lease was set to expire and out to october thirty first of two thousand and nine however as my client testified they vacated the property in march of two thousand and eight if they terminate their remit specifically in writing they did not they did notify the plaintiff though that they had big kid the premises of those but there were so the lease agreement they still had to pay rent even though has been resolved however it's the plaintiff position that that was filed for the purpose of getting paid the rent that was not being paid plus the utilities and and part of that case you know actually as part of the point is that that they no longer have those obligations in the contract i believe that under the right they had while i was they they would still have some other cases under the contract however i would also state that because of the fact that they gave of possession that there or if there are letters from mark sherman who was the director of properties in april of two thousand and eight to the defendant indicating that someone who went to the property had inspected the property that they were questing specific things be done to correct some issues on the properties but mainly cleanup type of  oil garbage you know things like that there was an issue addressed in regards to a dock scale so clearly the plaintiff went out to the property the following month inspected it took some pictures sent it to the defendant said he's are the issues that we need to res period because they signed a contract stating that they were paying you know that they were obligated to pay that well obviously if the plaintiff had read these that premises at that point it would be your position you know that that would even be a factor that would reduce the debt which they could claim but that's a separate case but and he states that the court when the are what he's describing to you that was entered september ninth of two thousand and nine now we have the inspection that occurred in april of two thousand and eight which mr richards had indicated would without a been able to happen unless the plaintiff had access to the  full inspection according to his testimony took a few pictures and submitted those so if the fact playing the file this in order to get possession then how is it that the mr richards is on the property a month beforehand somehow the property have been turned back over to the point well that was that was mr richards testimony he's here to testify that they would not have had access to do that type of inspection unless they had been given the keys in the property been turned to them list that's been presented by the plaintiff that would contradict that and so i mean basically the other this is i mean there's evidence as to what the condition of the property was when defend a big premises  and then obviously you've got a year and a half later you've got mr richards going and inspecting the property again and finding a bunch of additional issues with the property that or what he alleges to be the issues with the property and they never notified the defendant that these issues existed there were so real cases letters said from the player to the defendant stating hey you know you haven't paid your rent you know we're still waiting on your rent why when are you going to pay your rent never did they mention at any point hey you know also you've got all these other issues ongoing you know i mean it they they clearly had access to the property to be able to do that and they don't mention that and so that's that's one of the other and that's it and as it was it was a default order but i just i don't believe that that has any bearing on the actual damages in this case i mean they sued for their rent they got the rent but i don't believe that that together but it does list of those damages and the fur we basically we objected to the damages on the few different reasons the first reason was that basically it was based off of the language of lease itself num ber nineteen on their list is a request for twenty five thousand two hundred dollars and the campus of the structure on the road here left ten of them leaves specifically states that my client had no obligations or responsibilities made this lease the lease was paid your lease this property you're not responsible for any repairs for me that's to the structure of the period that's what he said was so i mean regardless of the cause richards speculated that this was based with this was due to what he called a tipping traders however he also testified that he never personally witnessed a single tipping trader and he further testified that there could have been other costs other things that could have doesn't return to them in the same condition as it was received and so it might cause like i'm really not sure i don't buy quiet who is somebody who was in arizona she was office person she didn't come out to personally inspect the property either prior to you know prior to them taking this lease on her so it's for a specific you know what i mean is what they're saying is you know they're bogus return it to us in the same condition it was received and there's no testimony as to what that condition was mean there are several things in here responding the least it also excludes what normal wear and tear damage from the elements to you know acts of god this isn't open for the most part this is an open facility you know there are claims in here in regards to cleaning r put mr richard mr richard specifically testifies that the made this was replacing filters he didn't know how long the how often the filters even needed to be replaced but this again was seven years later seven recalibrated every six months after seven years ago this is something that would have been done anyway this is just normal wear and tear on this on this scale so i mean it destroys destroys their claims for damages you know it you know we we would object and we're going to obviously this was the evidence was presented you know one of our main arms is that the evidence of it was not sufficient to justify the damage especially based off of the terms of these lease if you're talking about a lease where they don't have to pay know cause other than the tip trailers on peachtree thirteen of the record you know so specifically i mean you know the plaintiffs are responsible for twenty five thousand dollars in damages to something exploded in their lease is their responsibility and something that opinions in regards to what the actual value is as far as how much they're asking for the defendant ok you know in that regard i mean he testified that he had been working in this area for seven years but in that seven year period he this was only his second case and central in a way that he'd ever done we don't know when the first one was we don't know what it involves we have no information as to what he did in that case so we just have him being somebody who does who's done this for seven years for this company going right to looking at properties and saying oh i think i want four thousand dollars for that i think i want forty five hundred dollars for that and i think i need eight hundred dollars for this  i guess i would say that i would just disagree i mean i think the manifest weight of the evidence is that i mean the group gave the guy the benefit of the talent but but the evidence doesn't support that there's no there's no training here there's no i mean there's no education there's no you know here i have to