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There's no problem here, anyway. The original prediction was that the band of lake-effect was going to start in the southern tier Ski Country counties early Thursday (which it did), move north into Erie County's southern towns (which it also did, with a vengeance), and then drift up into our area and spend all of last night and today pummeling us with our own record levels of the white stuff.
Not so fast, Colonel Meteorologist.
That half-a-foot we got overnight into yesterday, much of it melted by day's end, had roughly doubled by this morning. The plows came, we've both been out for assorted errands, and while it is snowing a little, the predictions of feet have turned into inches.
Ah, but that snow had to go someplace, right? Apparently, a building in Orchard Park that's not being used this weekend anyway:
That gives new meaning to the name of the Bills stadium: the Highmark down there is well over 6 feet as of now, and they are quite vindicated in the early decision to move Sunday's game to Detroit. The team will lose over $8 million in ticket revenue and untold amounts for parking and concessions, while smaller businesses around OP, not rolling in TV billions, will suffer proportionately even more. But if you wanna go, $30 tickets at Ford Field are readily available, just 4-5 snow-free hours away via the 401 through Canada.
Making it even spookier was this: The snowstorm hitting Buffalo looks like the Bills' logo.
I saw that in Wegmans on my pre-(not)blizzard grocery run, and promptly took it as my prompt to redo the lyrics to the team's fight song:
dun dun dun dun…
The Bills make it wanna SNOW!
Pick your shovels up and SNOW!
Dig your car out and SNOW!
Throw your back out and SNOW!
Come on now!
The Bills are heading to D Town now!
Snowed out of their stadium now!
Yeah yeah yeah yeah… (say you will and all that as usual)
Buffalo’s traveling now,
They’re on the move now,
The Bills are traveling now,
They're peripatetic now!
They’re playing Cleveland
And then the Lions, yeah,
They’re spending a week there
DAMN THAT STUPID WEATHERMAN!
Hey-yay-yay-yay (x4)
Let’s go from Buffalo (x4)
The Bills make it wanna…. SNOW!
I kept that grocery run pretty basic, including the much needed refill of cat kibble for the boyz. That came out as the first item on the receipt, proving that Danny Wegman can basically sell me anything:
The Goat (cheese) Log and Mush(room) choices don't look all that appetizing, either. Then, this morning, Zoey (who mostly doesn't eat the kibble) plopped on my lap and started making the thukka-thukka sounds usually preceding her hocking one up. I said, Come on, cat, I just paid nine bucks for a new one! She saved it for later.
I went back in there again just now for a few other things, and the store was mostly dead. It's the closest Wegmans to UB, and I'm guessing the students largely bailed out of town early for the TG break. We're now laid in for as long as we need to be. Rain and melt are predicted for two days from now, so, not to jinx anything, but,....
Bullets maybe dodged?
----
I promised more background about the potential bankruptcy crime I may have helped avert the other day. The court has reported it to the appropriate internal official to check into, but unless it must be some misunderstanding, here's how I, and at least one other practitioner, think it came about.
There's a legal principle underlying what this court does with unclaimed funds, and states do when handling similar "abandoned property." The word is "escheat," and it does not mean what you think it means unless you're a crook. It's an offshoot of principles like "sovereign immunity" and "it's good to be the King"- basically, if there's noplace else for an asset to go, it goes back to the government. You die with no will and no heirs, the state gets your estate. You find ten bucks on the street, your legal obligation is to take it to the police officer station and report it; you might get to play "finders keepers" after a reasonable time, but if it's ten thousand, or an uncashed certified check from a bank, or money due a dead or missing person on an insurance policy, it's going off to Albany, Augusta or Annapolis where, until someone makes a valid claim to it, the state holds onto it with varying levels of finger pressure.
There's another source of such money that is really weird and contrary to how I think things should work. Court systems also handle Other Peoples Money, in cases where it is not forgotten but simply not known who may be entitled to it or how much. Mortgage and other foreclosure proceedings occasionally wind up with "surplus" funds, and there are procedures for claimants to get them out. Another common situation: A party (let's call them "A") may be involved in a dispute between B and C over money A is holding where A knows they have to pay somebody but doesn't know whether it's B or C and doesn't want to pay twice. There's anapp procedure for that; it's called "interpleader," and either A can ask a court to decide, or one of the other parties can. Either way, A can on their own, or may be ordered to, "pay into court" the amount they're not sure about and they free themselves of any further liability to B or C by doing so.
