Is there any particular reason that Small Claims court monetary limits are generally higher in Canada than in the US? By Province/Territory in Canada: https://neighbourhoodlegal.ca/2022/05/15/small-claims-court-monetary-limit-across-canada/ By State in US: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/small-claims-suits-how-much-30031.html
Two factors are at play. Currency Exchange Rates First off, don't forget that the Canadian numbers are in Canadian dollars while the U.S. numbers are in U.S. dollars. One Canadian dollars = 0.77 U.S. dollars. The monetary claim limits in U.S. dollars in Canadian courts (at this rate) are as follows: The Civil Division of the Provincial Court of Alberta hears claims up to $50,000. ($38,500 USD) The Civil Resolution Tribunal hears claims up to $5,000 ($3,850 USD) The Provincial Court of British Columbia’s Small Claims Court hears claims from $5,001 to $35,000 ($26,950 USD) The Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench’s Small Claims Court hears claims up to $15,000. ($11,550 USD) The Small Claims Court of New Brunswick hears claims up to $20,000. ($15,400 USD) The Provincial Court of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Small Claims Court hears claims up to $25,000. ($18,250 USD) The Territorial Court of the Northwest Territories hears claims up to $35,000 ($26,950 USD) The Nova Scotia Small Claims Court hears claims up to $25,000. ($18,250 USD) The Nunavut Court of Justice’s Small Claims Court hears claims up to $20,000. ($15,400 USD) The Ontario Superior Court of Justice’s Small Claims Court hears claims up to $35,000. ($26,950 USD) The Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island’s Small Claims Court hears claims up to $16,000. ($12,320 USD) The Small Claims Division at the Court of Québec hears claims up to $15,000. ($11,550 USD) The Provincial Court of Saskatchewan’s Small Claims Court hears claims up to $30,000. ($23,100 USD) Yukon’s Small Claims Court hears claims up to $25,000. ($18,250 USD) The Term &quot;Small Claims Court&quot; Is Used Differently Second, this isn't an apples to apples comparison. The Canadian limits are for what would be called limited jurisdiction civil courts in the U.S., (except perhaps, British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal) and aren't strictly equivalent to U.S. small claims courts which are a bit like the &quot;Judge Judy&quot; show or &quot;The People's Court&quot; on U.S. television But, most U.S. jurisdictions distinguish between small claims cases, which have a lower dollar limit and in which plaintiffs cannot commence cases with lawyers, and have an extremely simplified process, and ordinary civil cases in limited jurisdiction courts, which still have lots of parties without lawyers, and have greatly simplified and shortened pretrial civil procedure, but have higher dollar limits and allow either party to be represented by lawyers without limitations. Most adversarial U.S. limited jurisdiction court cases that are not small claims court cases are filed by professional debt collection firms on behalf of businesses, en masse with many cases resolved by default judgment, or involve protective orders (e.g. in domestic violence situations). The charts below for U.S. Courts (from here as of 2015 and hence seven years out of date) illustrate the difference. As of 2022, Colorado's limits are $7,500 USD for small claims court and $25,000 for its limited jurisdiction court. Some states, like New York State, have different jurisdictional limits in limited jurisdiction courts in different parts of the state. According to the body text, some limited jurisdiction courts in the U.S. can entertain claims up to $200,000 USD (i.e. Mississippi and Texas). Intrastate Federalism Many courts of limited jurisdiction in the U.S. are part of local governments (e.g. a city or municipal court) rather than part of the state court system. State governments have often been reluctant to grant much authority to civil courts which are outside the state court system (that state legislatures can regulate directly) to local governments. In contrast, all of the limited jurisdiction courts in Canada are part of either a provincial level court system, or the courts of a self-governing territory (also, while not precisely on point, while Canada has federal courts, the jurisdiction of Canada's federal courts is very limited and the federal court dockets make up only a tiny part of the total judicial system case load in Canada).
As described, no. Paying employees with benefits instead of money is called in kind remuneration. There are various limits on in kind payments around the world, including the US. Very generally, in kind payments are only allowed for particular industries and occupations, only allowed up to a certain dollar value, and only allowed as a certain fraction of the employee's wages. Furthermore, the value of the benefit can't exceed the actual cost to the employer - a meal that's priced at $7.25 on the menu is sold at a profit, and would be worth less than the menu price as in kind remuneration. So, given the scenario described, a restaurant employer could not replace 100% of their employee's wages with food sold for the same amount. It's too high a percentage of the wage paid as in kind payment, and the menu price equivalent of the wage would not have sufficient in kind value. A more detailed description of in kind payment laws can be found here. It's a rather long document that's not particularly well-organized, and is structured by describing various aspects of law in different geographic locations, rather than describing all aspects of the law in a location-specific manner. I was able to find US-specific law by searching the document for "United States".
