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Man Sued For $30K Over $40 Printer He Sold On Craigslist (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader cites an article on USA Today: Selling a used, black-and-white printer through Craigslist seemed simple and straightforward to Doug Costello. It wasn't. What the 66-year-old Massachusetts man didn't know then is that he would spend the next 6 and a half years embroiled in a complicated and confusing legal dispute in Indiana over that printer, which, according to its buyer, was broken. He would find himself liable for about $30,000 in damages. He would pay a lawyer at least $12,000 in his battle to escape the legal mess. And it all started with a piece of hardware he sold online for about $40 in 2009. With shipping and other costs, the total was less than $75, according to court records.Gersh Zavodnik, the printer's buyer, has been described as "prolific, abusive litigant" who has brought dozens of lawsuits against individuals and businesses. He often asks for "astronomical" damages.
don't sell anything on the internet. i've sold on ebay back in the day when it first started and after a while it's not worth the effort. you don't make anything after all the fees, shipping supplies, time spent packing this stuff and standing in line at the post office to mail it off give old phones to parents and buy new ones for yourself. donate books and movies to your local library. donate old clothing and toys. everything else you simply throw away and stay away from craigslist unless you're looking for sex or real estate
Typically this is solved by labeling the plaintiff as a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexatious_litigation Vexatious Litigant. Then it becomes harder for the plaintiff to file lawsuits.
What we need is loser pays the winner the lowest of the 2 sets of legal fees. Let MegaCorp show up with 50 lawyers. If you have 1, that's all they're getting.
Double legal fees will be painful for the small guy, but small enough of a risk to give the right people hope if the case is strong enough.
Likewise, if small guy wins, you collect your legal fees and pay nothing to your lawyer. As it should be. Winning a court case should never be a Pyrrhic victory.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
He's what the Judicial system calls a "Vexatious Litigant".
Sadly, in the US, this is only illegal under California law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Does it work differently in any other country?
If he gets ruled as a vexatious litigant, they basically have to get a judge to sign off on every lawsuit they bring before it can go court. Which can end up making more work for whatever judge or judges get saddled with reading through that sort of nonsense....
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
actually, I had lots of great experiences with craigslist; we used it almost exclusively for finding roomates. I had a couple of issues with scammers who delayed me by a day or two, and the usual issue of occasional bad roomates, but nothing worst than you find anywhere.
It is hillariously shady sometimes, or at least, people think it is.
I found some random crap in my basement left by a long departed (evicted, deadbeat) roomate and realized I could get $50 for a turntable he left behind. So I look it up to figure a price and put it up on craigslist. I based it on model numbers and ebay postings, and knocked a few bucks off based on other posts due to missing needles (I found those much later). Well maybe the price was low because the guy who called about it was a bit sketchy about it being stolen.
They came over, they bought it, they still were all nervous. As we wrap up a buddy of mine calls, we were heading out to lunch, so I walk out with them...and he rolls up.... 50 years old, perfect silver hair, dark sunglasses, and the blackest Ford LTD obvious former police cruiser you ever saw.
They looked at me and their eyes went wide "who is that", I just smiled, said "Just a friend of mine, don't worry about it" and walked over to the car. Lol let them have their fantasy if they want. They don't need to know they just watched two IT nerds who work from home occasionally heading off to get subs and bitch about work.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Does it work differently in any other country?
In many other countries, individuals and small businesses have little or no access to the legal system. America's legal system can be abused, but it is still superior to most others. It is not difficult to defend yourself without going bankrupt. You need to educate yourself, and do as much of the work yourself. If you trust your lawyer, you will definitely get screwed. In most legal situations, your primary adversary is your own lawyer, not the opposing party. Online resources have made it far easier to go pro per.
The USAToday article is very biased. The defendant mostly screwed himself by losing documents (and then claiming he never received them) and not responding before deadlines. The courts don't put up with that crap. The facts don't matter if you don't deliver them to the court. He was an idiot, and he left the court to decide based on a preponderance of the evidence that all came from the plaintiff.
Did anyone else notice this?
