You never know when your big payday is gonna come out of nowhere and surprise you.

And the farmer who is the main star of this story from Reddit hit the jackpot in a big way after some of his land was damaged and some bigwigs didn’t want to deal with him.

Check out what happened in the story below!

Won’t compensate me for my fence? Then compensate me 100 times as much for my crops!

“The malicious compliance in this story is not mine; it’s my brother in law’s.

My brother in law grows avocados in California.

Several years ago, a portion of his ranch was ravaged by a wildfire, or so he thought at first.

When the smoke cleared, it became obvious that the fire was caused by an electrical line that was blown over by strong winds and had landed on his fence, catching it on fire.

You owe me!

Since he had been planning on diversifying his crops anyway, he decided he’d simply replace his fence, replant, and move on.

To that end, he called up the electric company that owned the downed line and asked them for about $10K in compensation to replace the fence that had been destroyed by their electrical line.

They denied any and all culpability in the matter and told him that he should sue them if he didn’t like it.

Okay!

What the electric company didn’t realize was that my sister, his wife, works full time as a corporate attorney for one of the largest utilities in California, defending against cases just like this one.

At first she was concerned that this utility was a subsidiary of her employer, in which case there would be a massive conflict of interest.

Apparently legal departments frown on their employees when their husband is suing them.

Go figure.

Thankfully, after some investigation, she realized that the utility in question was completely independent of her employer, and at that point the gloves were off.

My sister didn’t represent her husband because she’s typically on the other side of these cases, but she did advise him on everything he needed to bring to court to win his case, and she helped him find a very reputable lawyer with a solid record of winning cases like these.

Not knowing what they were up against, the utility persisted in refusing to negotiate, hoping that by forcing my brother in law to trial, he would simply give up and go away.

Spurred on by my sister’s insistence that he had a solid case, he called their bluff and went to trial.

As it turns out, California takes agricultural damage very seriously, and the court conducted its own independent investigation.

Cha ching!

It estimated the total damages at around $335,000, which is over 33 times as much as my brother in law had asked for initially.

Furthermore, there is a law in California that awards triple damages in cases where agriculture is impacted, so the utility that had been unwilling to negotiate over $10K was now on the hook for over a million dollars in damages.

When all was said and done, my brother in law confided to me that he would have gladly settled for the $10K in arbitration and that it would probably have taken him over a decade to even sell a million dollars worth of crops.

The utility had to have their day in court, though.”

Check out what Reddit users had to say about this.

This reader made a funny comment.

Another individual weighed in.

This Reddit user spoke up.

Another individual shared a story.

And this person had a lot to say.

Talk about an unexpected pay day!

This seems very complicated, though.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.