Typically in defamation law, claims made persuiant to litigation are not defamatory, since they are going to be tested for validity if the case goes to trial. I'm not familiar with any differences in what is generally done in settlements between the U.K. and the U.S., but since both are Common Law countries, and Settlements are very common in civil proceedings in the U.S., it's a good start. Generally a settlemant can occur anytime before the verdict of the case is rendered, although usually it will happen after preliminary hearings during the Discovery phase. In the U.S., Discovery is very broad and one need not prove that the requested items contain evidence but might contain evidence. This means that, for example, you could request a substantial amount of e-mail records from the opposing party because somewhere on the company e-mail server, there might be something to help your case. And even if after you sift through the emails and find no smoking guns related to your case, you could find some dirty laundry that's unrelated but still damning... if not more so than the initial case. Many people, especially big compainies, would rather just give the ex-employee some what he/she wants, if it means they don't get to see the proverbial man behind the curtain. Additionally the practice might fall into a legally gray area of the law that, if it reaches trial, could hurt the company or even the industry if a judge rules against the company, effectively saying that this gray area is now definately illegal. Better to eat the loss of capital with the settling out of court than to take the much larger hit of the buisness practice being illegalized all together. Typically in settlements, both parties agree to terms and sign a contract. While the whole of the terms are never discussed, almost all include that the plaintiff will drop the case and never bring the matter to court again and that both parties will sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) meaning that they won't discuss the rest of the settlement terms with anyone not party to them. If the plaintiff does break the NDA, the defendant can sue for breech of contract and recover at the least the monitary compensation they awarded in the settlement. Conversely, if the respondent breaks the NDA, the plaintiff can refile their initial suit with the addition of breech of contract (and this time it will get to court... and all the dirty laundry sees the harsh light of day.). While the respondent in a settled case can possibly sue for defamation if the plaintiff said the respondent did what the initial suit claimed they did (legally, it was never proven or disproven), or they were guilty (again, since no verdict was reached at trial, no guilt was established), the breech of contract is a much more airtight case and doesn't open up discovery to the respondent's cupability in the settled case (since the breech is about discussing the settled case at all, not the validity of the accusations of the settled case). Typically they would not go this route because then it opens the can of worms the settlement was trying to keep a lid on.
Fee Shifting In Various Jurisdictions Spain (at least as of 1984) has rules on fee shifting (or the lack thereof) very similar to the American rule. The other countries of the E.U. (as of 1984) had rules similar to those of Britain's loser pays rule, although there was significant variation in detail from country to country that made this less of an omnibus statement than it might seem. See Werner Pfenningstorf, &quot;The European Experience With Fee Shifting&quot;, 47(1) Law and Contemporary Problems 37 (1984). Most countries with civil law systems (i.e. those systems based upon the civil code tradition of Continental Europe rather than the common law tradition of England or something else entirely) outside of Europe in Africa and Asia are derived from the French Civil Code (most of West, Northwest and Central Africa, for example), or the German Civil Code (Korea and Japan, for example), and probably have followed in the footsteps on their parent legal traditions on this issue. This is also true of most formerly Communist Eastern European countries. Most countries in Spanish speaking Latin America, however, have legal systems derived from the Spanish legal tradition (and national constitutions modeled on that of the U.S.), so other countries besides the U.S. and Spain without automatic fee shifting to a prevailing party are probably located in Latin America. Some of these Latin American countries, however. probably adopted fee shifting rules of their own, and many of these countries declared independence from Spain before Spain adopted its civil code, so the extent to which those countries follow the Spanish model may not be as complete as in countries that gained independence later on. It is also worth noting that, however, in most civil law countries, the fees that an attorney can charge are usually significantly more highly regulated than in the United States, so the possibility of extremely high litigation fees is lower. Furthermore, civil litigation, in general, involves lower attorney fees on average in civil law countries (and in Islamic law and Chinese style Communist countries) than in the United States, in litigated cases, because the process is less attorney resource intensive due to civil procedure differences. So far as I know, fee shifting is also not used in Islamic law countries, where the basic assumption is that the parties are often pro se (i.e. without lawyers) and the institution of a professional legal class post-dates the establishment of the relevant legal rules. I do not know what the situation is in the People's Republic of China or similar legal systems. The American Rule It also bears noting that there are many exceptions to the &quot;American rule&quot; in U.S. law. While the American rule does not shift attorney fees, fees for out of pocket litigation expenses such as filing fees, copying