Josh and Aaron discuss the value of justice courts, also known as small claims courts. You don’t always need a lawyer; sometimes you can do it on your own.
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0:00:00.2 Josh: Hey, Aaron.
0:00:00.6 Aaron: Hey, Josh.
0:00:02.2 Josh: Did you know that I sued PayPal?
0:00:05.0 Aaron: I recall you suing some major corporation somewhere.
0:00:09.8 Josh: I mean, it’s no big deal, but I won.
0:00:11.6 Aaron: [laughter] You took them down.
0:00:13.7 Josh: I took them down. Do you know how I did it?
0:00:15.8 Aaron: How’d you do it?
0:00:17.7 Josh: Small Claims Court.
0:00:18.8 Aaron: Wow. Well, I’m a big fan ever since Rain Man, Judge Wapner. I’ve been checking out Small Claims Court. I think a lot of people know what that is. In Texas, we don’t call it Small Claims Court, right?
0:00:31.9 Josh: You call it JP court?
0:00:33.5 Aaron: Yeah. Justice of the Peace Court or Justice Court. It’s a total Texas name, like Justice Court.
0:00:41.3 Josh: That’s where justice happens. That’s why.
0:00:42.8 Aaron: That’s where justice happens for the little guy.
0:00:45.2 Josh: Absolutely right.
0:00:46.5 Aaron: Yeah. A lot of our clients end up needing… Well, a lot of our prospective client calls end up being directed towards Small Claims Court because sometimes people call us about wild things that are happening with their landlord or just some property damage issue, some tree fell, there’s a lot of car wash problems out there, little things that go wrong and the consumer or the just the citizen out there is unable to get redress by just calling and complaining. And they’re calling us to see if a lawyer could help. Typically, for a small enough case, the lawyer is going to put too much of a tax on that case.
0:01:31.9 Josh: That’s absolutely right. Yeah. I mean, here’s the pattern. Someone gets wronged, they have a good case. They pick up the phone and they call a lawyer because they want help. The lawyer has to get on the phone with them and explain to them that many types of cases in Texas do not allow for the recovery of attorney’s fees. Even if you win, you might go all the way to a jury trial and be successful on your claim and have spent thousands of dollars on a lawyer, helping you get there to recover less than thousands of dollars on your claim and have no way to get your lawyer’s fees back. So, in cases like that, which are more frequent than you would expect, Small Claims Court can be a really great accessible option. And it’s also true even in the case where the law might allow for the recovery of attorney’s fees. Sometimes the attorney’s fees might be too burdensome for a person to bear because you have to pay them up front or sometimes the case might just be so small that an attorney doesn’t have the time to handle them. So, what are the kind of parameters of Small Claims Court and how are the basics of how Small Claims Court or justice court actually works?
0:03:00.2 Aaron: Yeah, Small Claims Court is awesome because number one, the judge does not even have to be an attorney. They are elected. They have to be basically a reasonable person who’s capable of being elected. That’s the main criteria. It’s less intimidating. You don’t have as much formality in Small Claims Court in front of that judge. They do have control of the courtroom. There’s less formality. There’s a limit to what you can sue for in Texas. Justice court is limited to $20,000. And you can request a jury if you want, that typically are tried in front of just the judge, if it’s a straightforward issue. And then, what’s really interesting, what I really like about justice court is that if you don’t like the outcome, either side can pursue what’s called a de novo appeal and refile the court, the case in county court, which is a court of record, which is a court with a regular judge in the county. And it’s a complete do over. So the first trial just is completely thrown out. There’s no record of it. It didn’t even happen, if you file for a new case. Now, that can be bad news if the defendant does that to you, if you just succeeded. But most of the time, the defendant realizes that it’s smarter to just pay what the first trial predicted would happen. And they do pay.
0:04:22.8 Josh: Yeah, I mean, practically all of those things that you said, what that means is it’s… You’re not at a disadvantage at the end of the day, going into Small Claims Court and representing yourself, even if the other side has a lawyer. Now, might you be outmaneuvered? Might you potentially lose? Of course. However, to your point, if you lose, the consequences of that are really minimal compared to if you lose in a higher level court like a county court or a district court. And what’s really cool about justice court or Small Claims Court is a lot of the rules don’t apply. So, unlike in the practice of county court or district court, where you have this fat book of rules of procedure and rules of evidence that you go to years of schooling to learn and perfect and hone in over time, that doesn’t really exist in justice court. So, a person with no training at all who just is relying on some text messages or some emails that kind of demonstrate or prove their case, which might not be admissible under the normal rules of evidence, or you might have to jump through a bunch of hoops in front of the judge to get those admitted in a normal court of record. You can just walk into Small Claims Court and the judge in small claims or justice court gets to look at what you’ve brought and make a decision about whether or not they’re going to consider that as evidence.
