Travel expenses? No!
None of the states recognize the expenses a litigant incurs in attending court as an item of court costs or as supporting a claim or counterclaim for monetary damages.
(An exception might be if the court were to find that the claim was so spurious and lacking of legal merit as to indicate a malicious motive.)
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Q: Could you be held responsible for the defendant corporation’s attorney fees in defending your lawsuit?
A: Under normal circumstances, only if the corporation came out on top. And then depending on the nature of the case and any applicable Texas statutory law that allows the prevailing party such costs.
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However, I fear that you may have other and more serious problems with the proposed lawsuit of which you may not be aware.
You mention that the company you dealt with has its headquarters/principle place of business “hundreds of miles away”
If that is to say that the corporation is not based in the state of Texas, and it is not registered as a foreign corporation in Texas and you intend to file in Texas, - -
How do you intend to show that a Texas court can assume personal jurisdiction over your defendant and render a judgment in your favor?
Are you sufficiently versed with the Texas’ long arm statute and the Texas case law defining what constitutes “transacting business within the state” to enable you to plead a case, even on the face of which a Texas court could assume personal jurisdiction under that long arm statute?
If so, are you familiar with the rules of civil procedures that prescribes the method of obtaining a Summons for Service for an out of state defendant, and how the service is to be made, who can effectively serve it, and the form of the return of service?
If as indicated it is your intention to file this in a Texas small claims court against an out-of-state defendant, I suggest you first inquire of the court as to whether these complicated processes can be pursued at that court level.
Because small claims courts are created to reduce some of the costs of litigation and avoid many of the established and arcane formalities, I seriously doubt that it can be done in Texas or any other state’s small claims division.
And this entire maze of procedure is aside from the legal merits of your claim.
Here you say that you “believe” the company “fraudulently misrepresented a service”.
Do you understand the legal definition of actionable civil fraud and the elements of proof needed to establish it? I have to question this as well. It takes more than sheer belief.
It takes hard. convincing evidence of a material false representation of a material fact made as an inducement.
Plus you must prove that you relied on the representation and had the right to rely on the representation and would not have entered into the transaction except for the representation. And then you must prove how you were damaged by the representation.
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I realize that legal representation can be obscenely expensive, and yet I fear that you are about to tackle something that you are not adequately equipped to handle on your own.
