A legal question (with standard disclaimers) for a friend who's being sued

In My Humble Opinion
1

Okey dokey-

I have a friend I’ve posted about on here before, and I mention this with his permission. I’ve changed or omitted some details to avoid identifying info.

He’s a very intelligent guy who makes some very stupid decisions. One involved a decision to become a truck driver. He accepted an offer from a company that offered to pay his tuition and guaranteed him a job for three years making $50,000 per year (or something like it). This was not in writing. (I know I know, I blew some veins at the time over this one.)

He and several other people from around the southeast quit their jobs and moved to a truck driving school in another state. Three weeks into it they were finally given their contracts, and for the first time they saw the fine print: if they signed they were obligated to work for the company for three years, no guarantee was made about the amount of money they’d receive, and if they quit within three years they’d owe the full amount of tuition plus interest (several thousand dollars) back to the company. I said at the time and still agree this was a very stupid thing to do on their parts (i.e. uprooting your life on a word and a handshake) but by the time they signed their contracts they had done just that- most didn’t have jobs to return to.

With my friend as with others it didn’t turn out remotely as promised. They were making less than half of the $50k per year (or something like it) they were promised and some weeks were going into debt to the trucking company. They were asked to falsify trucking documents as well (but not in such a way that it can be proven). He and several others quit in their first year, and have been pursued ever since.

Now, up to now I see the truck company as perhaps shady but not criminal- they’ve done nothing illegal that I can see (though certainly I’m not a lawyer). Their most recent act though seems to be grayer:

Today said friend is employed but has no money and is a college student, and it’s been about 5 years since this happened during which he hasn’t so much actively avoided them as he’s just moved around a lot. He received a summons to appear in civil court last week in a city that’s over 1,000 miles from where he lives over the matter of the tuition and interest (several thousand dollars). Had he received ample notice he’d have been hard pressed to make the court appearance, but here’s the thing: he got served two days after the court appearance was held in another state, where of course it was ruled in favor of the trucking company since he was a no show.

Reiterating the disclaimer that I don’t intend to act on any legal advice or suggest he do likewise, I’m just curious on a couple of matters:

1- Can he be liable for a verdict at a court appearance he wasn’t notified about until it was a done fact?

2- Would the recruiters claims about the amount of money he would make constitute any type of oral contract and if so is it even worth his time mentioning since it’s he said/they said?

3- Would it be wise for him to look up other people in the same class with him?

DISCLAIMER AGAIN: I absolve of any liability or any responsibility any poster in this thread and would never even think of advising him in any way other than advising him to seek paid professional legal advice, but I’m just curious as to whether people who have studied law or have had similar situations think he’s screwed or whether it’s worth spending the money to fight it, especially since he wasn’t given notice of the court (not that the verdict would have been any different necessarily).

My own non legal advice suggestion to him is and has for a long time been to try and work out a settlement with them for less than the full amount that can be made in payments. He doesn’t have the amount of money in full anyway and frankly wouldn’t be hurt that much by declaring bankruptcy to get out from the judgment (his credit is terrible), so they might listen.

2

A written contract over rides any oral agreement. Most contracts even state something to that effect. Your friend signed a legal binding contract and is on the hook for any amount he owes for the school.

If he has a years experience driving a truck he should easily be able to get a job with another trucking company making a decent wage.

It’s going to be hard (if not impossible) to prove any fraud. I suppose he could launch his own investigation in order to try and get some of this stuff on hidden camera and such and then maybe a lawyer might be willing to take up the case if said lawyer feels they can win the case and be paid off from any judgement.

Good luck with all that.

3

To your first point though, if he really wasn’t served notice of the case until two days AFTER the court date, that is a serious problem for the trucking company. In order for them to have gotten default judgment, they would certainly have to have provided some kind of evidence that he had been served, which if your facts are true, would have to be fraudulent. The courts, after all, would frown on someone just filing a lawsuit, never telling the other party, then ruling in default.

Of course what good this will actually do him is questionable. I mean the court might set aside the judgment and reopen the case, but then he’d still have to have some sort of defense, which if he signed a contract he probably doesn’t.

