Has anyone sued in small claims court before? | GTAMotorcycle.com

Has anyone sued in small claims court before?

PrivatePilot

PrivatePilot

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I won't say a whole lot except to say this is followup from my wife's motorcycle accident of August 2 years ago. For those who missed the post at the time, she's fine - thankfully only minor injuries despite a trip to the hospital and a 6 hour stay with a bunch of tests to ensure nothing internal was damaged...so all good there, but there was around $2500 worth of damage to the bike.

Since the accident was caused by road conditions (again, I won't go into a lot of detail here as I'd like to reserve that for our court day, but there was some pretty grievous maintenance issues, suffice to say), we filed a claim against the province for the damages as is possible in these sorts of situations...despite the fact many don't know you can do this.

There was no collision coverage via insurance anyways, and since the accident was caused by road conditions, we were advised to pursue a claim that way instead in the end.
Not surprisingly, the insurance company didn't see things our way; The road was inspected by our third party contractor such and such days and found to be in good condition, followed by saying the road condition issue was remedied within 24 hours, therefore everything is fine, blah blah blah, and denied our claim.

So we're suing the crown instead in small claims court. Filed the papers today.

I'm very well spoken in public, tend to have all my ducks in extremely straight rows, am quick to debate on the fly, and have a lot of evidence building our case, including a LOT of photos of the road issue(s) that caused the accident. Court does not intimidate me one tiny bit.

But, small claims will be a new one for me, and if the Crown actually goes past a negotiated settlement and decides to actually take it to the actual courtroom, I'll be there representing my wife.

If anyones been down the small claims court process before and could offer any knowledge, pointers, or advice, that'd be appreciated.
 
Never been through it but I wish you all the best.

Personally I think they’ll settle as it’s cheaper and faster than going through court, but they also don’t like opening doors to such claims.

The biggest concern is their argument is your wife ‘didn’t drive according to road conditions’ which is on the driver / rider.

Good luck.
 
Yes way back when I took a women to court for backing into me in a LCBO parking lot. Clearly her fault, had a cop report, but she refused to pay saying it was my fault.
In small claims court I learned that the cop report was useless w/o the cop present.
She brought a lawyer - I was after like $250 back in 1986.
Judge was good and I think he was onto her. He deemed her 80% at fault - which covered my lowest estimate.

Overall it was good learning experience. You have nothing to lose and all to gain. Judging by your prior posts you come across as a calm, intelligent, straight duck row guy, I think you'll do fine.
 
PrivatePilot said:
I won't say a whole lot except to say this is followup from my wife's motorcycle accident of August 2 years ago. For those who missed the post at the time, she's fine - thankfully only minor injuries despite a trip to the hospital and a 6 hour stay with a bunch of tests to ensure nothing internal was damaged...so all good there, but there was around $2500 worth of damage to the bike.

Since the accident was caused by road conditions (again, I won't go into a lot of detail here as I'd like to reserve that for our court day, but there was some pretty grievous maintenance issues, suffice to say), we filed a claim against the province for the damages as is possible in these sorts of situations...despite the fact many don't know you can do this.

There was no collision coverage via insurance anyways, and since the accident was caused by road conditions, we were advised to pursue a claim that way instead in the end.
Not surprisingly, the insurance company didn't see things our way; The road was inspected by our third party contractor such and such days and found to be in good condition, followed by saying the road condition issue was remedied within 24 hours, therefore everything is fine, blah blah blah, and denied our claim.

So we're suing the crown instead in small claims court. Filed the papers today.

I'm very well spoken in public, tend to have all my ducks in extremely straight rows, am quick to debate on the fly, and have a lot of evidence building our case, including a LOT of photos of the road issue(s) that caused the accident. Court does not intimidate me one tiny bit.

But, small claims will be a new one for me, and if the Crown actually goes past a negotiated settlement and decides to actually take it to the actual courtroom, I'll be there representing my wife.

If anyones been down the small claims court process before and could offer any knowledge, pointers, or advice, that'd be appreciated.
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Following and good luck. I may need to take a Tier 1 automotive supplier down the same path. Normally the company is good, unfortunately there is one specific employee that lives in his own reality which is markedly different from everyone else's (and not affected by written contracts).
 
No and Yes. I was sued by a contractor who I refused to pay. They didn't deliver the quality they promoted (seamless gutters, installed with a seam :oops: ), and the quoted price somehow changed 3 times. Not because of extras or any other agreements, this eventually undid their case and it was thrown out. I've also sued a former employer, but used a lawyer to blow up their case and got a nice settlement.

I suggest you tap into the free legal offerings around Ontario to a get a better sense of your case and what you will be going up against. Of course this might be somewhat bias's as lawyers will want to sell you services, but gets you some free research on how things can play out. There is a free service right at small claims court (at least in Toronto, it was there before COVID). Also look up free legal help Ontario which you can connect with a lawyer and discuss for an hour.

The process at SC is pretty simple it's just you, them, and an adjudicator in the room having a chat, there is nothing scary here. I felt mine was a bit against me, until I mentioned the changing pricing and she perked right up as it aligned with the consumer protection laws and then other side was done. If you are going up against the Gov, I think you will need to be either very prepared, or have representation as they will and possibly just out manoeuvre you. The Gov if anything, is all about protecting themselves. But SC is meant for the average person so it's less complicated. You could try the first round and if things aren't going well drop the case, as long as it means you don't have to pay their legal fees. I'm not quite clear on that point.