be greedy i have this i have that you know i worked in this area for you know for you know for fifty years and this is what i do type of thing i mean this is just i didn't really want to before and so maintain the lawn and we're going to keep the bushes trend and we're going to put some flowers in the front lawn and we're going to cut the grass and we're going to sweep up the driveway i think that if you were a tenant and the grace was long in the bushes for trinity you would have something to say at trial you should offer some evidence but you hear something to safe that wasn't performing it however the tenet takes us forward either head or runs through the grass takes a bunch of defense and writes and runs over a bush surely at trial that tenet could not be heard to say you said you were going to maintain the grass and so if i run my trailer my four wheeler over the grass and give it up the lawn and run over bush has excluded from the lease there's a problem that we have with the with with defense argument in this case is i think it ignores the standard review a political to each and every argument they've made if i can this was a bench trial the judge made specific findings about the credibility of witnesses that appeared before the court right effect as mr justice poco did he even put it in his order his final order says you know i find that the scariest credible and helpful and the best trial th they issued was whether or not judge's decision is against the manifest weight of the evidence it's not the no as appellants priest suggests but the results of a bench trial are the manifest weight of the evidence but there's another there in a situation where there's an apartment complex it becomes tetrachord it becomes a bench trial with our friend just judge mills would say the rubber meets the road where business relationships and applications get sorted out in front of a trial judge now it's true that one of the parties bears a burden of proof but it's not such that it's incessantly unmeetable so that you can stand in front of the court and offer no evidence to the court and continuously complain you didn't offer nothing didn't you didn't offer enough evidence you didn't offer enough evidence trials in cases like this are functional ways the business relationships get sorted out and there's a practical there's a story third step that i think we need keep in mind here is that the burden of proof for plaintiffs in this kind of business relationship is to proof right exactly what the model this and even the respond this witness who said you know i was a property manager and we stop the progress parish witness was to say we stopped working here you know march of two thousand and eight all of those people said yes this is exactly the kind of damage that happens when you don't properly place your semi trailer and the think pops up and hits the roof i'm going to tie this back to the burden of proof i was making and here it is the  probably happened you know the burden of proof is not we established things with great certainty it's more probably true than not given their burden of proof given that manifest weight in the in this of evidence in this case in fact all and only evidence in this case favor the plaintiffs decisions the decision favor the plaintiffs in the trial courts determinations and given the fact that the st impunity you can cause damage by your own conduct and behavior to say that if you write commercial premises and the premises less or agrees to give you a nice place to work and you can misstep with im so is a reasonable and disappear reasonable expected relationships between individuals that are in a lease agreement and that's just a really important part of this kind of decision i mean they don't pay rent they go on and on for months and it wasn't enough to put it better because what we're doing here is actually arranging expectations between a property owner and a property user and that kind of business relationship it gets directly big the point i was making if you look at the testimony of mr richard page ninety nine starting on line seven for the last couple of pages we said in his when he was giving his testimony what was the condition the premise was that like this at the start was supported by foundation and i gave you some examples of how the assertion that it wasn't were inaccurate if you read the record you'll see that it was supported by foundation the third point is this this issue of the sort of talk our way around into would say wait a minute when you want your client can just sit there and do nothing and let the damages crew doesn't apply to when as defendants witness and my witness exercised his judgment well he did abuses discretion which is the real standard but rather to get a really good efficient job ok and number three was experience mitigation is irrelevant so those are the three arguments that were made i don't think any of them calling this court to reverse the trial judge who in these kind of business relationships is really the front line for all of us thank you if you oh in regards to the analogy to the point of giving records to an apartment i guess i would just just like to clarify something about this i mean in reality what happened here is more of a situation of this is not a this is not leaving the all winter so that the pipes freeze and they come back and say oh by the way the pipes froze because you didn't come back and turn the heat on the water so i want you to pay for that so you know and you know in this case that you know that the pads froze because of the but to syria he can go back and say well you can come back over the winter you know nine months after you moved out and turn the heat on when i had to keep us i just i don't i don't see that and you know the evidence is that he left in march of two thousand and eight and that the police when expected the property in april two thousand and eight months later they were known he was gone they would have known that there's nothing there there's no trucks there there's no trailers there there's nothing there that we took pictures in the pictures show that there's nothing there and they send those to the plate so i don't believe that analogy is similar to what we're talking about here it records to his statements in regards to the fact that you know what the defenders try to do is say well the player presented this evidence and we didn't present anything damages that they claim and stating this thing or even damage some of them so it's not it's not an issue of the defendant not presenting enough evidence to rebut this it's just the fact that the guinness wasn't there in the first place  groups submitted to him in which he made that so it's forced his handling of this and handling of the witnesses there were no like testimony in front of them so he's reading exactly what you're reading i mean that's it so there's no additional information there or being able to absorb the manner of the character of the witnesses in this case and then the other thing is you know mark fuhrman was the one that wrote these letters and he didn't testify plaited going to be easily had mr director show up to testify on their behalf in regards to the condition of the premises at the time and the different communications and the first inspection in april of two thousand and eight and the different things that happened and he's not there you know the other person testifies that mr richards who never got on the property