Few consumers take advantage of opportunity

ON A TYPICAL DAY in Fredericksburg’s small-claims court, the clerk rattles off name after name.

Plaintiffs and defendants don't get on the stand. They just walk up to the judge and he asks questions.

There are no lawyers. The dollar amounts at stake are small. It’s rather informal.

Each case lasts maybe a minute, perhaps two if it’s complicated.

It’s assembly-line justice.

But unlike “The People's Court” or “Judge Judy,” few of these cases involve regular people suing big companies or even regular people suing regular people. Most involve a big company suing the little guy.

During a recent Monday morning session, a representative for American General Finance stood before the judge as the clerk named several defendants the company claimed owed money. Few even showed up. Banks such as BB&T and Geico Federal Credit Union sued customers over bounced checks. WFS Financial, an auto-loan company, sued clients over past-due payments.

Virginia’s small-claims court system is just a few years old, only becoming mandatory for all jurisdictions in 1999. And while it provides opportunities for regular Joes to seek justice without the expense of hiring lawyers, few take advantage of it. Stafford County, for example, only sees about 50 small-claims cases filed a year.

Perhaps it’s because people are intimidated by courts. Maybe people think it just isn’t worth taking a day off from work to fight over a few hundred bucks. Some people may not even realize it exists.

It could be because Virginia has the lowest dollar amount maximum of any state with a small claims-court: $1,000. That was one reason the state got an “F” on a legal reform group’s report card of small-claims courts. Virginia had the third-worst score of 47 states with these Courts.

Virginia’s General Assembly just passed a law doubling the limit to $2,000, but that still puts the state with the fourth-lowest limit. That change goes into effect July 1.

“It restricts small-claims courts to the most trivial matters,” explained Tom Gordon, senior counsel for HALT, the legal advocacy group that issued the report cards. “A contractor knows if they are doing a $7,000 job and they don’t do it right, that person has no recourse,” Gordon said.

Those people are in “legal limbo,” he said, because the cases involve too much money for small claims, but not enough to justify paying a lawyer.

Tennessee, by contrast, has the highest limit. People in lower--population jurisdictions there can use small-claims courts for disputes as high as $15,000, and in bigger counties can sue for as much as $25,000.

He believes other states should follow that example. The U.S. average is $4,000.

“Tennessee has had this limit for a few years now, and the sky hasn’t fallen,” Gordon said.

David Rubinstein, Fredericksburg’s only consumer attorney, said small-claims courts provide consumers with opportunities to sue over many everyday problems, such as getting a washing machine that doesn’t work properly, paying for something that wasn’t delivered or having a bank dispute over fees.

“They can just take it to small-claims court and tell it to the judge,” he said. “I think that some consumers are not aware that the small--claims court’s there and that they can use it.”

Rubinstein was on the Virginia Citizen’s Consumer Council, an advocacy group that pushed the Virginia General Assembly to establish small-claims courts here. Stafford General District Judge Harrison Braxton said he would like to see more regular people as plaintiffs on his small-claims court dockets.

Even though the courts are designed to make things easier on the average person, that isn’t always the case. Yes, the filing fees are low and lawyers are banned. “But it’s still the same courtroom,” he said. “It’s the same cast of characters. I’m not sure whether it makes a whole lot of difference.”

He said some people have misconceptions about small-claims courts.

“We’re not Judge Judy,” Braxton said with a chuckle. “We can’t handle cases that way. That’s show business. If we acted like one of those judges, we’d be fired on the spot.”

Stafford, however, was an innovator when it came to small-claims courts. The county had one of about five of the state's first small--claims courts. “We were the experiment,” Braxton recalled. “After the experiment seemed to work, all General District courts had a small-claims court section.”

Kevin O’Keefe, a former trial attorney who founded prairielaw.com, said consumers should take advantage of the tools available through small-claims courts—even in Virginia, where the limit is low. Prairielaw.com is a Web site with legal information, including a section on filing in small-claims courts.

When he would sit in on small claims courts, he rarely saw regular people as plaintiffs.

“Out of 300 cases they called, you have a handful at most of real people,” he said. “It’s scary in our society that so many people feel the law is inaccessible to them.” In some cases, O’Keefe said, threatening to file in small-claims court is enough. This works to a regular person's advantage.

Some companies will go ahead and pay to avoid wasting a day in court over such a small amount.