Taking people to the small claims court

[Alan Ambrose]

I'll give you my 10c on this subject. Feel free to comment and disagree. This is all my opinion and the experience of participating in half-a-dozen small claims and a couple of bigger claims. I'm not a lawyer but the wife is and, in addition, I was well schooled by a litigation lawyer on a bigger case.

 

OK the preliminiaries:

 

1. Do the dull work to avoid getting into disputes. Be clear and thorough, read contracts, check materials, dimensions, specifications. Describe jobs thoroughly. Use contracts or detailed job descriptions. Think about and document insurance, timescales, liability, accidents, contingencies (what happens when things go wrong like illness or absence), disgreements over quality, delays. Think about dispute resolution e.g. mediation up front.
2. Try to spot what's going to go wrong ahead of time. Often, you'll have an intuition about a risk, a person or a behaviour - follow it up, even before it's caused a problem.
3. As a defensive policy: document as much as you can. Emails, photos, dates, text messages etc. If you have an otherwise undocumented call, then send an email 'confirming' the details so that it gets documented.
4. Be business like, polite and prompt at all times. If you're worked up, don't respond until you've calmed down. Take the time to 'plead your case' with cold facts and logic. Try and eliminate any emotion from your argument.
5. Be reasonable. Projects overrun, get delayed, work is sometimes not perfect, mistakes happpen. Address them promptly, be understanding and prepared to meet the other party half way. That is, try to negotiate disputes away even if it means sometimes taking small losses on the chin. Encourage the other party to explain and propose a solution, listen and try to understand their point of view.
6. Be sure who/what the legal entity is (and their formal address) that you're considering taking to court. This must be accurate. If a person or sole trader, you need to know their legal name and home or business address. If a company, you should be able to find their registered office address on companies house website. Beware social media arrangements - you may simply not accurately know who the other party is.
7. Do a fair amount of polite (or increaasingly less polite) reminding, badgering, invoicing etc until you conclude that you've exhausted all non-court options. The courts expect you to try very hard to sort our your disputes and only come to the court as a last resort. Write a 'letter before action' with a date that you're expecting the other party to respond, pay up etc including a short description of the 'claim' (e.g. you had 30 days to pay my bill and we're now at 60 days and it isn't paid).

Edited April 16 by Alan Ambrose

[Alan Ambrose]

OK what is suitable for the small claims court, particularly the money claim system?

 

1. Any simple undisputed claim for money. Client hasn't paid bill / deposit hasn't been returned / you've paid for materials or a service and they haven't been supplied.
2. Any simple 'contract breach', especially one where there's a reasonable way of calculating the cost to you. That is, the other party promised to do x and hasn't e.g. they said they would finish the job by this date and they have not and they've stopped turning up on site (claim for a reasonable amount for someone else to finish the job). Or, they promised to use this material and they've used a cheaper substitute without your agreement (claim either for the cost difference if you're prepared to accept the work or the cost for someone else to redo the job using the right material if you're not). Or, they promised to fix a problem and they've failed to do so and they've given up and are not responding - again claim for someone else to conclude the job. In all of these cases, someone else's quote for the remedial work can be the basis of your claim amount.

What isn't:

 

1. Anything less than, say a hundred quid. Anything greater than, say, £10K (by yourself), £100K (with a solicitor).
2. Anything very complex or needing expert opinions. Yes, you can do that stuff in the small claims court but you'll probably want a solicitor to guide you.

[nod]

Short story 

Friends of our daughter had a single story extension built 35m2 

original quote 124k Contracts drawn 

Builder cracked on Final bill 193k 

Took it to court and lost 10 k legal costs plus his 

There mistake was to use his SE and Architect Both backed him to the hilt 

As above as already stated 

Legal has to be the last option 

[Alan Ambrose]

The process is well documented on the .gov site, together with the fees and stages:

 

https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money

 

The money claim system is particularly simple - you create an account and start a claim with a simple 3 line description and a claim amount.

