I watched a Judy Justice (newer version of Judge Judy) episode that was wild.
The case was about an adult son and his mom who had been living with the grandfather. They said they moved out because the grandfather “wanted his house back to himself,” and then they both moved into a landlady’s house where she rented out spare bedrooms to multiple tenants.
Both the son and the mom were claiming he didn’t have a drinking problem until after he moved into the landlady’s house, basically implying she caused it or made it worse because she was “a bully.”
At some point after moving in, the son got drunk one night, came home late, and urinated on the landlady’s couch. The landlady threw the couch out and replaced it, and the dispute was over the deposit and whether they owed her more money for the damage.
Instead of just owning what happened, they kept focusing on everything around it. They argued that the couch could have been cleaned, talked about depreciation, and even brought up using a “couch calculator” to determine value of a replacement couch (she spent $2500 on the first couch and the replacement). The mom said something along the lines of, “what if her dog had done it?”
That completely missed the point. It wasn’t a dog. It was her adult son. And even if it was a dog, the only thing that matters is whose responsibility it is. If it’s the landlady’s dog, that’s her issue. If it’s your son, then it’s yours/his.
The adult son even said later in the episode about the landlady, "She made me carry the couch outside," as if you wouldn't volunteer to do that if you have just destroyed someone's property. Sarah Lynn commented after the episode that it sounded like something a six-year-old would say.
It felt like they were arguing everything around the issue instead of the actual issue, which was just that he caused damage to someone else’s property.
Judy was clearly frustrated, especially with the mom, because instead of holding her son accountable, she was making excuses and reframing the situation in ways that avoided responsibility altogether.
The whole thing ended up feeling like a really clear example of an alcoholic and his enabling mother. Who both had an issue with taking accountability.