What legal recourse do I have as a business person?

My friend Timothy just opened a restaurant that sells individual, personal-style meat loafs for take-out. He sells all kinds of different meat loaf...turkey, southwestern style, regular homestyle, vegetarian, etc. So after a week or so he realized he didn't have enough loaf pans and he wasn't able to fulfill all his orders. He actually almost had to close his doors because of this. I told him that I knew a metal worker who had his own workshop who could probably produce the custom pans he needed. (Quick aside: The metal workers name is Turk, and we went to high school together. We were never friends and actually, we got into a couple fights at some parties. He's just this creepy guy who drives an old Thunderbird and has long black hair and wears black denim. But, I knew he had a shop, so I thought getting in touch with him would be a good idea.)

The deal was, Turk would produce 300 tin loaf pans in 10 days, delivered to me to be quality inspected, then I would confirm the quality of all pans and bring up any concerns to Turk who would be responsible for replacing any pans that weren't acceptable, and then deliver all the pans to Timothy. Turk would charge Timothy $1,800 for the loaf pans and I'd get $300 for my part in the transaction (plus a lot of free meat loaf.)

So 10 days go by and I don't get any of the pans from Turk. So I call his house and he says, "Oh I've been pretty sick, I haven't finished yet, give me three more days, k?" So I didn't feel like busting balls just because Turk was sick, so I said ok. Three days go by, and still no loaf pans. So I call up Turk again, and he's like, "Oh I'm still pretty sick, sorry." Then he starts to cough a lot and it sounds pretty fake. I tell him that he has two more days and I want all the loaf pans delivered, he says fine. Two days go by...and yep, no loaf pans. So I drive to his house and knock on his door. There's no answer, and since his door is just a broken screen door hanging off its hinges, I walked in. And what do you know, there's Turk lounging on what looks like a brand new papasan, in his underpants, smoking hash while some blond skank who also looks super strung on is shivering on the ground near him. So I was like, "Hey as*****, doesn't look like you're too sick!" And he stands up and is all like, "Well I'm sick of your BS, Eugene!" and he takes a swing at me, but he's so high he totally missed. I took a step back and started to take off my belt, and he totally mellowed out and it seemed like he was going to cry for a second. So I shouted at him to show me the work he had done, he brings to down to his shop (read: filthy basement) and points to a work bench with exactly three loaf pans made, and two of them look all out of shape. He wouldn't even look me at the eye, but he did offer me a beer and a smoke. After a little while we agreed that he had five more days to do all the work, or else.

So, and I'm sure you'll be surprised to learn, but five days go by, and I have NO loaf pans delivered to me. So I drive to Turk's house, and there he is waiting for me, holding an electric guitar. So I get out of my car and start pointing at him and yelling, just absolutely livid because Timothy said he was cutting my finder's fee in half because of the delay. All of a sudden Turk tosses the guitar over to that blond skank from before, and she starts wailing on it, he jumps up on the roof of my car and flips me off, the screen door to his house pops open and my SISTER runs out, jumps on my car with him, and starts making out with Turk! And Turk is just flipping me off going, "Two versus one, two versus one!"

I had to taking the F'ing BUS home!!!

So basically, what can I do? I don't have the loaf pans, Timothy is super pissed at me, I don't have any money because the deal didn't go through, and my sister Janet is living with Turk. WTF?!What legal recourse do I have as a business person?
Did you have an agreement that outlined payment for non-performance with either of the two parties? In fact Timothy might sue you and collect for your non-performance on the deal. You never should have placed yourself as the go-between without some kind of written agreement. Based on your story, I would say that you are what's known as "SOL."



The money in this thing is in the story, keep working on it and submit it for publication someplace.