 

The other party receives a formal document from the court asking them to respond with a short timeframe - either to admit and pay the claim or dispute the claim. In my experience, more than 50% just pay up once they've received the formal documentation and considered whether they want to invest the time and deal with the hassle of the court process. Job done.

 

In my experience, a minority of people will argue their case. Some will feel justified and prepared to argue their case. Some more experienced / devious characters will attempt to put you off by playing some games.

[Alan Ambrose]

@nod - IMO I think your example falls out of my scope of a simple small-ish money claim or contract breach. It will have been decided, presumably, on the detailed contract terms and the actions of the parties under the contract i.e much more complicated arguments than: client hasn't paid my undisputed bill or I paid for this product and have not received it and the company concerned won't give me my money back.

Edited April 16 by Alan Ambrose

[Alan Ambrose]

FYI I plan to cover next:

 

1. What happens next if the other side decides to argue their case.
2. Some typical scenarios.
3. Some actual examples.

 

Edited April 16 by Alan Ambrose

[Gus Potter]

2 hours ago, Alan Ambrose said:

I'll give you my 10c on this subject. Feel free to comment and disagree.

All good stuff Alan.

 

For me as an SE and the thing that keeps me awake at night is the thought of designing something that falls down and hurts or kills folk. If I did that then there are many examples of SE's that never work again. Persoanlly I would find it a hard thing to live with, I hope it never happens.  I've seen fatalities on site. In that context sometime I see folk on BH doing stupid things structurally or things that I can see are going to cause problems with say BC compliance. But this is social media and you all wear big boy pants.

3 hours ago, Alan Ambrose said:

Be reasonable. Projects overrun, get delayed, work is sometimes not perfect, mistakes happpen. Address them promptly, be understanding and prepared to meet the other party half way.

Good advice.

 

 

 

 

 

[TommoUK]

On 16/04/2025 at 20:40, Alan Ambrose said:

I'll give you my 10c on this subject. Feel free to comment and disagree. This is all my opinion and the experience of participating in half-a-dozen small claims and a couple of bigger claims. I'm not a lawyer but the wife is and, in addition, I was well schooled by a litigation lawyer on a bigger case.

 

OK the preliminiaries:

 

1. Do the dull work to avoid getting into disputes. Be clear and thorough, read contracts, check materials, dimensions, specifications. Describe jobs thoroughly. Use contracts or detailed job descriptions. Think about and document insurance, timescales, liability, accidents, contingencies (what happens when things go wrong like illness or absence), disgreements over quality, delays. Think about dispute resolution e.g. mediation up front.
2. Try to spot what's going to go wrong ahead of time. Often, you'll have an intuition about a risk, a person or a behaviour - follow it up, even before it's caused a problem.
3. As a defensive policy: document as much as you can. Emails, photos, dates, text messages etc. If you have an otherwise undocumented call, then send an email 'confirming' the details so that it gets documented.
4. Be business like, polite and prompt at all times. If you're worked up, don't respond until you've calmed down. Take the time to 'plead your case' with cold facts and logic. Try and eliminate any emotion from your argument.
5. Be reasonable. Projects overrun, get delayed, work is sometimes not perfect, mistakes happpen. Address them promptly, be understanding and prepared to meet the other party half way. That is, try to negotiate disputes away even if it means sometimes taking small losses on the chin. Encourage the other party to explain and propose a solution, listen and try to understand their point of view.
6. Be sure who/what the legal entity is (and their formal address) that you're considering taking to court. This must be accurate. If a person or sole trader, you need to know their legal name and home or business address. If a company, you should be able to find their registered office address on companies house website. Beware social media arrangements - you may simply not accurately know who the other party is.
7. Do a fair amount of polite (or increaasingly less polite) reminding, badgering, invoicing etc until you conclude that you've exhausted all non-court options. The courts expect you to try very hard to sort our your disputes and only come to the court as a last resort. Write a 'letter before action' with a date that you're expecting the other party to respond, pay up etc including a short description of the 'claim' (e.g. you had 30 days to pay my bill and we're now at 60 days and it isn't paid).

Great advice. 👍