0:06:05.3 Josh: And that’s extremely important because it should remove from the equation a lot of the fear or anxiety that you might have in utilizing the court system, which we’ve all seen on TV as as being basically inaccessible to people who are not lawyers. And that’s exactly the opposite of what Small Claims Court or Justice Court is designed for, which is to be accessible to everyone to give them an opportunity to pursue justice in their case. And what’s great about it as well is they’ve recently raised the limits of the amount of a dispute from $10,000, which is where it was for a very long time, up to $20,000 now. So, you can actually really get in there and have some meaningful cases decided in a way that is available to everyone and available actually pretty quickly.
0:07:11.0 Aaron: Yeah. And what’s cool about it is the judge can enforce the rules. And we’ve had entire jury trials in small claims. I’ve had like two or three jury trials in Small Claims Court, if you can believe that, where I’ve helped somebody. I usually was doing it for free for someone. And in those cases where both sides have lawyers, the judges frequently do apply the rules of hearsay, for example, and things like that. But there’s no consequence to not enforcing the rules because it’s not a court of record. And oftentimes the judges themselves are not trained on the rules of evidence. And so, it’s assumed that if it’s a layperson bringing in, like you said, a text message, talk about difficult. Like if you’re a lawyer, bringing in a text message to court requires all kinds of authentication, you have to go to the cell phone carrier, get affidavits that this is an authentic text message and get the defendant to admit this certain things about it. Whereas a layperson can walk into Small Claims Court with that text message. They might not even have it printed on a piece of paper. Sometimes they just show their phone to the judge and the judge can make a decision on that.
0:08:17.8 Aaron: And what’s interesting about Texas law is that if the case is in front of a judge as opposed to a jury, the judge is presumed to ignore irrelevant and admissible evidence. So, the judge may look at it and say, “Well, I’m not supposed to see that”, and then there’s no error. They just the judge just it’s presumed they didn’t even see it. So, it’s a very flexible tool for the regular people to use to get justice.
0:08:47.1 Josh: Yeah. And one of the advantages I’ve personally found in using Small Claims Court in my own personal life and how I’ve instructed friends and family and even prospective clients to use justice court is sometimes when you’re not… When you’re hit, you’re trying to get something accomplished outside of court, you’re trying to… Someone’s wronged you, a contractor screwed something up in your house, someone hit your car in a parking lot, something happened and you can’t but they won’t respond or they’re just not accepting responsibility, what I have found is sometimes just going through the process of initiating the lawsuit in Small Claims Court, which is extremely inexpensive, by the way, and it’s easy. You can do it online. There are people at the courthouse to help you with the filing and the service process, it’s really very, very accessible and fairly easy. Once you go through that process of formalizing your claim in a court of law. You got the attention of the other side, you have forced them to show up and raise their hand. And oftentimes that alone is enough to resolve the dispute, get them to accept responsibility, to pay what they owe you so that you can move on down the road and you’re with your life.
0:10:14.7 Josh: Now, that’s not to say that justice court or Small Claims Court is the right thing for every case. Obviously, we deal in the personal injury world and we frequently have people who call us and they think maybe that they have a minor claim because they’re having a kind of a nagging issue in their back. And we do a deeper dive to figure out what’s going on and help them get access to medical care. And we find out that there’s really something long term problematic going on there that turns their claim into something where a fair compensation far exceeds what they could get in Small Claims Court. So you have to be careful. But for those cases where there’s no kind of question about what the scope of the damages are, I just find myself giving this advice to people more and more and more these days, especially since they raise the limits of what you can recover. And I’ve had a lot of success in using it on my own in my own personal life. So I think it’s something that everyone should be informed about, everyone should take the time to be thoughtful about and, of course, have any questions about it to call us.
0:11:26.9 Aaron: Yeah, I recommend calling us regardless, because we can kind of remind you of some of the little technical rules like, “Okay, you need to find a precinct for a JP court that’s in your area. The best way to go about it is usually to go down there. They’ll help you with the forms. It’s gonna cost a couple hundred bucks to get it filed and get a constable to go serve it for you”. We’ll walk you through all that. But along the way, like you already mentioned, is we’ll also analyze just in case you have something that’s a lot bigger than $20,000. It’s sometimes good to get some input on that. This is a fun conversation. I love justice court. Anytime we wanna talk about that.
0:12:05.4 Josh: Yeah, man. It’s fantastic. So, yeah, thanks for listening.