Ha. Funny 
. Unfortunatly, the scenario you describe is still the best way to get justice around here. Yesterday, I watched a local late night talk show, and the host said “If you kill someone who you caught stealing from your house, YOU get sued for murder, and if you con someone, you get away with it”. Most Bulgarians (me included) are good people, but the “land” is a good environment for breeding bad ones. “Moral” is the best court system here.
That’s for sure. The guy who defaulted payment is based in the United States, which is a shame because he is giving US firms a bad name. When in fact there are many decent and high-quality US firms out there – like mine. He is a web-designer who sub-contracted out to me. There is always the possibility that he subcontracts out to contractors in other countries and is doing non-payment to them, where they would not have legal recourse against him. I being in the United States, have the legal opportunity to put a stop to this kind of unethical behavior. For that reason alone, I will file a claim against him. Even though the monetary amount (couple of hundred of dollars) is small and I can make that amount of money in the time I that I waste dealing with this guy.
It is encouraging to know that many of you have gone though the legal process. And it would be a good learning experience for me to learn the system on a small case. So that I am familiar if a “big case” happens in the future.
Thanks everyone for all the info.
small claims court sometimes bring more headaches than cash
Where I live, in Norway, being owned money is serious stuff. I had a claim of $ xxx xxx. The lawyer said: “Oh, it’s no trouble getting the money. It will just take a couple of years”.
Once upon a time I also had a guy living at my place. He never ever paid any bills. The bills kept filling up my mail box for years after he left. Nothing ever happen except for threat of legal action. After 5 years a police man came on my door, looking for him. He had to owe millions by then. In Denmark however, the police picked him up on the ferry arrival, as soon as he missed a couple of down payments on his house loan.
Yes, many times.
It has been worth it in so much as it sends out a message to people that you won’t be messed about.
It can however be a lot of trouble putting together your evidence for the case. Depends on the circumstances really.
Out of principle, if I’m owed money, I don’t let 'em get away with it.
How does small claims do that?
Of course, it is not enforceable. And the person does not get locked up in jail for this – at least not in the United States that is. But the legal process might help “deter” the person from committing the crime a second time. For some people it might deter. For other people it might be hopeless.
I was victimized before. I was deceived by my friend to signing a form which was in the end a promissory note. Hmmm, the small court decided in favor of the complainant. I immediately confronted my friend and eventually owned the fault. Must be wise next time.
However,the advantage of a small claims court is that it will prevent your client from doing the same thing to another person.
This is just not true. I know people who are serial defendants, because they keep doing the same thing over and over again. You might think that this is costly for them, but most claimants either a) don’t bother with court, or b) settle for a smaller sum. Sadly, these ‘defendants’ end up winning overall (financially, I mean).
I agree. There are plenty of unethical people who use the court system as a sort of buffer against good business practices. They are non-payers, late-payers and will only pay when there is a judgment against them sometimes. There are clients who constantly form new companies, pump them up, pay themselves, then default on all of their credits, etc. I was burned badly by a guy like that!
Most people aren’t that way, but it happens. I don’t think that winning in small claims court is really going to affect the defendant’s behavior much.
I’ve never taken someone to small claims court before, but I did threaten to with a textbook sell-back company that was not being honest with me and trying to get my book for free by some loophole in their website. I was so upset that it happened and they weren’t acknowledging their mistake at all, so I said I would file a suit if I didn’t get my book back. They sent it to me immediately. And I was ready to do the homework and go to court if it came to that, because it is principle, and it is important to be prepared to take legal action to protect yourself.
What evidence do you need? Do you need a signed contract or will email correspondence work?
You don’t ‘need’ anything but any kind of evidence to help prove your case will certainly help. You could win based on oral testimony only, but written evidence is always better!
E-mail correspondence is very effective as written evidence.
I have taken clients to small claims court and 100% of the time they have paid up without going to court. It seems that having the Sheriff knocking on their door to serve them with papers was enough to scare them into writing a check.
In Wisconsin it’s about $40 to file. I spend more in that making repeat phone calls nagging them for the money in the first place. I would definitely say it’s worth it.
Okay, unfortunately I have had to go to small claims court to make people be responsible before. Both actually were auto related.
