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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.
Where it's not about whether you win or lose, it's about bankrupting the opponent
So, you left a paper trail... Craigslist sales should always be in person, cash, and otherwise as anonymous as possible. Use a separate gmail account, fake name, protect yourself.
Loser pays would tamp down on a lot of people who use the process to punish people.
No matter where you go, there you are.
For some reason, this whole fiasco reminds me of this scene from Office Space.
With the part of the printer played by Mr. Zavodnik?
Along with
"No warranty from seller"
"Seller assumes no liability"
"All sales final"
"No Refunds"
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
It doesn't. His cased was dismissed from small claims, because he threw out the evidence (printer). He refiled in Superior Court with a bunch of new complaints. He didn't sue for $30,000, what he did was send a Request for Admission to the opponent requesting he admit to owing the 30,000 or the 300,000 or the 600,000. Marion County has a rule that if you don't respond to a Request for Admission in 30 days then you are presumed to have admitted the fact at issue. That was the plaintiff's game here. Send a bunch of requests and hope they don't respond.
He's supported and part of a whole crowd of citizens that like fleecing people by abusing the law. Why don't you advocate changing the horrible system that allows this shit in the first place? Sending one of them away isn't going to change a thing.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
The winning technique used by the plaintiff was thus:
The judge, who awarded him $30K (plus interest), acknowledged the amount is "seemingly high" and the judgment "may seem extreme for the breach of contract for the purchase of a printer." But he wrote that he's constrained by how the Supreme Court had previously interpreted a state trial rule, called Rule 36, which sets the 30-day deadline for responding to requests for admissions.
The appeal court noted:
Yes, he did, you dimwits. You sat on that rule for years and saw nothing wrong with it. You saw nothing wrong with it applied by your fellow pedigreed lawyers acting just as predatory — if only a little less obviously — against others. Suddenly, a man comes around filing his own lawsuits, representing himself in court — and you find yourself bound by your own arcane rules.
"Oh, but we did not mean for it be used that way." Well, you should not have written it that way then...
Whether the sold printer was broken, whether the seller really did try to sell a lemon — that's small potatoes. What pan Zavodnik exposed was the incompetence of Indiana's judges. Hurrah for the hacker!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Anybody can sue anybody for anything. That's how the system works. To counterbalance the potential for abuse in such a system, filers of frivolous suits are often subject to awards of attorney's fees plus sanctions for dragging blameless defendants into court. What you cannot do is bungle your defense on the assumption that a judge will eventually see you're being screwed and throw the case out. How is a judge supposed to adjudicate a dispute between two unrepresented parties who don't know or follow the rules, and both claim they're right? This guy got himself into a huge procedural mess by failing to respond properly in his first response to the lawsuit. If you get sued, especially by a litigious moron, hire an attorney immediately. These things NEVER get easier to handle later on, and it is NEVER better to try it yourself first. The best defenses to ridiculous lawsuits MUST be raised immediately, correctly, and aggressively. You want the system to work differently? Talk to your legislators. Until then, lawyer up.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
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/...
No what he's saying is, by what metric is America broken? How do you determine when something is "broken". What does that even mean? If this one thing means America is broken then every country is broken. If every country is broken is any country broken?
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.
The RIAA should have this guy on the payroll.
Dark Reflection
Not being able to sue over someone outside of small claims court for a $40 printer is not a Utopian society it is plain common sense.
Deporting what I assume are citizens, over a what is essentially a minor dispute, no one was killed, or hurt in the matter. Is essentially the same type insane overreaction that causes a $40 dispute to escalate to a $30K court case. If someone just keeps suing give them a warning or two that if they continue to do so they will be band from filing any further legal action.
This is not the fault of Zavodnik, it is the fault of the legal system that allowed it in the first place. Any sane judge should have just awarded one of them $40, any sane court of appeal should just have told the person who filed the appeal, stop wasting our time, and charged them a couple of hundred dollars in admin fees.
There no need for utopia here.
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?!"
"Because Costello did not respond to all three requests for admissions within 30 days of receiving them, and did not ask for an extension of time, as required by Indiana trial rules, Costello admitted to the liabilities and damages by default. He also did not appear at a July 2013 hearing, according to court records."
Courts don't like to be ignored. It's the worst possible thing you can do.
Respond promptly and equivocate: "I do not concede your claim. I expect to deny your claim." Equivocation lets you back away from a statement later if it turns out you were wrong or if the statement could have had some unintended legal meaning.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.