camwyn | Okay. Here's the deal with the trial.

GUY WITH MONEY: I am living rather happily in a rental building. It is a nice building. It has fantastic views of New York and the river. But it is a rental building. I think maybe I would like a condo instead. Also it should be bigger than what I've got now.

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: We have a new condo building going up! Look where it is! Also, our name makes BSG fans snicker even though we've had it for fifty years or more!

GUY: Oooh. Nice location. Have you got anything on the top floor?

SALES MANAGER: No.

GUY'S GIRLFRIEND: I'm outta here.

GUY: Are you sure? I really need a top floor apartment.

SALES MANAGER: Okay, maybe one apartment.

GUY: What's this building in the picture here? The one between the condo building and the water? It looks tall.

SALES MANAGER: Eh, won't go above twelve floors.

GUY: Groovy. *buys condo*

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: *starts building penthouse*

GUY: Hey hey hey whoa hold up buddy I wanted the topmost apartment. Let me out of this deal.

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: Fine, whatevs. We'll go get the lawyer.

GUY: If I pull out I want my purchase price back and three hundred thousand dollars in compensation!

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: .... that's like half the purchase price of the apartment.

GUY: Yes, and? Gimme.

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: How about if we knock sixty grand off your purchase price and add some extra stuff to your apartment?

GUY: Okay, fine.

TIME: *passes*

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: *continues with local buildings*

GUY: Oh, hey, a friend of mine has invited me to a celebration of Newport's twentieth anniversary, sponsored by the Lefraks. I shall go.

JAMIE LEFRAK: Hi!

GUY: Hi. My apartment. Will it have the nice views?

JAMIE: It'll have fantastic views! Also I have no clue who you are and probably won't remember you after about five minutes!

GUY: Cool.

EVERYONE PRESENT: *reads brochures about area, with pictures of three tall buildings slated to be built in next few years*

PICTURES ON WALLS: *depict the building between the condo and the water to be 30+ stories tall*

MODELS IN AREA: *depict the building between the condo and the water to be 30+ stories tall*

NEWPORT NEWS NEWSLETTER: *talks about building between condo and water being 30+ stories tall*

GUY: *somehow manages to not see any of this*

BUILDING BETWEEN CONDO AND WATER: *gets taller*

GUY: Whoa. THAT ain't right. *sends angry letter*

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: Oh, you mean you paid attention to the advertising of the fantastiwonderful condo views but didn't pay attention to anything else?

GUY: Stop building that building you horrible people! VAST AND TERRIBLE CONSPIRACY TO KEEP ME IGNORANT!

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: You mean you believed what we told you to get you to buy and then completely stopped paying attention to anything else whatsoever about what was going on in the Newport area?

GUY: Suing now.

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: Seriously, dude, how could you not know that other buildings were going up?

GUY: Suing moar now. Also, my apartment floor sucks.

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: ... what?

GUY: It's pulling up in places! And not level! And you promised solid oak hardwood floors and it's manufactured wood with a thin oak veneer! You said oak plank!

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: Yeah, that's the industry standard term for flooring with oak on top and pieces wider than three inches. Solid oak makes for a lousy floor because it tends to warp and twist and pull apart, so we installed the manufactured kind.

GUY: The model apartment had solid oak flooring!

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: No it didn't. It had a different brand of manufactured wood- see? Right here? This is the sample. It says what it's made of in big letters. You saw it when you came here.

GUY: Suing EVEN MOAR now. Also also, you said there would be storage lockers available in the residential space! And I have to go to the garage unit's side of the line to get to them! And I have to pay for them because you subleased the space to the filthy filthy public! I want a free locker!

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: We said there would be lockers on site. We never EVER said they would be free.

GUY: SUING A WHOLE LOT NOW. Also also ALSO, you put PART OF THE PARKING LOT on the roof of the garage unit and the roof isn't 'the upper surface of the garage unit', it's a separate layer, so YOU DEPRIVED ME OF PART OF THE COMMON SPACE WHICH I-

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION: Good God, man.

GUY: EVEN MORE ALSO, my lights burn out after a handful of days! And the closets are awful! And the marble saddles between rooms are broken! And you left the closets painted inside with primer! And the ceiling lights are weird! And-

LEFRAK ORGANIZATION PROPERTY MANAGER: Maybe you should've contacted me to fix those as soon as you had a problem. We can't really fix what you don't tell us needs fixing.

GUY: SUING SO HARD NOW. Also, gimme a parking space.

LAWYER: *attempts to read Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition of 'panoramic' into the record*

OTHER LAWYER: *objects*

JUDGE: *rolls eyes, sustains*

JURY: Lefraks, you lied to this man and engaged in deceptive advertising.

GUY: *smugs*

JURY: However, guy with money, you did not prove actual measurable financial loss as a result of the advertising.

GUY: *does not smug so much*

JURY: Also, the evidentiary photos taken in your apartment- as opposed to the photos you took yourself- show that the view is still really pretty good if you, y'know, look a little bit to the right instead of just staring at the enormous building. You lost the view of midtown Manhattan but you can still see everything south of the Empire State Building.

GUY: *does not smug at all*

JURY: And you can shut up about the lockers and the floors because while the Lefraks lied to you about some of their plans, they didn't lie to you about those. And you never even showed us pictures of your supposedly horrible floor, let alone proved to us that it needed replacing. And you really do kinda need to, like, tell people that there are problems in need of fixing instead of suing them to get them fixed. And they gave you a free parking space, just not a reserved one, so suck it up.

LEFRAKS: *look smug*

JURY: Did you miss the part where you violated several consumer fraud statutes? Just because we didn't make you pay the guy didn't mean you got off scott free, you know.

JUDGE: Good jury. Go home.

JURY: Thank you. *runs like hell*

So... yeah. Thus ends the Trial of the First World Problems.