See You In Court

Jul 14, 2010

After waiting a couple of months for a check -- submitting and re-submitting an invoice -- it became clear that one of Deborah's clients had no intention of paying her for the bookkeeping work she did. "I should always go with my gut," Deborah said, referring to the fact that she had a bad feeling about the client from day one. But work is work so she tried to stick it out. In the end, though, she reached a breaking point and it was either quit or go insane. "I don't think it's a good fit," she told her client, although she may as well have told her the truth: "You're a kook."

Deborah sent an invoice for the days she worked, waited a month, resubmitted the invoice, waited another month and then began calling to see what the problem was. When she finally got the client's elderly man-friend on the phone -- a guy Deborah had met before, but whose role at the company was never made clear -- he admitted that they had no intention of paying her. "We thought is was suspicious that you quit so suddenly," he said, implying that she quit because she didn't know what she was doing.

Deborah has been doing freelance bookkeeping for years and, although it's not her passion, she's quite capable and has never had a complaint or a problem with any of her other clients.

"See you in court," she said, just like they do in the movies. She hung up the phone and immediately began investigating how to file a Small Claims suit.

Deadbeat clients are a real problem for freelancers. They aren't offered the same protection from the Department of Labor as full-time employees are. While progress is being made, for now, the only recourse for a freelancer is to take a deadbeat client to court. Fortunately, Deborah's wages fell within the limit allowed to file in Small Claims, and she was free to pursue it. Freelancers who get stiffed for thousands of dollars are up shit's creek.

I was surprised at how quickly she was able to get a court date in what, according to the New York City Small Claims Court website is one the busiest Small Claims Courts in the world (no surprise) but when we got to the courthouse and saw the clerks barking orders in their thick New Yawk accents, it was clear they didn't fuck around. "If you don't ansuh when ya name is cawled, ya case'll get dismissed and you'll be outta luck, so listen up people! And no tawking!"

Scheduled for the evening session, we arrived in the courthouse fifteen minutes early, at 6:15 PM, and sat in a room filled with about 50 or so other litigants. Deborah was well-prepared, but anxious --"I just want it to be over with already." -- but not nearly as anxious as the Weeble-shaped bald guy sitting in the row ahead of us. He was with a guy who seemed to be acting as his lawyer, although there are no lawyers at a first hearing in Small Claims Court (no doubt another reason why things moved so quickly). Maybe he was an interpreter who also happened to be helping out with some friendly advice.

The bald guy was the defendant. He was fidgety, his Jimmy-leg shook the whole row, and he kept wiping his face and wringing his hands. "I dun unnerstent why dis ist happenink," he said in what sounded like an Eastern European accent. "I didn't do annytink."

His interpreter/advisor had several pages of printed notes that had been typed in an extra-large font. "It's just procedure," he said as he flipped through the notes, finding key words and sentences to highlight with a Day-Glo yellow marker. "Even a serial pedophile can get his day in court," he said, "and this? This is way, way less than anything like that. This is nothing. But you gotta follow the procedure, that's all, otherwise whaddayou got? You got Nazi Germany."

True enough, and so, doing our part to promote the American Dream, we waited for Deborah's name to be called. When it was, she and her nemesis were sent to another room on a different floor to, again, wait for their names to be called. It was slightly awkward waiting for the elevator, but thankfully there was a bank of three or four elevators and we managed to get on a different car than Deborah's enemies.

Although the dingy yellow room we were sent to was a courtroom, it was essentially just being used as a holding pen. Glued, slightly crooked, to the back wall was a small engraved brown plastic sign -- the kind you might see on a men’s room door or a middle manager's desk -- that said, "In God We Trust." It had been painted around, not very carefully, several times. Under the sign was a Judge's bench, sans Judge, and next to that was a dingy American flag. In front of the Judge's bench were two desks, pushed together into one. Two guys were seated behind the desks, one in a Police uniform, the other in an ill-fitting suit and had a bushy salt-and-pepper mustache. They took turns calling names from a stack of papers.

At one point, a woman who was standing at the front desk muttered something under her breath as she walked away. The mustached man blew his top. "Say that again and you'll be leaving here in handcuffs!" he bellowed. The woman left the room, and a few seconds later, we could hear a disturbance in the hallway. The mustachioed man leapt from his chair and bolted out of the room. It was several minutes before he returned, and the roll call continued.

Deborah's name was the last one called. She and her nemesis were offered the choice of having the case heard immediately by an arbitrator, or scheduling a date with a Judge a month or two down the road. The only difference, at least as far as I understood it, was that by going with an arbitrator, you waived your right to an appeal, but since the filing fee for an appeal was more than the money Deborah was seeking, going with a Judge offered no advantage. Both sides needed to agree on an arbitrator; however, thankfully, Deborah's nemesis was sensible enough to want to get things over with. Once they signed their names, they were sent to another room, this one set up like a courtroom too, the only difference being that it was empty save for a woman seated in the Judge's bench. Deborah and the woman she was suing stood before the arbitrator while the elderly man-friend and I sat in the pews.

They got right to it. Deborah went first. She was focused and composed, speaking evenly, making her case. Even as the dead-beat client gave her side of things, the only sign Deborah showed of tension was reaching into her bag for her lip balm and putting it on her lips. As things progressed, they got a little heated, though nothing like some of the screaming we heard coming from behind other doors along the way. After some relatively even-tempered back and forth, the arbitrator told them she'd heard enough: "You'll get my decision in the mail in about a week."

And so we left the courthouse without knowing whether she won or not.

"I need a drink," Deborah said. We stopped at a nearby restaurant, sat at the bar, and reviewed everything that happened. "I think you won," I said. "I do, but regardless, you stood up for yourself, and I'm proud of you. If it had been me, I probably would've just written it off. Good for you, cheers."

"Cheers."