Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with suing

Bringing my ex to Small Claims Court

ascetic — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:31:14 -0800

I am suing my ex in small claims court for my Xbox 360, please review the evidence and help me out. So, here’s the scoop: I bought an Xbox 360 Arcade on or around Valentine’s Day of this year. The timing was purely coincidental; I already had plans for Valentine’s Day gifts. My girlfriend at the time traded in her broken Xbox 360 as credit (a $40 value). I ended up paying $195 with my debit card. We broke up, and she is claiming that the Xbox is hers. So, I am suing her in small claims court. She has the receipt (which would prove that I indeed swiped my card), which I am sure she will cleverly lose. I do have a bank statement showing that $195 was spent at Gamestop on the 14th. I contacted Gamestop and they cannot print out any duplicate receipts...

Do I have enough substantiating evidence? I know in my head that the Xbox is MINE, but how can I strengthen my argument? I will answer any questions.

Legalfilter: I need advice if we should sue or not!

freddymetz — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 18:59:02 -0800

Legalfilter: I need advice if we should sue or not! We booked a hotel online, received our booking/reservation confirmation and arrived at the hotel in DC.
They then told us that we didnt have a reservation and they were sold out.

We then called the central office and the woman there could only give us a generic excuse to do with the credit card (but if we have received the confirmation, they have received the money..right?).
What i suspect, is that they made a mistake and dont feel they can admit it and now blame it on a generic credit card error.

They also said that they cancelled the booking an hour after we booked it but we received NO information of the cancellation what so ever.

We drove 300 miles to get to the hotel where we had a reserved room and they just left us standing there in the middle of the night.
I dont think this is acceptable behaviour from a top class hotel, so what do you guys think?

If you need any more information, feel free to ask!

suing over google adwords/result

Anonymous — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:50:26 -0800

Someone is threatening to sue my client because his website is returned in search results for the other guy's company name. My client just sent a rather panicky email out to pretty much everyone he knows because someone is threatening to sue him if his site continues to come up in google searches for his company name. The full text of the threat is in french so I only have my client's translation.

Basically, one of my client's websites rents accommodation in a certain area of france so naturally they are targeting their SEO efforts and pay per click campaigns focus on the phrase " accommodation".

The guy who is threatening to sue has called his company " accommodation"

Clearly this is just a ludicrous threat but we're looking for some citations preferably in european/french law to get him to drop it, at minimal cost (ie. without having to lawyer up)

Bastard Landlord steals security depsoit (with many twists involved): What to do?

stratastar — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 13:25:16 -0800

Landlord Filter: So I'm suing my landlord, help me get my gameplan/choice of action together before I meet a lawyer... Me and two friends of mine lived in a College Park, MD off-campus apartment. The apartment building is not centeralized, each individual apt. is owned by seperate/various landlords. My landlord required a 2 months deposit for the place (came down to $1200 a piece, or $3600 total).

We payed the deposit and payed each month in full(albeit a few months were late at times, if not extremely late). He warned us that we needed to get the money in quicker, but never anything in writing. He was pretty lackidasical--more on that later).

We moved out at the end of our lease, July 1st 2006. The apartment was pretty messy, but not damaged. We had accrued nearly $900 worth of noise violation fines from the centeralized building (we had a LOT of parties). Not having the funds to pay for such, we asked our landlord to take it off our deposit (the apt. building's policy takes the fine to the landlord if the tennants don't make with the loot).

Anyways, we tried cleaning the place (it was rEALLLY messy, we lived like slobs). We worked for 2 days before our lease was out, but the chicks who moved in weren't happy with the condition (how dare they!). Aparently my landlord hired a cleaning crew one day and it was resolved.

We gave our keys directly to the new tennants because our landlord never stepped a foot in the building for the last 9 months (he lives in New Jersey, we are in College Park, MD). We called him repeatedly about our deposits, expecting aprox 2500 of the 3600 back (-900 for fines, 200ish for cleaning). He never responded.

We called him repeatedly for over a month. Finally we sent a letter FEDEX'd with sign verification, requesting to speak to him or else we would pursuit legal action. A month later (which comes to aprox. 70 days after the end of our lease), he finally sends us checks for $400 each (totally $1200), probably because of the threat of legal action in the letter. We found the sum totally unacceptable.

Researching Prince George's County law on security deposits, apparently the landlord must file any complaint on a deduction for the security deposit within 30 days. If he does not do anything within 45 days, you are granted the right to sue for the entire amount plus up to 3 times compensatory damages.

My roomates, who are very broke, want to sue for the maximum (which would be $10800, or 3x3600). We lost our copy of the lease, which could be problematic, but we do have copies of the checks we made out to him at the begining of the lease, showing the $3600 collectively up front.

Is it worth suing him, if we have to inccur legal fees? How can we get out of legal fees (free public defenders perhaps) ? Is it ethical to sue for so much, when in fact, we owe aprox $1000 dollars collectively via the fines/cleaning?

P.S. our landlord is a bastard so there is a sense of vindication; he never fixed anything in our place, we had to do it ourselves (and we didn't complain-- we're like cockroaches; we adapted). We did not damage the place and we payed way too mcuh for the going rate in the area.

We have a meeting with a lawyer on Thursday, but the lawyer smells expensive ($250 an hour) and I'm not sure if she will give us a completely unbiased opinion.

Should we try to squeeze as much as possible? Is it a viable option? Should we settle for the $400 and just find his address and impugn our own revenge (just kidding)?

You're in good hands.

itchie — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 19:41:57 -0800

In an Allstate commercial I have seen, the narrator tells a tale of a car that smashes into a house. The narrator continues to explain that the family got sued by the driver of the car. Can any lawyer-types out there explain to me how this is legally possible? To me (someone completely unaffiliated with anything having to do with the law), this seems odd - how can it be possibly legal for the driver of the car to sue the family, although they had no wrongdoing? I can't find the commercial online, and I'm pretty sure that's what was said in the commercial. If I'm wrong on any accounts, please correct me accordingly. Thank you in advance.