charges, and expert witness fees are shifted as a matter of course to the prevailing party. Most professionally drafted written agreements have fee shifting provisions. Many specific statutes (e.g. civil rights actions and many labor law and consumer rights enforcement cases) also have fee shifting provisions (sometimes one sided, sometimes two sides). Fees can also be awarded in certain kinds of breach of fiduciary duty litigation contexts and in cases involving a dispute over a &quot;common fund&quot;. In divorce cases, litigation costs of both sides are often (really usually) allocated by the court in proportion to ability to pay, as &quot;winning&quot; and &quot;losing&quot; are ill defined. The biggest areas where fees shifting would be unusual in the U.S. would be in common law tort lawsuits, such as negligence cases (e.g. automobile accidents and slip and fall cases), strict liability products liability cases, defamation cases, intentional harm cases, and fraud actions. The American rule also applies in cases of oral contracts or contracts drafted by inexpert non-lawyers. Even in those cases various kinds of litigation misconduct can result in fee shifting. In U.S. tort cases, defendants usually have their attorney fees paid for by their insurance company, and plaintiffs often have an attorney paid on a contingent fee basis. Furthermore, awards by juries for non-economic damages and/or punitive damages often makes it possible for a prevailing plaintiff to receive full or nearly full economic loss compensation in such lawsuits, with the non-economic and/or punitive damages awards effectively providing resources to pay the attorney for the plaintiff on top of economic loss compensation for the plaintiff.
Nope. Say I sue you successfully, and the court delivers a judgement that awards $1000 in damages. It is not the responsibility of the small claims court to ensure that the judgement is fulfilled. In fact, the debtor (person who lost) can outright refuse to pay the creditor (or the person who won). They are not in violation of any law at this point. However, the creditor can ask the court for options on enforcing their judgement, and these can include, but are not limited to: Garnishing wages Providing a court order Seizure of assets (through court sheriff, don't use this yourself or you end up getting into criminal matters) and others to enforce the judgement. The debtor isn't liable for refusing, unless when they are in violation of a court order. Violating a court order is a criminal matter, and the debtor could possibly be found guilty of contempt of court. Oh, and the case wouldn't move on to a higher court. Cases go to a higher court when an appeal is made, generally when there has been an error in enforcing the law. You also need to be provided leave to make an appeal.
Someone has pulled a sample motion of this type off of PACER (the public access Internet portal to civil filings in federal court). The example is more formal and structured than a lot of state court motion practice would be, however (e.g. few state court's require or encourage motions with a table of contents and a table of authorities). This example is 36 pages long, and many states don't even allow motions to run for more than 10-15 pages without leave of the court to do so in advance. There is a New Jersey federal court example here which is also on the formal and fussy side (although, in part, because the motion isn't just an arbitration motion and is also raising several additional unrelated issues which if omitted would cut it in half). See also one here. Another example, from a California state court, is closer to the mark for a typical state court filing. A court that handles residential landlord-tenant matters is probably even more &quot;casual&quot; and probably expects motions to get to the point more quickly. The core content is probably solid, although it would have to be customized to reference the state law statutory and procedural rules rather than the federal rules of civil procedure, and to analyze and set forth the facts of your case rather than those of some random person whose pleading is linked. This would also have to be adopted to state court practice standard, which typically uses different formatting for captions, signature blocks, whether or not line numbering is required, etc., and is often subject to other requirements. Some require that a certificate of service be filed as a separate document, while others routinely incorporate it in the main document. Many state courts require that a proposed order be submitted with a motion as a matter of state or local court rules, a few states require a cover sheet to be filed with motions, many states require you to confer with the other side in the case and to recite their position opposing or supporting the motion, or something in between, before filing it, and some courts require you to notify them once the deadline for a response has passed, regarding whether an opposition has been filed to the motion's request for relief or not. Similarly, some states courts require that motions be &quot;verified&quot; (i.e. have their allegations confirmed under oath) or supported by an affidavit setting forth the factual matters alleged in them. New York State structures a lot of motions as &quot;orders to show cause&quot; in which the court preliminarily reviews the relief requested and issues an order telling the other side that it will do something if they don't file an objection showing good cause for the court not to rule in that way by a given day, which must be formally delivered (i.e. &quot;served&quot;) upon the other side by a deadline. I don't know if New Jersey local motion practice is similar. Many court systems also charge a &quot;new case&quot; filing fee for motions to compel arbitration that does not apply to other kinds of motions. Ideally, you'd want to review some motions (about pretty much anything) to get a feel for how this is usually done in New Jersey.
