We’ve been telling the tale of Long Beach mom Debro Saad and her daughter Star Harris: of Harris’s slip-and-fall lawsuit against a Long Beach 7-Eleven, which returns to San Pedro Courthouse for a status conference Oct. 29; and how Harris and Saad have been involved in no fewer than 36 separate legal actions since Jan. 1, 1995.

But the story becomes even more interesting when you consider some of their motivations.

“I see bigger and better for me,” Harris, 39, tells me in a telephone conversation, describing how it is that the two women have sued and been sued so many times. A former attorney familiar with the pair has a different scenario in mind.

“You’re familiar with the term ‘litigious plaintiff,’ just people that file and file and file and file?” asks attorney Timothy Ryan, Harris’s former lawyer on the 7-Eleven case. “Ultimately the court will take a stance. It’s not good. It clogs up the court system.” Saad disagrees.

“If you see it and I fought for it, it was wrong,” Saad says. “I’m not a habitual sue-er. I’m just a person who says, ‘Get the hell off of me.’ It’s not against the law to have 50 lawsuits.”

That’s not even the story’s most curious aspect. Fact is, Harris and Saad usually represent themselves in court–and they usually lose.

In the decade before filing her 7-Eleven lawsuit in 2005, Harris sued Timmons Volkswagen–and was herself sued by the State of California, a Long Beach hairstylist, and several landlords seeking back rent.

Her mother sued the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a K-Mart store in Long Beach–and was sued for back rent at least twice by landlords. Each time the women represented themselves–and lost.

Results like these should make you wonder why they’ve done without legal counsel–but the answer, coming from Harris, is surprisingly simple.

“We didn’t need ’em,” explains Harris. There you go.

Tags: 7-Eleven, California, Debro Saad, K-Mart, Long Beach, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, San Pedro, Southern California, Star Harris, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas, Timmons Volkswagen, Timothy Ryan