But the money can sit there, sometimes for years, while B and C fight it out. Or don't fight it out. One may die, one may go bankrupt, the judge may be promoted to a higher court and everybody forgets about it. All of these have happened in cases I have handled. In one of them, I found out that New York requires its court financial officers to turn over those "payment into court" funds as abandoned property, usually their whole kitty once a year, when the money has been there for more than two or three years. THEN, to get the money out, the state holds on with the grip strength of Wonder Woman above, deflecting anything other than the exact language in an order to distribute, requiring multiple rounds of costs for service, certification and filing fees, which you don't get to pay out of the money in question but have to advance yourself.
Ah, but it's not like they're trying to hold onto that money forever, they will say. Many states, including New York, make lists, and often publicize their existence, so you can see if something in your name is just waiting for you! But, as with many other things in life, good luck collecting. If it really is your money, you will need to submit claim forms with identity-theftity documentation of who you are to the respective repository. There may have been, or need to be, an underlying court proceeding that would need to get (re)activated, which means filing fees. At the end, it often just isn't worth it to bother. And the New York list, at least, you can search online by just last name, and you will see an address, a date, and who paid it into the state, but you will not see how much. The main reason for that is to keep trolls out of the system who might be looking for big piles'o'cash to either steal or "help" the claimant get back. In the cases I've handled, I knew how much was involved, and used that knowledge to decide whether to go through the rigamarole.
In bankruptcy, though, it's easier. Which is nice if you're a criminal, or just incompetent, as our seemingly dead claimant from the other day must be one or the other of.
----
Bankruptcy courts do a lot of things well: process incoming filings, notify people of what's going on, decide disputes, exercise pretty broad powers to discharge debts and issue judgments for or against parties. One thing they probably do the least, and among the least well, is handle actual money. People involved in the system often don't know this: in a very early case of my original office's, a dinner theater filed a bankruptcy. Hundreds of moms and pops who'd bought tickets to upcoming shows got notices of the filing with claim forms to fill out. They'd dot every i, cross every t, attach their receipts and check copies and identification documents, then drive to the court clerk's office, pay to park, and hand their claims over to the clerk and waited for a check to be handed back to them.
Nope. Not how it works.
Payments in bankruptcy cases, in the 5-10 percent or so where there is payment, is a slow process. The court itself sends very little money out from its own coffers, but trustees appointed in cases are acting as court officers and need to account for every penny. Any uncashed checks get voided after 90-180 days and those amounts are sent to the unclaimed funds department. Like their state counterparts, these court sites can be searched, but unlike New York, these repositories can be searched by amount.
About a year ago, I did so, after accidentally clicking on the website's link to it, just to see if anything looked familiar, and one did. Boy did it. The largest single unclaimed deposit in the Western District of New York is for more than $100,000, and it's from a case I filed in my waning days in Rochester back in 1993. I filed the case for three creditors against the company, known as an "involuntary" filing, so the company was not my client. A year later, neither were the three creditors. The case bounced around for a number of years, some assets were liquidated and distributed, some unclaimed funds were returned to the court and some routinely applied for and returned, and the case closed in 2002, long after I'd had a sentient thought about it.
And then this happened: Over 100 grand came into the case from an unexpected source. And nobody wanted it.
----
More things bounced around, including a new trustee being appointed to replace the original retired one. That trustee was relieved of his duties in hundreds of cases some years later and, I heard, died from COVID sometime last year. His successor finally got around to doing something about it in early 2020, and "something" basically consisted of nothing- punting that much money into the abandon-hope pot.
I'll let him explain it: it's legalese and boringese, but click if you se habla:
( What you are about to see is true. The names have been omitted to protect the innocent. Or whatever they are. )
And so, with notices being sent to creditors over 25 years after the case was filed, nobody objected and the $100,000 went off to unclaimed funds to die. I even called my successor at the collections firm I filed the case for, to see if they had any interest in chasing the rainbow. Never heard anything, but just now, checking for this very post, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a claim filed, less than two months ago, by an unclaimed funds troll alleging it is the assignee of this pot of money!