What you are referring to is a Rule 68 (FED. R. Civ. P. 68) offer of judgment (OOJ). Thus far, nearly every jurisdiction's court of appeals has refused to construe these as being binding on the Plaintiff if the offer is denied, even if it offers complete remuneration, especially in a putative class action. The underlying reasons when applied to a certified class differ fairly substantially from an individual plaintiff or a non-certified class. However, there are some kinds of cases where a Rule 68 offer could never fully compensate (as with cases where subjective or non-substantive forms of damage have been requested). A Rule 68 offer is a cost-flipping mechanism, often used by defense attorneys when they are making what they believe is a fair offer (very rarely is the offer one that is equal to the Plaintiff's demand, which is why this issue rarely arises). If a defense attorney makes an offer of judgment, and then the Plaintiff doesn't accept the offer, they need to get a jury verdict in an amount greater than the offer, or the costs are flipped. So, typically, if there is no OOJ and the Plaintiff wins even a nominal judgment (it can be a dollar) the Defendant always has to pay their costs, which can be substantial. When a Rule 68 offer is made, it's a carefully calculated amount that the defendant thinks the plaintiff can't get in a jury verdict, even if they win, but it's typically less than the demand. The reason a Rule 68 offer is almost never "full compensation" is that a Plaintiff's demand for settlement will typically be somewhere in the area of 3x the amount the Plaintiff's attorney estimates the case to be worth. The Plaintiff is informed of this by their lawyer, so they don't have unreasonable expectations. If you think about it, this makes sense from an ability to negotiate perspective, with the logic being that the Plaintiff wants to get as close to full value as they can, and the defense needs their client to think they've saved them from some huge judgement. If a plaintiff demanded only what the case was worth, it would have no chance of settling for true value, or if the case were to settle, the Defense lawyer wouldn't be able to move the Plaintiff down off their number in any substantial way. This way, the lawyers can play their game negotiating the case down to a fair value. Plaintiff gets what their case is worth and Defendant feels like their lawyer saved them from catastrophe. It's all illusion. The First Circuit recently joined the Second, Fifth, Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh Circuits in holding that a Rule 68 offer made prior to class certification and rejected by Plaintiff does not moot the Plaintiff’s claim. The Plaintiff, a private high school, brought the action against the corporate developer of a college-entrance exam, alleging violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and an analogous state statute related to unsolicited faxes it received. Prior to Plaintiff’s deadline to move for class certification, the Defendant made an Offer Of Judgment, offering Plaintiff the amount it could receive under the two statutes for each fax. Plaintiff did not respond within 14 days, rendering the offer withdrawn under Rule 68, and instead moved for class certification. Defendant then moved to dismiss, arguing that the withdrawn offer rendered Plaintiff’s claims moot and divested the court of subject matter jurisdiction. The district court denied the motion, holding that Plaintiff’s claim was not moot, but certified the question of whether an unaccepted Rule 68 offer, made before certification, moots the entire action and deprives the court of jurisdiction. Generally speaking, aside from very specific types of cases involving contracts, or specific types of statutory relief, a Plaintiff typically includes counts for things like NIED (negligent infliction of emotional distress), pain and suffering, loss of consortium, loss of future earning capacity &ndash; these are a few of the types of counts whereby there is no specific value a defendant could ever point to being "fully satisfied" &ndash; the reason being, a jury needs to determine the legitimate value of these claims unless the Plaintiff accepts a settlement award whereby he/she/it feels as if it's fully satisfied.
The lawyer referred to in that article is suing in his capacity as the recipient of spam emails under California's anti-spam law. Not every jurisdiction has a law like this. I'm from Australia. In Australia, when we make laws prohibiting something, the law usually appoints a government agency to administer the law and bring prosecutions under it, and fines are paid to the government. In contrast, America has a lot of these laws where affected individuals can sue and collect the fines personally. So under the Californian law, you can get $1,000 per email for particular kinds of spam even if you haven't actually suffered any real damage: California Business and Professions Code s 17529.5(b)(1)(B)(ii). How? You need to work out who sent the spam, get evidence to prove it, and file a claim in a Californian court. Apparently you can sue in small claims court, which saves you on filing fees. It helps if you have many email accounts, because then you will receive many emails and therefore can collect many fines. One of that lawyer's wins was in Balsam v Trancos (2012) in the Californian Court of Appeal. Another example of a judgment discussing the Californian anti-spam law is Bontrager v Showmark Media.