Bribe
82
We were tired of waiting; another year had passed, and we hadn’t heard anything about the report that we paid for. The report was supposed to estimate the damages caused by the demolition of the basement by Helmer Wieringa when they finally replaced the sewage mains. It seemed quite a simple for a judge, but the problem was that with each passing day, the claim’s value increased, dealt was against our interest. The court doesn’t want to admit that its own delays increase damages for us, so we asked them to consider this factor and set a date for the continuation of the process. They set a date quickly, and the legal hearing became incredibly short. However, the judge ruled that the case was inconclusive because we could have presented the whole issue of damages in the first case, causing us to lose the first court hearing.
He didn’t bother to consider, or respond to, the points we made in detail about damages that occurred after the insurance settlement, in fact these damages were unrelated to the leak. We could go into the appeal’s process and ask for an explanation for the verdict that contradicted the Dutch law without giving any sensible explanation. It seemed like laziness, brushing the whole story aside. When a judge’s decision is made without an explanation and with a sum of money to pay the lawyer representing the other side, you know where the money will be transferred to - the judge himself. This sends a message to the second judge that the loser can be knocked out again, making it pointless to answer their claims.
They don’t care about the case; they only care about how much money they can make without being caught. The entire legal system in the Netherlands seems to revolve around profiting from a position of power. They don’t uphold the law or protect the vulnerable; instead, they look for loopholes to enrich themselves at the expense of those who have already been harmed. They prefer to punish those who have already been beaten rather than protect them from the abuser. We realised that we wouldn’t get any justice in a court in the Netherlands because we are the individual who was hurt. Every judge seemed to side with the abuser and their personal interests.
We decided not to continue filling their pockets with money so that they can decide how much we have to pay to the body corporate and watch it disappear. Everyone in the building knew we lost the case, and they knew the money wasn’t transferred to them. It was paid to the judges so they wouldn’t have to pay for the damages they caused us. Everyone remained silent and didn’t speak out about the scam, which essentially made them complicit. We decided to move on with our life in Australia, without thinking too much about the unused ground floor we had in Amsterdam for all these years.