The California nanny who has refused to move out claims she wasn't fired. She quit.

[Archae]

Source: ABC News

Diane Stretton also claims that she worked 90 straight days without a day off or even a coffee or lunch break while helping Marcella and Ralph Bracamonte care for their three children in their Upland home.

(snip)

Marc Cohen, a lawyer for the Bracamontes, told ABC News, "The family is deeply disturbed and absolutely denies all of those statements. It’s absolutely not true.”

(snip)

During Stretton's standoff with the Bracamontes, her litigious past has emerged. She has a long history of litigation and is listed on California's Vexatious Litigant List, which includes people who have been found to bring legal action that is frivolous or repetitive.

(snip)

Court documents show that when Stretton's father, John Richardson, died in 2000, his will included Stretton's two sisters, Donna Tobey and Sharon Freeburn. Richardson "specifically and expressly omitted Stretton,"

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/US/nanny-leave-fired-quit/story?id=24380108

---

Sues just about anyone and everyone, and gets chopped out of her Dad's will.
Yeah, really credible woman.

[rocktivity]

1. She's been gone since Thursday? Great!

And she may regret insisting that she quit. In addition to poking yet another hole in her credibility, her lawyers can claim that since her residency was one of her job duties, she gave up her legal right to it when she voluntarily stopped working!


rocktivity

[christx30]

2. So she quit instead of fired.

At least with this revaluation, her resume is intact.

[Demobrat]

3. She did quit.

She quit working and refused to leave her place of employment.

[rocktivity]

5. DING DING DING! Demobrat, you're our grand prize winner

She quit working and refused to leave her place of employment.

Right - she was neither a tenant nor a guest. The home was her workplace, and her living there was her compensation, not a "perk".

The family says the cops told them couldn't help because it was a civil matter. But if any other workplace called them and said that an ex-employee was refusing to leave the premises, they would have shown up and threatened to arrest them for trespassing.

Since she voluntarily decided to stop working, it was her responsibility to have someplace else to go. And has she been psychologically evaluated yet? She sounds a little schizophrenic to me.


rocktivity

[BeliQueen]

9. Employment implies that she was being compensated with something other than room and board

Since they weren't paying her, she wasn't working there. They established an illegal situation which they got trapped in.

If she was an honest employee, they would have paid her, written up a tax-form, and submitted that information to the government.

These people were scammers who got scammed.

I'm shocked that these people who were basically entered into a slave-agreement are getting such sympathy from such a progressive site.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

18. No matter which way you slice it and dice it, it was still her residence.

Last edited Wed Jul 2, 2014, 11:57 PM - Edit history (1)

If she is established as a resident, usually, iirc, 30 days, she has rights to due process of formal eviction.

She was a tenant. Wether her compensation to the landlord was labor, cash, or trinkets and beads, it doesn't matter. She still has tenant rights.

[Demobrat]

22. Yes she does, and she is milking them for all they are worth.

However, tenants DO NOT have the right to demand that the family in whose home they are squatting vacate the premises, nor do they have the right to demand their preferred meals. This woman's actions, while primarily within the law, are beyond the pale.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

23. No doubt about it.

This is a new twist but it is an old trick by scammers. A.K.A. "Professional renters"

I know a few people this happened to. People move in and never pay rent. They tie the landlord up in housing court with frivolous complaints.

[Demobrat]

25. I live in San Francisco.

None of this is new to me. Once people are in it's very hard to get them out. For the most part I think renter's protections are necessary, but this woman is just a plain old scammer.

[liberalhistorian]

20. Not only that, but she also

demanded that the family leave the home between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. People like this, however, have very little sense of shame or self-awareness. And it takes a LOT to be put on a vexatious litigant list, most courts don't like to do that unless it's absolutely clear that it's really necessary. I guess filing 36 frivolous lawsuits against anyone that even looked at her wrong would have fit the definition of necessary!

[Demobrat]

21. I saw that - and my jaw hit the floor.

She actually thinks she should be left alone to do as she pleases in these people's home for 12 hours per day! I think they should agree to her list of demands - and then take the door off her bedroom and remove the bed. Unless I missed it, her very comprehensive list of demands didnt require that they provide her with either a door or a bed.

[liberalhistorian]

24. As a former real estate paralegal

married to an attorney, I have known many tenants like this and it took forever for the owners to be able to finally do something about it. By the time they were able to do so, their house/apt./room had been trashed and/or looted. There were even cases where homeowners who'd rented out rooms or extra apts. within their houses were forced to leave their OWN HOMES, while the tenant was permitted to stay, because of such disputes and lies told by the tenants; they had to leave their own homes, and the tenants had free access to them, while the whole legal mess was being sorted out. Not every tenant is in the right, there ARE people who take advantage of the strong tenant protection laws in many states.

Now, I'm glad we have such laws and they're very important to ensure fairness for renters; there are a lot of unscrupulous landlords out there (like the one hubby and I had previously that stiffed us on the return of our deposit for no reason and the house was left in far better shape than when we first moved in). But there are bad tenants, just like there are bad landlords, and I feel really sorry for whoever ends up with this crazy selfish grifter next. The only good thing is that she's on the vexatious litigant list and there's been all this publicity in addition, so maybe she won't find it so easy to take advantage of and screw people from now on.

[Demobrat]

26. I feel sorry for the next landlord too.

Meanwhile this nutcase is accusing the homeowner of ruining her life by telling her story. I guess if her life consists of scamming people out of free housing, yeah, it's ruined.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

32. My brother had this experience with a "girlfriend"

After all of two or three weeks this surfer-drifter girl moved in with him to mine and my parents absolute horror. Then she turned around and kicked him out of his own apartment, refused to leave herself and threatened to get a restraining order and accuse him of various things.

