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by gist 1149 days ago
Winning in small claims (or any court) and actually collecting the money are two different things.

I found a very interesting paradox from doing a fair amount of small claims cases many years ago.

Basically if we were right (we were the company making the claim and should have been paid) the defendant lied and we lost. However if we were wrong (ie the claimant was right had a valid defense to not paying) we typically won (because they were honest and we could exploit and dance around what they were saying.
2 comments
toast0 1149 days ago
Collecting the money is relatively simple if the loser has assets within the jurisdiction of the court. I've seen news stories about people lining up a sherrif to auction bank branches when BofA didn't pay their ordered damages.

Of course, the auction doesn't happen, but when the sherrif comes out, people start doing the things they need to.

Now, if there's no amazon physically in your locality, it would be harder.

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tyingq 1149 days ago
For larger companies, they may offer to settle before the court case to avoid the cost of sending a lawyer.
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gist 1149 days ago
Well maybe. But also consider that a company large or small may want to pay to send a lawyer (not to mention many companies obviously have attorneys on staff) to fight, extend, whatever simply to send a message. This would in theory be even more today with social media then pre-internet say 30 years ago (or pre social media). Why? Well it certainly pays to fight otherwise you will have all sorts of people filing claims knowing that you 'don't send a lawyer to fight it'. Because everyone typically talks and brags about what they were able to do after the fact.

Even if they don't show up and get a judgement they can then appeal or do many things to stop the enforcement process.

Also nothing to prevent an opponent for whatever reason finding a way to file a counterclaim to which you would then need to defend against and probably pay a lawyer to handle. (Meaning not in small claims court or above your knowledge level). Related note also that LLC's and Inc. must typically be represented by an attorney in court.

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