Here is one of many Western Union mailers that Fairbanks sent me.
At the time when I actually received these in the mail, I never opened them
because they appeared to be junk mail (folded in the manner you see, with tear
tabs at each side). Note that while Western Union's name appears on the front,
Fairbanks' name is nowhere to be seen. I have edited out my street address and
account number for obvious reasons.
At trial I was questioned about
these mailers by my attorney, why I never opened them, how it is that I still
had them. I will tell you all now what I testified to that day. When these
mailers came in, I thought they were junk mail and threw them in what had become
the junk mail box. My fiancee had suffered from a head injury after
falling through our back porch and as a result, she was not able to care for
herself or do many of the things I had become accustomed to her doing around the
house. As a result of this, house cleaning was a low priority on my list and so
the junk mail box grew and never got cleaned out. At some point, although
I don't recall the date, during her recovery, she started trying to get back to
normal and one of the things she decided on was trying to clean the house. The
problem was, the head injury had left her in such a state that what was once a
normal or easy decision to make became impossible for her and so, instead of
cleaning out the junk mail box and throwing the items away, she packed all the
items into a garbage bag and took the bag down to the basement. To this day she
can't explain to anyone why she did what she did because she doesn't understand
it herself.
It turned out to be lucky that she never threw the bag of
junk mail away because about the time I had my mortgage analyzed I got another
one of the Western Unions and realized the return address belonged to Fairbanks
and so I opened it. It was then that I finally realized all those yellow mailers
were not junk but mailers from Fairbanks. I mentioned it to my fiancee who then
shyly admitted that she had never thrown the junk mail away and stored it all in
a bag in the basement.
It was hard to give that testimony in court with
her sitting there in the front row, supporting me as she always has. I wanted
her to be able to keep her dignity about it all and in the end I think that's
what caused the Judge to not fully understand the issue of these mailers.
