how to successfully sue someone in Small Claims Court

Small Claims Court is the People’s Court, set up for pro se representation. It was made for quick and easy judgment without all the rigamarole of the House of Horrors.

Each state has a hierarchy of civil courts ranked according to case value. Typically, each state has a Small Claims Court for claims up to their Small Claims limit and one or more courts for cases of higher value than small claims. If your claim is more than the Small Claims Court limit, you can still bring it in Small Claims. You just must reduce the amount you are asking.

Seriously consider reducing your claim to the Small Claims limit since the House of Horrors will be your forum if you do not. You really don’t want to go there! If you think you do, review our Upper Civil Courts web page and Upper Civil Courts Coach.

Before filing your case, take these two steps:

The Small Claims process is about as quick and easy as it gets. It’s informal and doesn’t involve the mumbo jumbo of the upper-level civil courts.

Anyone can use Small Claims to quickly recover money damages. In law, everything boils down to money. Payment of money is the punishment for all civil wrongs. If you’ve been damaged, money is your compensation, with a few exceptions.

Attorney representation or pro se in Small Claims Court?

Most states permit attorney representation, but pro se users pick up the torch and do it on their own. Most often there is not a need to turn your case over to counsel since the Small Claims Court has recently come into its Heyday.

Some valuable benefits have flowed from the Covid-19 pandemic, one being that the People’s Forum received a whopping overhaul delivering the Small Claims Court to the lap of the pro se litigant.

We now have platforms in most states that allow pro se litigants to access and complete forms online, file them, and in some states serve them. Not only that, but the inconvenience and disempowerment features of the Small Claims Court have fallen away due to many locales now permitting remote Zoom hearings. It doesn’t get any better than this for the Small Claims litigant who has become a beneficiary of the pandemic. Our Small Claims Court Coach is jam packed with information about these tools which are challenging to locate on your own.

Small Claims Case Value Limitation

Understanding your case value is essential for obvious reasons.

Lawsuit Analyzer^© values your case and provides a multi-phase comprehensive assessment. In the valuation process, it identifies the Small Claims Court limit for the state where you will file your case. The Help files are a mini legal education with one of the pivotal steps to drive you into Small Claims Court if the alternative is the upper civil courts.

Below is a sample Phase 5 chart from Lawsuit Analyzer^© which we’ve used in some of the other resource pages. It depicts the scenario where this claimant, a self-publishing author, will have to battle it out in the upper civil court with the printer who botched two-thirds of his books. His Recoverable Damages are $12,000 and he’s estimated to net $10,400 when he finally gets to judgment day. Is the battle really worth it when looking at the time, expense and stress involved?