Hot Bench

Terrified by his song lyrics and fed up with his police reports, a woman files a restraining order against her reportedly terrorizing neighbor; he sues her for legal fees.

A landlord still needs to collect the last month's rent from an ex-tenant whose boyfriend punched a hole in the door in a fit of anger.

A restaurant owner who gave up his "man cave" so that his cook and her family could have a roof over their heads says she burned his furniture in a bonfire.

A daughter knows her mother will help her out of a financial bind, then neglects to repay her.

A pregnant woman's neighbor locked her in a garage for an hour and screamed her head off in a dispute about a water bill.

A young man moved across the country to be with his new boyfriend after one date, and when red flags started to pop up, they hoped a cruise would help rekindle the magic; the middle of the ocean wasn't the best place to hash out their differences.

A woman with impaired mobility accuses her caretaker of abandoning her in Hawaii; the caretaker says, "she tried to run me over with her scooter!"

A used car's engine starts smoking 15 minutes after a family buys it; the seller says they must have caused the massive coolant leak in that short time.

A hairstylist agreed to store a customer's hair extensions, but after two years with no contact, she deemed them unusable and threw them away.

An 11-year-old had to dig a grave for his beloved dog; his parents take to court the neighbor whose dog they say broke through the fence and attacked.

A man meets a reportedly homeless woman next to a garbage bin and brings her home to live in his one-bedroom apartment, but the living arrangement doesn't go well, so he sues her for emotional distress.

A man wants his money back after paying for his brother's dog's life-saving surgery; a woman sues a woodworker over a vanity.

An unlicensed driver who stopped in a lane of traffic to drop off her friend at home sues a guy for rear-ending her.

Things weren't going well in a business partnership, so one partner lied to entice the other into a buyout; now the ousted partner feels cheated.

A woman who moved to Denver for a new job and temporarily stayed with her cousin says the cousin's children stole her credit card and damaged her cellphone, and a mountain of clothes went missing.

A woman says the condo she purchased had undisclosed plumbing and grading problems, causing her garage to get flooded.

A kitchen designer holds his client's drawers hostage so that she will help him hunt down payments he is owed by the previous homeowner.

A motorcycle mechanic guaranteed he could fix his client's bike before he found an exhaust valve that should have been adjusted 7,000 miles ago; he offered to pay for it if another mechanic could fix it, but the client just wants his money back.

A woman discovered rust on a used truck she bought "as-is"; the seller graciously offered to refund her money, but, he says, she refused the second installment, and therefore he doesn't owe her anything.

A woman sues her former live-in boyfriend for her therapy bills; he countersues for storage fees on the items she left behind.

A landlady lets scammers into her home without a lease or background check, then holds her property manager responsible for the unpaid rent; the property manager says she's still owed for all the work she did trying to evict the tenants.

While a cancer patient's home contractor was reportedly sick in bed with COVID-19, a rival contractor snapped a photo of him at a different job site.

The litigants' chain of text messages show how a 10-year friendship fell apart over an unpaid loan.

A woman lends her new boyfriend $600 for marijuana, and he never pays her back; she wants an additional fee for the inconvenience.

A woman who took her disabled sister for a haircut says the stylist got angry and aggressive with the clippers, causing red welts on her neck.

A baby gets burned by apple pie, and the two women who are supposed to be watching him launch into a fistfight; one sues the other for damage to her breast implant.

A man who says he was tricked into a fake relationship by a woman who wanted childcare help while her husband was in jail wants her to return a truck he bought and put it in her name, but she says it belongs to her as payment for a loan she gave him.

An unwed couple used the man's credit and VA loan to buy a home, but now that they have broken up, the woman wants to be repaid for the furniture that was in the home when they bought it.

A woman resists repaying her aunt for a loan, saying she previously forgave her aunt's debt of the same amount; the aunt calls her a pathological liar.

Both litigants in a car sale dispute offer to take lie detector tests to determine who is scamming whom.

A two-week flooring job wasn't complete five months later, and the handyman who dropped the ball is full of excuses, while the homeowner had to rip it all up and start over.

The purchaser of a utility van accuses the sellers of tampering with the odometer, costing him thousands of dollars to remedy; the accused say they never sold him any vehicle and suspect he is committing fraud.

An unemployed man's ex-girlfriend kept a detailed list of every expense she covered; he resents the petty charges, but he signed a promissory note to repay her -- and, as Judge Juarez points out, "You're allowed to be petty if you get it in writing."

A man rented his car to a customer, who damaged it to the tune of $6,000 and thinks insurance should have paid for all the repairs.

A woman refuses to repay her mother for bailing her out of jail, saying it was a tactic to get custody of her children.