"Zavodnik, a native of Ukraine who moved to the United States in 1987 under a grant of political asylum"
I'm assuming that he went to the U.S. to escape the U.S.S.R., but that fell to pieces a few years after arriving. I don't know what his current immigration status is, but wouldn't asylum eventually be revoked? Seems like you wouldn't get granted asylum from a government that no longer exist (barring the current political crisis with Crimea, which occurred over 20 years after he left).
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
this, oh this is so right! My mom handled a case wherein three guys had a $10 million dollar inheritance... after 12 years one of the brothers hadn't seen 1 dollar, so he hired my mom... She asked him what he wanted to get, his reply, "$10,000,000!!!!!" She told him that at the very most he could expect was 1/3rd and probably a lot less because the brother who had the money, was the Executor and he is legally allowed to pay himself a 'reasonable' fee for managing the money. He has been for the last 12 years. So chances are that even if he won, he'd only get 1/3rd of what was left! He decided, against her judgment to go ahead... With demanding 10 million. The judge threw out that case, but allowed him to bring another... he brought another with my mom as his lawyer. This time asking for 5 million. Judge threw it out. Allowed him to bring another. over two years he kept telling my mom to keep bringing ridiculous lawsuits that she kept telling him would not go forward... After $17,000 in legal fees, he got awarded 1.3rd of what was left, so he got $10,000. He refused to pay my mom. She sued him, the judge awarded her the $17,000. So he won and was out $7,000.
My not responding to your flame is in no way indicative of my submission to your statement, it just means I don't have t
Does it work differently in any other country?
In Germany, the judge first figures out how much we are arguing about, here: $30,000. Or $29,955 if the guy offered to return the $45. Then the judge looks up what the fees or the court and the lawyers would be for a $30,000 case, maybe $3,000 altogether. That's what court and lawyers get (court is not free).
Should the judge order a payment of $60, that's 0.2% of what they argued about, then the defendent pays $60 plus 0.2% of the cost (court and both lawyers), that's another six dollars, while the plaintiff gets $60 and pays 99.8% of the cost, that is $2,994.,
That's why people in Germany don't go to court and ask for ridiculous amounts of money.
Off-topic, but since you brought it up ...
I was four years old. My parents had an overly exuberant keeshond that delighted in nipping at me. It is possible the malevolent hound was only being playful and socializing, but to me it was behaving more like a competitive, overbearing sibling. For example, it never nipped at me when an adult was around. One winter day, after we were all outside in the snow, my mom went upstairs and this treacherous canine knocked me down from behind and nipped at my ears "playfully". Still in my one-piece snowsuit and wearing mittens, I'd had enough of this cantankerous pupstart's behavior, and I demonstrated the evolutionary advantages of an opposable thumb by grabbing his snout with both mittened hands, and finishing with a powerful argument delivered by human incisors directly upon his loathsome, black, wet nose!
Naturally, the little bitch shrieked and whined theatrically over the comeuppance, but I stood over him triumphant. "How do you like it?!"
And that's how these things would normally be handled here as well.
In fact, it is mentioned in the article that it *did* go to small claims first, where the plaintiff asked for a ridiculous court-maximum of $6000 (for a $75 online purchase). That got found in favor of the defendant after the plantiff apparently admitted to destroying/disposing of the printer and had no further evidence of it not being as described in the sale.
Only after he lost in small claims did he somehow then take it to additional courts. I have a few thoughts based on the Indiana Supreme Court actually knowing this guy by name and commenting on his usage of the courts -- but the words "libel suit" are coming to my mind so I'll just keep my impressions to myself.
In Britain, this sort of thing would probably be dealt with in a Small Claims Court, and would cost next to nothing for the defendant to represent himself. The outrageous damages would be viewed by a judge as outright silliness and dismissed; even were the defendant to lose, the most that would happen would be the cost of his printer plus the other part's costs (which he could apply to the court to "tax" if he felt them unreasonable).
This sort of thing would also likely get the serial litigant declared to be a Vexatious Litigant. the Uk Government keeps a public list of these people, who must seek a court's permission before embarking on any litigation whatsoever, because they have shown themselves to be time-wasters in the past.