房客去年搬走，造成一些damage。我们扣了她一些deposit, about $900, half of the deposit. 有一个房间被涂得乱七八糟，完全需要重新paint, other rooms also a lot of holes to patch. She only lived for two years. She also had a dog without our approval. The real hard wood floor in one place of living room翘起来，可能caused by the dog's pee. The laminate floor in her daughter's room was also bumped up probably due to the water damage. We send her the invoices and pictures before and after. Then after 5 month, she asked a lawyer sending us a letter to request us to return back her $1500 of deposit. It seems that she did not tell her lawyer that we already returned $900 more deposit to her and herself chose not to cash out. We did not response the lawyer's request. Two days ago, we searched our trial time for a traffic violation and accidently found out that the lawyer filed a small claim to use about three months ago which was one year after the tenant moved out. We did not received any paper. Then we found the lawyer filed with a wrong address, the wrong house number which caused us not receiving any paper. Our question is whether we need to go to court to correct the address, or we just ignore the claim since we have not received any paper/document. Any bad consequence if we ignore the claim since we never received any paper? Will the judge make a decision without confirmation that we received the information of the claim? 请大家帮忙集思广益。谢谢。
1. you should have responded to the lawyer's letter, then you don't have to go through this small claim hassle. If you ignore the small claim law suit, you'll spend more time later. Trust me, respond early.
2. If the trial date is in the future, call the lawyer and talk about the issue, come to an agreement, he'll withdraw the lawsuit. These lawyers are tenant's right volunteers, they are not making money, they just want to see tenants not taken advantage of. They have no incentive to waste their time for money they can't get.
If you cannot come to an agreement, tell lawyer to email you the court paper, and go to court on that date.
The lesson is do not hide your head in the sand, you'll just waste more time and money later. be proactive.
3. If the trial already happened, there is nothing you can do, just wait for their next move. No need to do anything.
The clerk's office will tell you the case status, but they cannot explain the terminologies to you or tell you what to do next, because that means giving legal advice. You are better off just print out the case status page from the website and google around the terminologies online before you go.
房客去年搬走，造成一些damage。我们扣了她一些deposit, about $900, half of the deposit. 有一个房间被涂得乱七八糟，完全需要重新paint, other rooms also a lot of holes to patch. She only lived for two years. She also had a dog without our approval. The real hard wood floor in one place of living room翘起来，可能caused by the dog's pee. The laminate floor in her daughter's room was also bumped up probably due to the water damage. We send her the invoices and pictures before and after. Then after 5 month, she asked a lawyer sending us a letter to request us to return back her $1500 of deposit. It seems that she did not tell her lawyer that we already returned $900 more deposit to her and herself chose not to cash out. We did not response the lawyer's request. Two days ago, we searched our trial time for a traffic violation and accidently found out that the lawyer filed a small claim to use about three months ago which was one year after the tenant moved out. We did not received any paper. Then we found the lawyer filed with a wrong address, the wrong house number which caused us not receiving any paper. Our question is whether we need to go to court to correct the address, or we just ignore the claim since we have not received any paper/document. Any bad consequence if we ignore the claim since we never received any paper? Will the judge make a decision without confirmation that we received the information of the claim? 请大家帮忙集思广益。谢谢。
procedural errors. Make sure you have a lawyer.
court.
We lived on 921 , he filed with 920 house number. That is why we did not receive any notification of the case.
1. you should have responded to the lawyer's letter, then you don't have to go through this small claim hassle. If you ignore the small claim law suit, you'll spend more time later. Trust me, respond early.
2. If the trial date is in the future, call the lawyer and talk about the issue, come to an agreement, he'll withdraw the lawsuit. These lawyers are tenant's right volunteers, they are not making money, they just want to see tenants not taken advantage of. They have no incentive to waste their time for money they can't get.
If you cannot come to an agreement, tell lawyer to email you the court paper, and go to court on that date.
The lesson is do not hide your head in the sand, you'll just waste more time and money later. be proactive.
3. If the trial already happened, there is nothing you can do, just wait for their next move. No need to do anything.
We will go to court to ask more information.
The clerk's office will tell you the case status, but they cannot explain the terminologies to you or tell you what to do next, because that means giving legal advice. You are better off just print out the case status page from the website and google around the terminologies online before you go.