Another angle is word of mouth-is there a way to round up other victims of this jerk and write reviews somewhere/somehow? Just throwing that out there.
As it happens, my cousin owns a bar in Phoenix. Tuesday nights are trivia nights, karaoke on Saturdays.
If you were located in my county I’d sue his ass off for you, and start by asking you to find other people whom he has done this with. Call your competitors. He has probably done the same thing to them. I had a bookkeeper who had a lawyer do this to her. Judges know who these asses are and would love to hand it to them. Juries might take more convincing.
This sounds off to me. You may feel that representing yourself in Superior Court is beyond your ability, but I can’t see how you would be forced to hire a lawyer, especially if it was as a result of a counter-claim.
Either way, I’d call the bar association and try to find someone willing to take it on contingency/pro bono.
Absolutely.
Find a lawyer who exudes confidence they will get your money somehow or else have the guy disbarred.
Check his history and make sure he has won a lot of cases similar to yours.
Lawyers know that even if they win a judgement against you, that is just the beginning. In order to collect your money, you need about a half dozen things at work.
- the guy needs to have some real assets or income which you can attack
- you need some alternate avenue to attack - e.g. if you win but he doesn’t pay, you can make a complaint with the Law Society or the Bar. you need to speak to a lawyer to determine which strategy may be successful.
But you **absolutely ** need the help of a lawyer to succeed. Make sure you find one who is confident he can get the money for you. If he tells you he can without investigating the guy, you can be pretty sure he is wortless and you can forget it. Why? Because he needs to know the guy has some kind of income or real property that he can attack. No lawyer can tell that without doing some kind of investigation.
Finally, if the work you did was good and he sent you a letter claiming it was not finished, can you go to his property when he is not there and “re-possess” some of the materials you put there?
After all, if the work was good and you take it back (or at least the major components) then he will have a strong motive to pay. But you absolutely must check with a lawyer first about this. Otherwise, you could get arrested for stuff like tresspassing or theft.
But if he sent you a letter saying the work is not good or not finished, then it seems to me you have a pretty good case for going back there and doing some more work (that largely consists of you taking back the materials you left there).
But don’t do anything without a lawyer first telling you it is OK.
P.S. The behavior you described is so extremely outrageous, I would guess there is something at play in this guy’s life that is illegal - like maybe heavy drug use or trafficking or something.
If you can afford it, I would pay a little money to a detective to just look into this guy and see if you can discover anything about him that may help your cause.
Next time get paid up front. I turn away some business by doing this, but I think I’m better off in the long run. When people ask why I don’t bill for my services, I explain how often I’ve been screwed over the years.
Just IMHO, but I used to work with a lot of attorneys professionally. And I know a fair number personally. I wouldn’t say all or even most, but a fair number of lawyers think they can bully people around by virtue of the fact that they have a JD. They assume most people who don’t deal with lawyers or don’t bother to learn the specifics of the law will just cave, worried that the lawyer will somehow use their magical law powers against them.
The reality is, most courts and the bar do not look favorably on having their time wasted with frivolous lawsuits. And there is more to a court case than sending an intimidating letter.
Also keep in mind that they don’t “have free legal advice”. Time spent building and pursuing a bullshit case against you is time not spent billing clients. Not to mention potential damage to his personal and professional reputation.
My general philosophy is that bullies don’t want to “fight” you. They just want to beat you up. That is to say, even if he wins, he may not want to win at the expense of getting his nose busted (metaphorically speaking).
IANAL, but to me it seems like your best bet is to just send it to collections and let them chase down your money for you. Because fuck that guy.
Why does everyone think this douchy attorney is a guy?
Good point. The approach is pretty crude, that’s what makes me envision a man. Women usually have a more sophisticated approach when trying to screw people over in my experience.
You didn’t specify exactly what type of work you did, so this is a shot in the dark.
Is the service you provided covered under your state’s mechanic lien law?
I know that if I have a car in for repair and it does not get picked up and paid for I can have it sold at auction after 30 days.
#notalldouchyattorneys
Apparently the lawyer is a woman. See below. Bolding added by me.
:golf clap:
Regards,
Shodan
Yeah, they bitch and screech at them.
I’m actually curious as to the name of the attorney, since I work at a law firm in Phoenix 
(Although not as an attorney - I do work closely with our vendor payable people, though).
For the record, you are most definitely not required to have an attorney in Superior Court matters. Lord knows, my firm has been involved in any number of cases where the opposing party was unrepresented in Superior Court. It’s not a great idea to represent yourself in Superior Court, but it certainly happens often enough that perhaps 5% or so of the cases my firm handles are against pro se litigants (pro se = without a lawyer).
For a $3,000 total bill, small claims court is probably a reasonable alternative - although the Douchey Attorney will be able to get the matter removed to Justice Court (which allows for attorney representation, and has a higher max value of the case) as a matter of right. You won’t need your own attorney in Small Claims/Justice Court, and the Court actually is pretty responsive about providing assistance to people who are navigating the Small Claims/Justice Court system without an attorney. It is considerably less formal than Superior Court.
I’m wondering if the OP’s attorney (whose advice she should take over random message board advice) is thinking practically, rather purely academically legally. The cost to initiate litigation (presuming the OP’s attorney does so in Superior Court, where legal fees are more likely to be awarded) is likely to run between $1,000 and $2,000. Even if the Douchey Attorney folds immediately and pays the whole of what’s owed (and, let’s face it, there’s a middling likelihood any attorney who sends a letter of that stripe to a vendor they hired is going to continue douching it up for at least a while), the OP is still going to collect (in all likelihood) in the neighborhood of $1,000, and be required to put up with a certain amount of undiluted aggravation in the process. The longer the case goes on, the less money the OP is ever likely to collect. I very rarely see people fold immediately after being served with a lawsuit. Mostly they wait it out through at least a Motion to Dismiss/Motion for Summary Judgment.
Assuming the Douchey Attorney wants to press the matter all the way to trial, it will cost a bare minimum of $10,000 - $15,000 (presuming the minimum reasonable litigation is done and the simplest path to trial is taken) to litigate a matter to the point of trial. The OP will not be able to find a lawyer willing to take this sucker on contingency because even a 50% contingency is going to be $1,500. While the Superior Court may well elect to award attorneys’ fees, they aren’t super likely to award an amount for fees that is many times greater than the actual damages of $3,000, especially in the case of a business dispute where attorneys’ fees were not addressed in a written contract (or where there is not a written contract for services).
Of course, if the Douchey Attorney requested the OP’s services on behalf of a client, the OP could always approach the client directly and request payment.
** As always, I am not the OP’s lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
My BIL (excavating contractor) was also screwed out of a good chunk of his fee by an attorney who hired him. It sounds like the best piece of advice for the small independent business owner is never do work for an attorney.
At least in Florida, a company cannot represent itself in court, except in small claims cases. So, if the lawsuit is in the corporate name, the company would be required to have a lawyer. I know nothing about Arizona law, though.
He’s bluffing. No way in hell would he risk his career over 3k.
My thought too. It may be worth it to show the court (including other attorneys in the courtroom waiting for their case to be heard) what a jerk the attorney is. Better than the newspaper.
You don’t happen to run a dry cleaner do you?