What enforcement action can be taken against a small claims court respondent? I recently applied for Simple Procedure (Form 3A) against respondent X at Edinburgh Sheriff Court. (My claim was initiated prior to 31 May 2023.) X did not respond by the deadline. Then I submitted an Application for Decision (Form 7A). As a result the Sheriff Court issued a Decision Form (13A) in early April 2023, ordering X to pay me a sum of money. But X still has not responded. What are my options now? I looked through the guidelines (especially Part 15) but I'm not sure of the best way to proceed.
At this point, since it's been more than four weeks since the order was issued, you are able to enforce the order. The delay is just to allow appeals or corrections. It is up to you to arrange enforcement, so at a high level your choices are to do nothing, or to proceed. If you do nothing then you will not get any money. If you proceed then you will spend more money, which you may or may not get back, as with the original sum. The Scottish procedure is conceptually similar to the English one that is more normally described in online resources, but the words are different. To decode things a bit, You are now trying to proceed with &quot;diligence&quot;, which means enforcing the court order. The court itself is not involved, having moved on to other things. There are several ways the money could come to you, such as &quot;arrestment&quot;, &quot;attachment&quot; and &quot;inhibition&quot;. Or, X might give you the money voluntarily. The next steps must be taken by a &quot;sheriff officer&quot; on your instruction. Despite the name being similar to &quot;sheriff&quot; as in &quot;Sheriff Court&quot;, these officers are private practitioners who are licensed by the courts to pursue debtors. You can use https://smaso.org.uk to find a sheriff officer you like. Most likely you will be able to give them all the information online. Then, they will go ahead with the first step, formally serving a &quot;charge for payment&quot; on X. Then, X has 14 days to come up with the money; if they don't, then the sheriff officer can proceed with more drastic steps. They will be able to advise based on the particular circumstances, but some broad possibilities are &quot;arrestment&quot; of X's money directly from their bank, or &quot;attachment&quot;, which is seizure of X's property to be auctioned off. If X is an employed person (rather than a business, say) then you might also arrange &quot;arrestment of earnings&quot; whereby the employer diverts a sum from X's pay to you, for whatever necessary period of time. All these come with their own rules and timescales, including processes if X's bank or employer does not comply. The sheriff officer will have to be paid for all this. The usual way is that you pay them up-front, and then that fee can be added to the diligence. All officers charge the same rates, but the fee schedule is a bit complicated depending on exactly which services are involved, how long it takes the officer to do the work, and their travel time. It is up to you to make the decisions about how much you want to spend in pursuit of the money, also taking into account the likelihood that you will actually get it. For the sheriff officer, since this is a completely routine part of the job, they will be able to give you their impression of the range of outcomes based on the specifics of X's situation.
When a judge decides a case there will be An order - e.g. &quot;Smith shall pay Jones £100,000&quot; Reasons for the decision - i.e. a description of the evidence, and the judge's findings of fact and legal reasoning. Sometimes a party, even though they have completely won, is nevertheless aggrieved by some things the judge has said in the Reasons (or in the way the judge has handled the trial - e.g. the judge's interventions). For example the judge may have said that the winning party was not a credible witness but they nevertheless won because of the evidence of other witnesses who were found to be credible. The rule in England and Wales is that you can only appeal orders. So if the order is completely in your favour you cannot appeal just because you don't like the reasons.
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.
This is explained at paragraphs 2-4 of the decision you link. There were two proceedings: a claim in the county court and an application to the Tribunal. The county court claim was transferred to the Tribunal to be consolidated with the application, and they were to be heard together. (Although, technically there should be no literal &quot;transfer&quot; or &quot;consolidation&quot;; the claim is always a county court claim, separate from the tribunal application. It is just that the matters are heard at the same occasion by inviting a tribunal judge to sit in their capacity as a county court judge. See commentary on City, University of London v. Vodafone Limited (2020).) In that circumstance, Judge Nicol was sitting as both a tribunal judge and as a county court judge. This is possible because: On 22 April 2014, the Crime and Courts Act 2013 Sch.9(1) para. 4 was brought into force, providing that judges of the First-tier Tribunal are judges of the county court and therefore able to exercise the jurisdiction of the county court, providing that a claim form has been issued and the matter has been listed for hearing by them. Stephen Jourdan, K.C., &quot;FTT Judges sitting as judges of the county court&quot; (January 2019) See also this previous Q&amp;A where this was explained.
