Small Claims Court Research Articles

Voice and Context in Simulated Everyday Legal Discourse: The Influence of Sex Differences and Social Ties

Everyday legal discourse refers to the spoken language with which ordinary people constitute the law-in-action. In this article, we experimentally investigate the social distribution of rule- and relationally-oriented discourse found by ethnographers in small-claims court settings. We examine the influences of sex differences and social ties between disputants on these types of discourse in a mock small-claims setting using a quantitative content coding scheme. We do not find empirical support for sex differences in the production of simulated everyday legal discourse. The relational context of a dispute (operationalized as the strength of social ties between disputants) has significant effects on the distribution of rule- and relationally-oriented discourse, so that disputants in relationally-close contexts produce more relationally-oriented discourse and those in relationally-distant contexts produce more rule-oriented discourses than those in relationally-close contexts. With these findings as a backdrop, we discuss (1) the contextual nature of sex differences in everyday legal discourse; (2) discourse “switching” and emotional investment in personal relationships, and (3) applications for our coding scheme to studies of disputing frames.

Equitable Jurisdiction of the Provincial Court of Alberta (Civil Division)

This article is concerned with the issue of whether the Provincial Court of Alberta (Civil Division) possesses any equitable jurisdiction. The authors first provide a history of equity and its fusion with law, and the impact of that fusion in Canada. The authors then examine the jurisdiction of the Provincial Court of Alberta (Civil Division) and conclude that, as an inferior statutory court, it can have no inherent substantive jurisdiction, only an inherent procedural jurisdiction. However, the Legislature can enlarge the Court's jurisdiction by statute (although the authors point out that there are limits on the jurisdiction that can be granted to an inferior statutory court). The authors then argue that, contrary to common belief, the Provincial Court of Alberta (Civil Division) does possess a limited equitable jurisdiction. They base this submission first on the wording of the Alberta Provincial Court Act, which allows the court to hear and adjudicate any claim for debt or damages (and unlike in other Alberta statutes, the Court in those situations is not specifically barred from granting equitable relief). Secondly, they submit that the granting of limited equitable jurisdiction is necessarily incidental to the achievement of broad policy goals related to the establishment of the Court. Finally, the authors compare the jurisdiction of the Provincial Court of Alberta (Civil Division) to that of the Small Claims Courts in Ontario and British Columbia.

Equal access to justice

My concerns are unlikely to strike a note amongst those senior judges delivering “big justice” who will operate in the multi-track. They seldom encounter disabled people in their courts and when they do access, communication and representation problems are likely to have been sorted out at an earlier stage. But for those of us who have to deal with those earlier stages or are to (and already do) deliver “bulk justice” in the fast track and small claims courts, coping with disabled litigants is already a problem. Hitherto we have responded with insufficient care to their needs, but is it too late to hope that we may be encouraged (or better still constrained) to take into account their disclosed needs when managing cases so that civil proceedings may be conducted in a manner that is fair to all. If we do not face up to this now we could find ourselves and our courts in breach of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 which is intended to impose the new culture on society (including our courts). The message from society is clear: a change in the culture of civil justice is required but we must not overlook the “disability factor”.

Judicial Scripts in the Dramaturgy of the Small Claims Court

AbstractThe Small Claims Court is designed to improve access to justice through a number of procedures, the net effect of which is to enhance the role of the judge as manager of the adjudicative process. The essay reports the results of interviews with 14 Small Claims Court judges in Montreal. Attitudes of judges about their responsibility to ensure a fair hearing, to assist litigants in presenting their cases and to adjust the substance of rules of law and evidence are surveyed. The study also canvasses judicial perceptions and responses to Small Claims Court plaintiffs who may be from ethno-cultural minorities. It concludes that despite their discretion to depart from a strictly adversarial adjudicative posture, judges rarely do so. It also concludes that judges do not see their role as requiring them to take special account of the expectations and understandings of ethno-cultural communities. Informality of proceedings, low filing fees, and the exclusion of lawyers are thought by judges to be a sufficient concession to enhanced access. Transforming the object and processes of civil disputes is not seen as a proper endeavour for the court

Should a Lawyer Be Allowed in Small Claims Court? Some Empirical Light

Jurisdictions across the United States are facing the issue of whether or not lawyers should be permitted to represent plaintiffs in small claims court. In this paper, we make use of an expected utility model to analyze how the number of claims filed by attorneys on behalf of plaintiffs has varied over almost four decades in the New York City Small Claims Court. The paper concludes that as the size of legally allowable claims has increased, the percentage of claims in which a plaintiff is represented by a lawyer has also increased.

