Small claims only one of the two partners?

[cbernal]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Tx

I was sued from a former customer of a business partnership that I was involved in. The customer only sued me of the two partners in the partnership. First time I have ever been sued and did not fully understand what to do in small claims. Therefore, I have a judgement against me for 10,000.00 dollars for not repsponding to the small claims suit with in the required ten days. Is there anything I can do now? If it was a partnership, shouldn't my business partner share in the burden?

There was one thousand dollars worth of work left to do on the customers truck that was left undone and the customer was not charged for the work. Why he was suing for ten thousand dollars was unclear to me. My business partner was the one who shut down the business and ran everybody out.


Sincerely,

Carlos

 

[justalayman]

depending on how the business was structured, you might not have had any personal liability.

Then, if was personal liability, the person suing could sue either of you as you would both be jointly and severally liable.

You might have an action against your partner.

Your failure to respond within the time allotted (and it surely was written directly on the complaint and summons you received) is very difficult to overcome. Generally, "I didn't know" doesn't get it. The courts expect a person that is being sued that doesn't know what to do will hire an attorney for advice. Your failure to do so it likely irreversible.

So, to find out if you do have any way of getting out of this, you need to hire a lawyer that can look at all of the specifics of the action to see if there is any justification to set the verdict aside.

 

[tranquility]

Generally, partners have joint and several liability for the acts of the partners in the furtherance of the business. That's why many make the partnership a limited liability partnership. Did you do that?

While you can ask for contribution or indemnification from other partners, you probably should have joined them to the original suit. By not doing so, and by getting a default judgment against you, you may have given up some rights against them by failing to mitigate your damages.

See an attorney.

 

[cbernal]

Thanks Tranquility. In my stupidity I thought I was just being notified about the pending suit. I did not realize that I had to return anything in writing. I did not read the paperwork very carefully. The other predicament I am in is limited amount of funds to hire an attorney. My previous business partner cleaned out the business account and I started my new business with a two thousand dollar loan which I have paid back but no profits all year. Barely scraping by and having to deal with these issues as well does not help the situation. Thousand dollars is like a hundred thousand dollars to me right now and I also had two customers give me bad checks that I am dealing with as well. VERY limited funds unfortunately.

 

[cbernal]

depending on how the business was structured, you might not have had any personal liability.

Then, if was personal liability, the person suing could sue either of you as you would both be jointly and severally liable.

You might have an action against your partner.

Your failure to respond within the time allotted (and it surely was written directly on the complaint and summons you received) is very difficult to overcome. Generally, "I didn't know" doesn't get it. The courts expect a person that is being sued that doesn't know what to do will hire an attorney for advice. Your failure to do so it likely irreversible.

So, to find out if you do have any way of getting out of this, you need to hire a lawyer that can look at all of the specifics of the action to see if there is any justification to set the verdict aside.

I was under the assumption that his notice had his name and the business name attached to it. Due to my ignorance and not reading the document well, this has me in a jam now. If I was guilty of owing the money I would make arrangements to pay the debt. After I went out of my way for the customer and moving items for him after he moved out of the area, storing personal affects of his as well. Once I removed my personal belongings from the business by order of Police, and told I couldn't remove the customers truck to my new facility, he then turns around and sues me. For being nice I got screwed it appears.

 

[justalayman]

. If I was guilty of owing the money I would make arrangements to pay the debt

.well, then you might want to try to set up payment arrangements because a judgment means the court has found you liable for the money.

I was under the assumption that his notice had his name and the business name attached to it.

If it did, it would say so right on it. If it wasn't there, then it was just you.

I did not realize that I had to return anything in writing.

did it say "You must respond within <X> days". That is usually a pretty good sign they expect you to return something.

I did not read the paperwork very carefully

.Contract and lawsuits need to be read very carefully. Failing to do so is generally not an acceptable justification to have a verdict set aside.

The other predicament I am in is limited amount of funds to hire an attorney.

You could have likely gotten some advice for very little money. Maybe even a free consultation would have given you enough advice to avoid what happened. I understand what being short of money is but sometimes you simply have to do whatever it takes to find the funds to do what you have to do. It might have saved you $10,000 in this case.

and now, you still really need to spend the money to have a consultation to see if there is any way out of this, or at least part of it.