Small Claims Court

[DGK]

Any idea roughly how long it takes for a claim to make it to the courtroom?

[Mailman]

About this long mailman holds hands apart

Im sure when you file your claim online it comes up with an indicative time for the hearing?

Mailman

[Clog II The Avenger]

Smc

Allow for delivery of papers to the Defendant 14 days offer having the Court stamp your papers.
Allow 14 another days for Defendant to reply with a defence.
If no Defence then ask Court for Judgement.
If a defence; prepare your papers and exchange copies with the Defendant and ask Court for Hearing date (this may take between 28 days and three months)
If you win the Defendant should pay up plus your costs (travel, loss of earnings etc) but not any solicitors costs.
(You can charge £8,30 per hour for preparation of the case)
If the Defendant does not pay up you then need to apply to the Court for enforcement, (Bailiff etc.)

[Gold Dalek]

Remember:

If you are claiming through your company you cannot represent yourself

Mine took 1.5 years from start to finish ( they settled out of court)

[wendigo100]

Remember:

If you are claiming through your company you cannot represent yourself

Mine took 1.5 years from start to finish ( they settled out of court)

Was that a claim against The Doctor?

[DimPrawn]

Illegally parked Tardis.

[DGK]

Damn, I was going to fight this myself

Perry Mason style

[AtW]

(travel, loss of earnings etc)

You may not get loss of earnings - on my court date I took day off from work, so in theory I lost earnings, but judge said that since what I took was part of my holiday allotment, I did not really lose money, so it seems I should have actually taken unpaid day off and hope that it will be covered, which it may not be.

The harder part may be getting the money after you win.

[TheMonkey]

I tend to ignore the small claims route. Pay a solicitor to write them a nice letter - usually gets further quicker without having to involve some snotty bastard judge.

[Clog II The Avenger]

Pay a solicitor

I tend to ignore the small claims route. Pay a solicitor to write them a nice letter - usually gets further quicker without having to involve some snotty bastard judge.

Paying a solicitor is not a good idea. You can not claim the costs of a solicitor back from a small claims Court. The cost of a summons is about the same as a letter from a solicitor. Another way is to fill in the Court form, don't get it stamped by the Court and fax the filled in form to the defendant with a fax cover saying that you will take the form to the Court if they don’t pay within 24hrs. (this worked well when I had a claim against Tesco for faulty goods. They paid within hours.)

When I sued an agent who was slow in paying; I was awarded loss of earnings and travel expenses for attending Court