I think I'm making another call on Monday. Assuming the courthouse isn't buried under EIGHT feet of snow by then.
Not so fast, Colonel Meteorologist.
That half-a-foot we got overnight into yesterday, much of it melted by day's end, had roughly doubled by this morning. The plows came, we've both been out for assorted errands, and while it is snowing a little, the predictions of feet have turned into inches.
Ah, but that snow had to go someplace, right? Apparently, a building in Orchard Park that's not being used this weekend anyway:
That gives new meaning to the name of the Bills stadium: the Highmark down there is well over 6 feet as of now, and they are quite vindicated in the early decision to move Sunday's game to Detroit. The team will lose over $8 million in ticket revenue and untold amounts for parking and concessions, while smaller businesses around OP, not rolling in TV billions, will suffer proportionately even more. But if you wanna go, $30 tickets at Ford Field are readily available, just 4-5 snow-free hours away via the 401 through Canada.
Making it even spookier was this: The snowstorm hitting Buffalo looks like the Bills' logo.
I saw that in Wegmans on my pre-(not)blizzard grocery run, and promptly took it as my prompt to redo the lyrics to the team's fight song:
dun dun dun dun…
The Bills make it wanna SNOW!
Pick your shovels up and SNOW!
Dig your car out and SNOW!
Throw your back out and SNOW!
Come on now!
The Bills are heading to D Town now!
Snowed out of their stadium now!
Yeah yeah yeah yeah… (say you will and all that as usual)
Buffalo’s traveling now,
They’re on the move now,
The Bills are traveling now,
They're peripatetic now!
They’re playing Cleveland
And then the Lions, yeah,
They’re spending a week there
DAMN THAT STUPID WEATHERMAN!
Hey-yay-yay-yay (x4)
Let’s go from Buffalo (x4)
The Bills make it wanna…. SNOW!
I kept that grocery run pretty basic, including the much needed refill of cat kibble for the boyz. That came out as the first item on the receipt, proving that Danny Wegman can basically sell me anything:
The Goat (cheese) Log and Mush(room) choices don't look all that appetizing, either. Then, this morning, Zoey (who mostly doesn't eat the kibble) plopped on my lap and started making the thukka-thukka sounds usually preceding her hocking one up. I said, Come on, cat, I just paid nine bucks for a new one! She saved it for later.
I went back in there again just now for a few other things, and the store was mostly dead. It's the closest Wegmans to UB, and I'm guessing the students largely bailed out of town early for the TG break. We're now laid in for as long as we need to be. Rain and melt are predicted for two days from now, so, not to jinx anything, but,....
Bullets maybe dodged?
----
I promised more background about the potential bankruptcy crime I may have helped avert the other day. The court has reported it to the appropriate internal official to check into, but unless it must be some misunderstanding, here's how I, and at least one other practitioner, think it came about.
There's a legal principle underlying what this court does with unclaimed funds, and states do when handling similar "abandoned property." The word is "escheat," and it does not mean what you think it means unless you're a crook. It's an offshoot of principles like "sovereign immunity" and "it's good to be the King"- basically, if there's noplace else for an asset to go, it goes back to the government. You die with no will and no heirs, the state gets your estate. You find ten bucks on the street, your legal obligation is to take it to the police officer station and report it; you might get to play "finders keepers" after a reasonable time, but if it's ten thousand, or an uncashed certified check from a bank, or money due a dead or missing person on an insurance policy, it's going off to Albany, Augusta or Annapolis where, until someone makes a valid claim to it, the state holds onto it with varying levels of finger pressure.
