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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.
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...
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.
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.