The first I was hit by a car passing me on the right hand side on a one lane, one way road as I was turning into my driveway. The motorists was uninsured and he was boring his girlfriend’s car which was also uninsured. Instead of going through insurance because I was young and they were going to raise my rates, I sued in small claims court after arbitration failed (and by failed they pretty much gave me the finger and told me I wouldn’t get a cent ). I won in court, she appealed, and showed up 30 minutes late to here appeal. I won the appeal and got more money awarded. She still hasn’t paid to date, but she has her license suspended for 3 years at my doing. Now that I know she has graduated college, we are looking into putting a lien on any property, garnishing her wages, or selling the settlement to a collector.
The second time was recently. I was renting a townhome in San Diego which had underground parking. Something from the ceiling leaked onto my paint, like acid water, and ate away the paint in big drip patterns on my hood and quarter panel of my suv. It looks like a terradactyl took a poop on my hood hah. Well, the builder admitted to fault in emails and promised to pay me for 6 months. They failed to do so citing cash flow issues with the crappy real estate market in San Diego. Well, the day before I moved from San Diego to Austin, I filed paperwork in small claims and had the Sheriff serve them papers. The caompany promptly called me and settled before we went to court. So, it cost me about $100 in filing and process serving fees, but I got a check for 1500 to repair my car.
So, is it worth it? I think so. Whether you win or loss or even collect after winning, it is worth it. Don’t let people get away with it. A good amount of the time people will pay up when they get the summons for court.
Oh, plus it is kind of fun to see the legal system at work. Well for me it was.
Going to court should always be the last resort. There are now a number of other ways of sorting out complaints, disputes and legal problems without court action, including arbitration, mediation and ombudsmen schemes These are often called alternative dispute resolution (ADR) schemes.
Court rules require you to think about whether alternative dispute resolution is a better way to reach an agreement before going to court.
There are time restrictions for issuing claims. If you have delayed issuing proceedings for any reason, you may wish to seek legal advice before issuing your claim.
I haven’t heard of any such rules although there are plenty of ‘court’ systems. Usually an obligation to go into mediation, arbitration, etc. would be part of the agreement/contract that governed the transaction that went wrong.
In small claims it seems that the streamlined system is intentionally designed to make the system accessible to people who don’t have time or resources to explore all sort of alternative dispute resolution options.
If you have a substantial case that may be a good candidate for mediation, it might be a great option. If you have a $2500 case and you are looking for a quick resolution, small claims is the way to go.
Also, small claims is very cost effective for low value cases. And, most alternatives are not cost effective for very low value cases.
Mediation and arbitration are surprisingly expensive (although not as expensive as going to court). I had a $35,000 go into arbitration using the AAA and I wound up spending about $2500 in fees alone. The client stonewalled the entire process, rarely showed up, and ultimately the case had to go before a judge to obtain a judgment.
The whole thing took over a year and by the time it got before a judge the defendant had folded the company. I would have much preferred to take my 5k in small claims court and walked away.
Nowadays, I won’t sign contracts that obligate my company to go into mediation, then arbitration before going to court. If the contract is worth 100k+ I will certainly want to go into arbitration first, but doing both in sequence (an increasingly popular contract clause) is wasteful and takes to long. My own contracts have no mediation/arbitration for values lower than $50k, and require that we enter into ‘good faith’ arbitration effort of reasonable duration before moving to court. For much larger contracts, we have a very detailed section of the agreement which specifies the organization that will oversee any arbitration, the jurisdiction, rules etc.
Alternatives to court are increasingly valuable with larger dollar values, but this thread is about small claims and for little stuff, small claims court is very effective.
Once somebody has been taken to a County Court (Small claims) in the UK and ordered to pay they receive what is called a County Court Judgement (CCJ).
These remain a matter of record for six years unless paid in full within ten days. Thereafter they remain a matter of record even if they have been paid except that they are marked as satisfied (Paid) or outstanding.
The case is heard in the court in the plaintiffs locality usually; but it can be moved to the defendants locality if the defendants requests this and the court agrees.
It does not matter where the case is heard; all judgements are a matter of public record and cannot be hidden (unless they are not looked for).
Taking on a client without checking whether or not they have any CCJ’s is at best a little foolhardy. I would not entertain working for anybody who had an outstanding CCJ under any circumstances.
Working for somebody who has satisfied CCJ’s happens from time to time and I have no problem with it. It simply means that two people were unable to agree about something and the court became the arbiter; when the decision went against them, they paid up.
Six years in the UK and nearly all the other countries in the EEC.(European Union)