There's another source of such money that is really weird and contrary to how I think things should work. Court systems also handle Other Peoples Money, in cases where it is not forgotten but simply not known who may be entitled to it or how much. Mortgage and other foreclosure proceedings occasionally wind up with "surplus" funds, and there are procedures for claimants to get them out. Another common situation: A party (let's call them "A") may be involved in a dispute between B and C over money A is holding where A knows they have to pay somebody but doesn't know whether it's B or C and doesn't want to pay twice. There's an
But the money can sit there, sometimes for years, while B and C fight it out. Or don't fight it out. One may die, one may go bankrupt, the judge may be promoted to a higher court and everybody forgets about it. All of these have happened in cases I have handled. In one of them, I found out that New York requires its court financial officers to turn over those "payment into court" funds as abandoned property, usually their whole kitty once a year, when the money has been there for more than two or three years. THEN, to get the money out, the state holds on with the grip strength of Wonder Woman above, deflecting anything other than the exact language in an order to distribute, requiring multiple rounds of costs for service, certification and filing fees, which you don't get to pay out of the money in question but have to advance yourself.
Ah, but it's not like they're trying to hold onto that money forever, they will say. Many states, including New York, make lists, and often publicize their existence, so you can see if something in your name is just waiting for you! But, as with many other things in life, good luck collecting. If it really is your money, you will need to submit claim forms with identity-theftity documentation of who you are to the respective repository. There may have been, or need to be, an underlying court proceeding that would need to get (re)activated, which means filing fees. At the end, it often just isn't worth it to bother. And the New York list, at least, you can search online by just last name, and you will see an address, a date, and who paid it into the state, but you will not see how much. The main reason for that is to keep trolls out of the system who might be looking for big piles'o'cash to either steal or "help" the claimant get back. In the cases I've handled, I knew how much was involved, and used that knowledge to decide whether to go through the rigamarole.
In bankruptcy, though, it's easier. Which is nice if you're a criminal, or just incompetent, as our seemingly dead claimant from the other day must be one or the other of.
----
Bankruptcy courts do a lot of things well: process incoming filings, notify people of what's going on, decide disputes, exercise pretty broad powers to discharge debts and issue judgments for or against parties. One thing they probably do the least, and among the least well, is handle actual money. People involved in the system often don't know this: in a very early case of my original office's, a dinner theater filed a bankruptcy. Hundreds of moms and pops who'd bought tickets to upcoming shows got notices of the filing with claim forms to fill out. They'd dot every i, cross every t, attach their receipts and check copies and identification documents, then drive to the court clerk's office, pay to park, and hand their claims over to the clerk and waited for a check to be handed back to them.
Nope. Not how it works.
Payments in bankruptcy cases, in the 5-10 percent or so where there is payment, is a slow process. The court itself sends very little money out from its own coffers, but trustees appointed in cases are acting as court officers and need to account for every penny. Any uncashed checks get voided after 90-180 days and those amounts are sent to the unclaimed funds department. Like their state counterparts, these court sites can be searched, but unlike New York, these repositories can be searched by amount.
About a year ago, I did so, after accidentally clicking on the website's link to it, just to see if anything looked familiar, and one did. Boy did it. The largest single unclaimed deposit in the Western District of New York is for more than $100,000, and it's from a case I filed in my waning days in Rochester back in 1993. I filed the case for three creditors against the company, known as an "involuntary" filing, so the company was not my client. A year later, neither were the three creditors. The case bounced around for a number of years, some assets were liquidated and distributed, some unclaimed funds were returned to the court and some routinely applied for and returned, and the case closed in 2002, long after I'd had a sentient thought about it.
And then this happened: Over 100 grand came into the case from an unexpected source. And nobody wanted it.
----
More things bounced around, including a new trustee being appointed to replace the original retired one. That trustee was relieved of his duties in hundreds of cases some years later and, I heard, died from COVID sometime last year. His successor finally got around to doing something about it in early 2020, and "something" basically consisted of nothing- punting that much money into the abandon-hope pot.
I'll let him explain it: it's legalese and boringese, but click if you se habla:
( What you are about to see is true. The names have been omitted to protect the innocent. Or whatever they are. )
And so, with notices being sent to creditors over 25 years after the case was filed, nobody objected and the $100,000 went off to unclaimed funds to die. I even called my successor at the collections firm I filed the case for, to see if they had any interest in chasing the rainbow. Never heard anything, but just now, checking for this very post, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a claim filed, less than two months ago, by an unclaimed funds troll alleging it is the assignee of this pot of money!
I think I'm making another call on Monday. Assuming the courthouse isn't buried under EIGHT feet of snow by then.