He had about four months left on the lease that my parents had signed, so they just wrote off the damage deposit and let the landlord deal with getting rid of her. There is no doubt in my mind that this girl went into the "relationship" planning to do this.

[BeliQueen]

4. Working for room and board is not working--that's called slavery

And slavery is illegal in America.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

6. She's not working for room and board...

She's a live-in nanny. They make money as well as being given room and board. It's not slavery.

[BeliQueen]

10. She was not paid.

Her only compensation was room and board. Read the article. That's what they listed on Craigslist and that's what they agreed to.

If you want to say that--"Well she agreed to it"--it's still illegal.

Working for room and board is slavery.

Slavery is illegal in America.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

16. Oh shit...

I didn't see that. My mistake. Yeah, that's a fucked up situation.

[BeliQueen]

12. From the CNN Article

"According to the Bracamontes, Stretton started out fine when they hired her March 4 after running a background check. In exchange for room and board, Stretton was expected to help out with household chores and child care at their home in Upland, about 35 miles east of Los Angeles."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/27/us/nanny-squatter/

She was not a nanny--she was a slave.

[TBF]

15. That's not true -

Most nannies are compensated above the room & board. It's not a very high salary but often there are additional perks like your bills being covered, food provided, and transportation provided. I had such a position while taking graduate school classes at night. I went through a nanny agency to get the job.

If it's true they weren't paying her a wage she has a good lawsuit here.

[Demobrat]

17. Slaves are not free to leave.

If she didn't like the deal she made she was free to leave at any time. She didn't want to leave. She wanted free room and board in exchange for nothing.

[BeliQueen]

19. That's not entirely true

Slaves could leave anytime they wanted--most weren't kept in chains. But there was an infrastructure that supported their enslavement.

In the case of antebellum slavery, it was the threat of capture, torture, and death. In post-Civil War times it was the "company store" and "company script" where people were supposedly paid a wage, but the wages were first garnished for room and board, and the "money" they received was not legal tender and could only be used at the company store.

This woman's situation is clearly a case of the post-Civil War slavery.

Your statement shows a rudimentary understanding of slavery--it's not as clear cut as you'd like to think that it is.

[dilby]

30. She agreed to the terms.

I knew a girl who was a nanny and I thought it was a messed up situation since she only made $300 a month which is next to nothing. However she had free rent, free food, free internet, free cell phone, free laptop, free car, free gas. She even had a slush fund where they would give her money to take the kids to events, movies, zoo or lunches, she just had to give the change back along with receipts.

She worked while parents were at work and had evenings and weekends off, if the parents had to go out of town she had to work it but that was not very often. So yeah she basically made about $10 a day but with everything that was included in her job she did not mind, even went on vacations with the family and they paid for it.

[Demobrat]

31. Free rent is huge.

Especially since it's not taxable. Throw in utilities and food and that kind of deal can work well for everyone. I know somebody who rented two apartments in the same building and let the nanny live in one as part of her compensation. I never heard her complain.

[brentspeak]

33. Your celebration of modern American slavery

is consistent with your other anti-Democratic stances expressed here on DU, like this anti-union B.S. post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=678120

And the followup where you employ classic anti-union divide-and-conquer resentment rhetoric: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=678259

[Demobrat]

36. Thank you for your input.

I'm proud and honored that you took the time to check me out and give me the benefit of your purity.

[KamaAina]

7. Oh, Mr. Shef-field!

[savalez]

8. Great story but

why does this one get to stay in LBN while a boy scout shooting himself at camp gets deemed "local" and locked?

[MADem]

27. This deals with labor law, accusations of indentured servitude, and a homeless, vexatious litigant,

the Boy Scout did something that people do every day. His story is also one of gun violence, young people with access to guns, the gun control question, etc...in short, it would do better in guns.


IMO.

Now, if the Nanny pulled out an automatic weapon and killed the entire family, her story wouldn't belong in LBN either...!

[LeftyMom]

28. Because the gun nuts alert on all threads about gun violence and sympathetic hosts lock them. nt

[savalez]

29. It was

front page news on TPM, Raw Story and other left leaning websites.

[KinMd]

11. Early lead for most boring story of 2014

[Sunlei]

13. Thats what the family deserves for trying to get such cheap help.

She was observed sleeping in her car because they locked her out of the house The police said that is a civil matter.

They better room and board her, or pay her off (see their lawyer for a writeoff statement) or she will win a court case against them.

[Javaman]

14. grifters grift. nt

[Ash_F]

34. I'd be skeptical of what the employers say.

They have all the power here.

[Archae]

35. Do they?

Here in Sheboygan 2 of my relatives got hosed by renters, took them months to get the non-rent paying bums to leave, and one trashed the place he was renting from my relative, including stealing appliances.

[Ash_F]

37. Must be nice to own property.

Not defending the renters, but also not taking sides until I hear the whole story, including their side.

Renters and property owners live in two different Americas.

[Archae]

38. My own POV...

I've lived in this apartment now for 22 years, and 6 landlords.

Only had one who was simply lazy, I'd have to really lean on him to get anything fixed.

About 10 years ago I repainted the place, from off-white to light green.
The then-landlord didn't mind, he even reimbursed me for the cost of the paint.

As for the renters, I've learned the one who trashed the place he was renting was caught in Milwaukee running a meth house.

While we didn't find any drug stuff left behind, he tore the place up and stole appliances.
Most likely to fence for meth.