Mediation and Adjudication in the Small Claims Court: The Effects of Process and Case Characteristics

Research examining the relative effectiveness of mediation and adjudication has raised questions about whether the apparent benefits of mediation can be attributed to differences in the two dispute resolution procedures or, instead, are due to differences in the characteristics of the disputes or disputants. Litigants in four small claims courts provided multiple comparison groups that enabled us to examine case and process effects. Disputes and disputants in mediation and adjudication differed on few attributes. The process, outcomes, and impact of mediation and adjudication differed in ways generally consistent with their theoretical differences. Although the degree of liability admitted by the defendant played a role, overall, differences in the effectiveness of mediation and adjudication were due more to differences in the processes themselves than to differences in the disputes and disputants using each procedure.

Probabilities of Small Claims Judgment Satisfaction and Factors Influencing Success

A claim adjudicated in small claims court is substantively not resolved until the judgement rendered has been received by the winning plaintiff. Using data from the Boone County, Missouri, Small Claims Court, this study found that one‐half of the winning claims were collected in full. Differences in collection success were more closely related to the judgment amount and characteristics of the defendant than to characteristics of the plaintiff.

Small Claims Court: Factors Influencing a Successful Outcome for the Individual Plaintiff

The purpose of this study is to ascertain the extent of individual plaintiff success in the trial stage of the small claims process and the impact of selected factors upon these favorable outcomes. Results of this study provide a basis for litigants and potential litigants to predict the outcome of the small claims trial. Of particular interest is the finding that litigant use of legal advice and representation in court is not a major factor in the outcome of a small claims court case. The results of this examination of the small claims court as it functions in Boone County, Missouri, suggest that, with the possible exception of plaintiff's gender, “justice is blind.”

Mediator gender: Communication differences in resolved and unresolved mediations

AbstractThis article focuses on differences between male and female mediators' use of communicative behavior, specifically formulations, in resolved and unresolved mediations. The authors observed and videotaped mediations in a small claims court, transcribed these sessions, and then content‐analyzed the transcripts in terms of formulation function. The authors found no differences in the number of formulations used by males or females, but did note differences in the types of formulations used: females used more clarifying and males used more controlling formulations; males used more formulations when both disputants were male, and females more when both disputants were female. The authors also discovered some differential effects linking mediators' gender to disputants' satisfaction with the mediation and their perceptions of mediator competence, clarity, and fairness.

International Perspectives on Civil Justice. Essays in Honour of Sir Jack I.H. Jacob Q.C. Edited by I.R. Scott. [London: Sweet & Maxwell. 1990. xiv, and 282pp. Hardback £48·00 net.] - Small Claims Courts: A Comparative Study. Edited by Christopher J. Whelan. [Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1990. xiv, 234, (References) 13 and (Index) 5pp. Hardback £27·50 net

International Perspectives on Civil Justice. Essays in Honour of Sir Jack I.H. Jacob Q.C. Edited by I.R. Scott. [London: Sweet & Maxwell. 1990. xiv, and 282pp. Hardback £48·00 net.] - Small Claims Courts: A Comparative Study. Edited by Christopher J. Whelan. [Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1990. xiv, 234, (References) 13 and (Index) 5pp. Hardback £27·50 net]. - Volume 50 Issue 1

The impact of litigants' baby-facedness and attractiveness on adjudications in small claims courts.

The effects of litigants' facial appearance on judicial decisions were investigated in 506 cases heard in small claims courts. Replicating previous laboratory studies, both baby-facedness and attractiveness exerted a significant impact on adjudications. As plaintiffs increased in attractiveness, defendants were more likely to lose the case. Also, as defendants increased in baby-facedness, they were more likely to win cases involving intentional actions and less likely to win cases involving negligent actions, although the latter simple effect was not significant. Finally, as defendants increased in facial maturity, they were required to pay larger monetary awards to baby-faced plaintiffs, albeit not to average or mature-faced plaintiffs. This pattern of decisions was interpreted as reflecting assumptions about the psychological attributes of baby-faced versus mature-faced individuals. The effects of the extralegal variables of litigant attractiveness and baby-facedness were sufficiently large to have practical as well as statistical significance, and they were independent of each other and the age of the litigants as well as of legal variables predicting adjudications.

Countrymen and the Law in Late-Medieval Tuscany

The Curia dei Foretani, or the Court of the Countrymen, of the commune of Lucca was a sort of rural small-claims court. Designed by an urban government to hear minor civil cases which originated in the countryside, it was occupied with the variety of issues that punctuated country life, most especially cases brought by landlords, merchants, and speculators whose living was tied to the rural economy of northwestern Tuscany. The records of the Curia dei Foretani offer an unusual opportunity to investigate landlordtenant, lender-borrower, and speculator-producer relations during the critical period of the fourteenth century when urban interest in the countryside was intense. As will become clear, the streamlined procedure used by the court was designed to allow rapid petition, hearing, and judgment, which, it has been argued, were designed to favor the wealthy, usually urban, elites. Yet as analysis of the actual functioning of the court will show, villagers in this part of Tuscany were able to avoid, or at least moderate, the most complete forms of landlord domination. The reasons why are complex, but one aspect was the court procedure itself, which could be manipulated by knowledgeable members of strong, semi-autonomous rural communities who had access to legal advice or who had broadly based communal support for their actions. Urban landlords in the Lucchesia never achieved the sort of

