My lawyer convinced me to settle a dispute over a $2,500 invoice with a former client in Dallas 2 months ago, and I wish I had listened sooner.

Last week I realized dragging it out for 3 years racked up over $5,000 in legal fees, so has anyone else been burned by stubbornly refusing to settle small claims?

3 comments

3 Comments

ericcraig16d ago

Right after "refusing to settle small claims" I had the same exact thing happen with a client over a $1,200 landscaping job. The lawyer fees were $4,800 by the time we got to mediation, and I would have been way better off just walking away from the whole thing. My experience is that people get real stubborn about the principle of the thing, but the hard numbers don't care about your pride. Take it from me, that $2,500 settlement probably saved you from spending another year in discovery motions and court fees that would have made the original dispute look cheap.

marybutler16d ago

My brother-in-law once spent over a year fighting with his homeowners association over a bird feeder. The HOA said it was against the rules, he said it wasn't. He must have had ten back-and-forth letters with them, and at one point he actually hired a lawyer to write a nastygram. The lawyer cost him about $600, and all he really wanted was to hang a little plastic tube with some sunflower seeds. In the end, he took it down anyway because the squirrels kept knocking it over.

murray.robert16d ago

Honestly, I gotta say, the lawyer's letter was probably overkill from the start. Most HOAs have a formal appeals process that's way cheaper to go through than getting a lawyer involved. Tbh, your brother-in-law could have just looked up the HOA's covenant and bylaw documents himself, found the specific rule about bird feeders, and sent a simple certified letter pointing out the exact wording. Ngl, that $600 lawyer fee sounds like it was more about making a point than actually solving the problem, which is a shame since the squirrels won in the end anyway.