Any eviction order (for non-payment) will not be enforced by the sheriff (as ordered by the court), and that is how evictions would happen. This is also required under the governor's order of March 20. Foreclosure entails eviction – though the order prohibits the enforcement of an associated eviction order, and doesn't prohibit starting action against a property owner. Theoretically, you could file for eviction against your tenant and at some point the petition could be granted, and the sheriff would enforce it. Those are the current legal options. Current (optimistic) projections are that evictions could happen in the second half of May.
Depends on the context Statutory timeframes Certain documents, like a Statement of Claim or an Adjudication Application, set very strict timeframes in motion by their receipt and there are real legal consequences if they are not responded to within a statutorily mandated period. For the former, failure to respond may result in a default judgement and, for the latter, it prohibits the adjudicator from considering a response. In such circumstances, the statute will set out the notice period. Contractural timeframes The document may be initiating an action where there are timeframes spelled out in a pre-existing contract. For example, what’s commonly called a “show cause notice” is a notice from one party to the other that they are invoking a contractural term that requires them to give the other party the opportunity to respond, that is, to “show cause”, why they should’t do something the contract then allows - like terminating it. In such circumstances, the contract will set out the notice period or, if the contract is silent, then a reasonable notice period is required - see below. Reasonable notice It is inherent in contracts, but also a feature of the law more generally, that when a specific notice period is not given, reasonable notice is required. What is reasonable depends on all the circumstances including the ability of the recipient to respond, the severity of the consequence of not responding, and the urgency of the issue. For example, a reasonable time to respond to an eviction notice will be longer than that required to respond to remove your vehicle that is blocking a fire escape - particularly if the building is presently on fire. Date of the notice or date of receipt? When measuring all these times, the question might arise as to whether they are from the date printed on the notice, the date the notice is delivered (or, in legal speak, served), or the date that it comes to the attention of the recipient. Again, that will depend on the circumstances and a statute or contract may measure time from any of those things. They may also have deemed receipt, that is, receipt has legally occurred even if it hasn’t factually occurred. For example, receipt may be in the ordinary course of mail for a posted letter - so for a letter posted by Express Mail, the next business day after postage even if the Post Office loses it. Any or all of these may be subject to their own measures of reasonableness. For example, even if the time is measured from the date on the notice, this would not be reasonable if the sending party waited 2 weeks before sending it. Similarly, if the recipient can demonstrate that they spent the last 6 months in a coma, it might not be reasonable to sanction them for failing to respond. The legal art of service, deemed or otherwise, is a whole subsection of law in itself.
There isn't an automatic exclusion rule for all forms of improperly acquired evidence in the UK. I can't find the exact quote but there was a judgement from a senior court that said in terms: &quot;it's not the court's job to discipline the police but to see that justice is done.&quot; However, judges have the discretion to disallow individual pieces of evidence if they think the interests of justice require it. Section 78 (1) of PACE (1984) has: In any proceedings the court may refuse to allow evidence on which the prosecution proposes to rely to be given if it appears to the court that, having regard to all the circumstances, including the circumstances in which the evidence was obtained, the admission of the evidence would have such an adverse effect on the fairness of the proceedings that the court ought not to admit it. Senior judges have been reluctant to lay down general guidelines, holding the trial judge best placed to make these decisions (although of course, subject to appeal). The foundational principle is the accused's right to a fair trial, so in principle one could appeal to the ECtHR under Article 6. However it generally takes a similar line to courts in the UK: It is not the role of the Court to determine, as a matter of principle, whether particular types of evidence - for example, unlawfully obtained evidence - may be admissible or, indeed, whether the applicant was guilty or not. The question which must be answered is whether the proceedings as a whole, including the way in which the evidence was obtained, were fair. PACE Section 78(2) is: Nothing in this section shall prejudice any rule of law requiring a court to exclude evidence. The general principle in 78 (1) does not override specific prohibitions: for instance, intercept evidence is never admissable under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
A warrant is never automatically issued. A warrant (I assume you mean arrest warrant) can be issued under court orders, if there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed. If a court orders A to pay money to B and A does not, A can be arrested. A court will not sua sponte make such an order without some petition by a harmed party. So B could sue A for the amount owed, and the burden is on B. There are criminal laws that pertain to check bouncing, for example in Washington under RCW 9a.56.060 it is a crime, but not every check-bouncing is a crime. You have to have "intent to defraud", "knowing at the time..that he or she has not sufficient funds". If convicted you will be fined, and may be imprisoned. Even in the case of a fraudulent intent, there is no automatic warrant (the police do not know what has come to pass). B does not "press charges", but they can complain to the police who may investigate and find that there is evidence of fraudulent intent (which can lead to an arrest warrant). They may also conclude that the evidence of fraud is insufficient.