Just a thought, you could do some resarch on cars, and pot hole damage. I'm pretty sure the city is liable if your car is damaged via bad road conditions. Something similar could be applied to your case. Or I could be off base on this...
 
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@sburns i took CoT through insurance as their pothole damaged my wheel. Literally ripped it apart on my way to work.

That was an easy process. Photo and dimensions of pothole, and they prorated the tire price so I got about $150 or so out of them. No need to SC court.

This one seems like it’s trickier, but I agree…govt don’t like losing cases and opening doors for future action.
 
I've been there twice. The first time was to recover $10k from a tyrant commercial landlord.

I'm pretty good on stage and had no problem communicating my case. What I didn't understand was how the game is played. My opponents lawyer kept getting the trial rescheduled, made me show up in court several times. Each time the judge rescheduled, he'd ask me "is there anything you'd like to ask the court?", I'd say no because I had no questions. At the 4th reschedule, the judge sent some type of baseball hand signal to a lawyer sitting beside me, the lawyer leaned over and wispered the answer "yes, your honor I'd like to ask the defendent to pay my wages and expenses in coming here today, $200." I repeated the answer, the judge smiled and a few lawyers in the room chuckled. I got the $200, and $600 the next time (I asked for comp on past visits. The landlord returned my $10k.

The other time I was a witness, a riding buddy and I were riding south on Woodbine in Aurora, we hit a hard edge of a fresh pavement grind, his GS rim broke from the impact. He sued York Region for $800, they settled before going to court.
 
Thanks all....I just typed a huge reply and then hit some stupid key combination that effin deleted it all, fack.

Anyhow, Lets do this again.

- I fully expect the "riding to conditions" argument to be made if we do get to court. I have a defence for that in that on a provincially controlled paved highway there is a reasonable expectation that conditions shouldn't include what we experienced. If this sort of thing was on the 401 there would be tens of thousands of dollars of damage inside a few minutes, and likely some accidents as well as a result of vehicles losing control. And we were only doing maybe 40kph, perhaps less at the time. We were definitely riding cautiously. Hell, traffic was crawling along as this was a detour around a major construction area that had traffic backed up some distance, hence why we were on this road to begin with.

- The initial judgement from the provinces insurance adjustor indicated that this highway maintenance was controlled by a third party contractor and that they'd inspected the road beforehand and it was recorded blah blah, and then magically fixed it immediately *after* the accident (but it didn't seem to matter before?), suggesting that there was indeed some serious issues. The evidence we have will surely make any judge question exactly how these issues could be allowed to get so bad to begin with, and then be magically fixed after it caused an accident.

- She wasn't charged. The OPP officer that attended said it was road conditions. We will be filing to get a copy of the police report in which this is hopefully documented.

sburns said:
Just a thought, you could do some resarch on cars, and pot hole damage. I'm pretty sure the city is liable if your car is damaged via bad road conditions. Something similar could be applied to your case.
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This is exactly the process we engaged in to begin with and that I'm referencing. You are required to try this before proceeding to court action.. They adjudicated against us 1.5 years after the accident which was a ridiculously long time, but that's another story. We disagree with the decision hence where we're going with this.

Anyhow, as for delays and such, I don't expect the province will play these sorts of games. If they want to go to court and spend probably twice the actual cost of our claim in lawyers fees to defend the case inside the first day to show up in court, etc etc, then so be it. Costs for us will be a days pay each I guess. I might even be able to get paid for my day as our contract has wording to that effect, I'll have to check.

If they want to settle and admit no fault, great, we can do that as well - in realty is only a few K claim we've filed, very modest all things considered, I even did all the labour myself and didn't include a dime for that. I'm sure we'd have to sign documents stating no fault on behalf of the province/without prejudice, etc etc...and we walk away with some cash to cover all the money we've already spent fixing the bike and replacing gear, etc.

Worst case, we lose, and that's that I guess. We're out another ~$100 in the end for the filing fees for the case on top of everything else, but can't say we didn't try to stand up for ourselves. The actual costs (short of about $500 worth of stuff I haven't yet replaced but just bandaged up) are all sunk costs at this point anyways, the money was spent 2 years ago as the bike was unrideable until we did so.

We're not looking to get rich here or trying to claim injuries or anything like that....we just want to be made whole on about 85% of the dollars and cents involved in the accident. Hell, if I included everything including the ambulance ride, the gas involved in taking a car 3 hours north and back to collect the bike from the impound lot, the tow fee and storage, etc etc...I could easily have tacked on another $1K. But I know that will look nickel-and-dime to a judge and my goal is to come off as the exact opposite.

The province has 20 days or something I believe to respond now. Papers were served yesterday.

Here we go.
 
GreyGhost said:
Following and good luck. I may need to take a Tier 1 automotive supplier down the same path. Normally the company is good, unfortunately there is one specific employee that lives in his own reality which is markedly different from everyone else's (and not affected by written contracts).
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wait until Friday please, its my last day :D
 
sburns said:
Oo Ooo... career move, career switch? Whats going on, care to share something?
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Career switch, I'll be managing admin side of a plumbing company.
 
Check the time limit for notifying the municipality that you intend to make a claim.

I think it may be ridiculously short... something like a few days.. but am not sure.
 
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