4

Disclaimer: The following is not legal advice, and is quite probably wrong.

I am a 2nd year law student at a decent school. I slept through most of contracts, however and did OK in CivPro.

If the facts are as you represented them, probably not. If lack of notice can be proved, the judgment can likely be successfully attacked.

However, I don’t believe you actually need to have received notice if the plaintiff made a good faith effort to get the notice to you. If your friend was really hard to find and they tried really hard and couldn’t until the last minute, it may not matter. If the mail was late, it may not matter. I think notice by regular mail was an unresolved question.

What I have in my notes:

Notice reasonably calculated to apprise all parties:

  1. Reasonably convey information
  2. Reasonable time to make appearance
  3. Does not require “heroic efforts”
  4. Reasonableness under the circumstances

You’re also entitled to a certain # of days of notice. Check the rules of civil procedure in the state your friend was sued.

Possibly more importantly, however, though I may be wrong here: if your friend has no ties to the state in which they sued him, the judgment is unenforceable anyway for lack of personal jurisdiction.

Not 100% sure, but I’m pretty sure a written contract supersedes an oral contract. However, if there is no mention of salary in the written contract, your friend might be able to argue that there was a separate oral agreement. Wouldn’t be barred by the parol evidence rule because it’s evidence of the existence of a separate agreement. If your friend could get his friends to testify to this point, it’d be pretty persuasive.

Parol Evidence legal definition of Parol Evidence Parol Evidence Rule here.

Yes, see above.

5

Since the OP is a real-life situation, not some hypothetical legal/medical question, under our new policy I’m moving it from GQ to IMHO, where everyone can express their opinion.

samclem Moderator, GQ(and IMHO)

6

This is where you need to consult with a lawyer in the state where the court appearance took place. The simple reason is, that the Rules of Court (sometimes called Rules of Civil Procedure in some jurisdictions) in that state would answer this question to the extent that your friend could (a) mount a defense to the default based on the fact that the Rules were violated/ignored; or (b) know for sure that the Rules allowed such an event to take place, and he is thus liable. As it is now, I would doubt that the Rules would allow for this, but you never know. IAAL, but not in any state of the USA.

Here, you’re looking for two things in the Rules:

– The amount of notice he is required to be given. This should be obvious, and will be spelled out in the Rules.

– Whether the plaintiff had to apply for service ex juris in order to serve your friend in another state. IME, orders for service ex juris always have an extra notice period (defined in the Rules) tacked on, by virtue of the fact that it will always take longer to serve someone at a distance. This extra notice should allow the documents to be served in time.

If an irregularity in service or notice took place; the ruling could most likely be challenged. But the Rules will answer the question of whether an irregluarity took place.

This is general information that may or may not prove useful, depending on the Rules of the state in question. Again, I’d suggest consulting a lawyer in the state in question, as the lawyer should know the Rules easily. But published versions of the Rules should also be available to the layperson at a law library or online, if your friend is willing to plow through materials that can sometimes be denser than legislation.

7

No advice for your friend, but some miscellaneous comments/questions:

(1) Am I wrong that the verbal promises would in fact take precedence over the written fine print, at least if you could prove the verbal promises were made?

(2) I didn’t know that Board policy was to allow asking for legal advice, as long as you posted a disclaimer. I had a thread shut down (because Mod said “I was asking for legal advice”) even though I didn’t want legal advice – I’d already gotten free legal advice via a friend: it told me what I already knew, but didn’t answer my practical non-legal question!

(3) That Fly-by-night company is not the only agency with confused chronology about deadlines. Ordinary airmail from U.S.A. reaches me in seven days, but an agency of the U.S. Treasury routinely sends me letters “that must be responded to in 30 days from the date on the letter”, and uses some mailing method that takes 30 days to reach me! :smack:

8

Thanks for input. Again, my non-professional legal advice to him is to see professional legal advice (most large cities have a service that will refer you to an attorney where you can consult them for a relatively small fee the first time) and try to work out some kind of settlement and repayment plan, because even if the judgment is unenforceable all putting it aside will do is postpone the inevitable.

Ever love somebody too much to yell “I TOLD YOU SO… AGAIN!” but still want to yell it… again?