MANAGING OVERDUES: Facts From Four Studies

Historically, librarians have resorted to short‐term, charitable, punitive, and legalistic means to resolve the mounting problems associated with overdues—materials unreturned from circulation. In their quest to retrieve overdues we hear and read reports of librarians confronting delinquent borrowers by sending staff to private homes, filing criminal charges or claims in small claims court, engaging credit collection agencies, sending overdue notices as Western Union Mailgrams, conducting “fine free” amnesty days for return of all overdue materials, and offering rewards for returning books. There is an air of desperation in these moves. Despite that desperation, however, while anecdotal accounts pepper the pages of library literature, there is surprisingly little hard evidence that can guide policy decisions to lessen the probability of unreturned materials.

Assessing the Effects of Case Characteristics and Settlement Forum on Dispute Outcomes and Compliance

McEwen and Maiman (1986) have disagreed with my claim that the case characteristic of admitted liability explains more variability in dispute outcome and compliance than whether the case was resolved through a mediation or adjudication forum. Those authors reanalyzed some of my data from an Ontario small claims court and concluded that forum type is the stronger variable. I take issue with them on a number of conceptual and methodological points. In my own reanalysis of the Ontario data I am able to demonstrate statistically that admitted liability is the stronger predictor of outcomes. I also discuss why this should be so and raise some questions about compliance. Whether we can generalize to McEwen and Maiman's data from Maine courts is a matter of speculation, but I am inclined to infer that we can. Our debate raises important issues in the assessment of dispute resolution.

Arguing for Justice: An Analysis of Arguing in Small Claims Court

This essay reports on systematic observation and analysis of arguments by untrained advocates in court. The small claims court was found to be a unique argument field: there, untrained arguers must...

An Assessment of Mediation in a Small Claims Court

Mediation has frequently been advocated as an alternative to adjudication for minor civil disputes that appear in the small claims court. It has been claimed that mediation is more likely to result in compromise, greater compliance, and higher disputant satisfaction with the outcome. This article raises questions about these claims for the superiority of mediation and poses an alternative hypothesis. The hypothesis was tested in the context of a field study of a small claims court that utilizes mediation in pretrial resolution hearings. It was found that differences between adjudication and mediation outcomes could be partly explained by differences in the cases' “admitted liability.” Cases involving the defendant's denial of all liability were more likely to be adjudicated, whereas those involving admission of partial or full liability were more likely to be settled by mediation. Many mediated settlements involved no compromise; many were more the result of coercive than of consensual processes. Compromise, when it did occur, was not necessarily a satisfactory outcome for one or both of the disputing parties.

The Small-Case Procedure of the United States Tax Court: A Small Claims Court that Works

Professor Whitford finds that the small-case procedure of the United States Tax Court, unlike most other small claims courts, provides a meaningful avenue of redress for taxpayers contesting small amounts and appearing pro se. The success of this procedure is attributed to the unique dispute “posture” of the Tax Court petitioner and to the extensive resources assigned to the small-case procedure by both the Tax Court and the chief counsel to the IRS. This special Tax Court invention is not likely to be replicated in courts of more general jurisdiction. Lack of political support will prevent allocation of resources sufficient to make pro se litigation work. The expenditure of such resources in the Tax Court apparently reflects a felt need to legitimate the tax system by providing fair disputing procedures.

The Small-Case Procedure of the United States Tax Court: A Small Claims Court That Works

Professor Whitford finds that the small-case procedure of the United States Tax Court, unlike most other small claims courts, provides a meaningful avenue of redress for taxpayers contesting small amounts and appearing pro se. The success of this procedure is attributed to the unique dispute “posture” of the Tax Court petitioner and to the extensive resources assigned to the small-case procedure by both the Tax Court and the chief counsel to the IRS. This special Tax Court invention is not likely to be replicated in courts of more general jurisdiction. Lack of political support will prevent allocation of resources sufficient to make pro se litigation work. The expenditure of such resources in the Tax Court apparently reflects a felt need to legitimate the tax system by providing fair disputing procedures.

Mediation in Small Claims Court: Achieving Compliance Through Consent

In Maine defendants in small claims court are nearly twice as likely to comply fully with mediated outcomes as with judgments imposed by the court after adjudication. Some of the explanation can be attributed to specific features that are more common to mediated and negotiated settlements than to adjudicated outcomes. In addition, consensual processes lead to social psychological pressures for compliance that are not associated with authoritative judgments. Our findings point to the value of consent—the most central difference between mediation and adjudication—as an adjunct to command in promoting compliance with rules and orders.

The Small Claims Court: A Reconceptualization of Disputes and an Empirical Investigation

In this paper disputes are seen as varying along a dimension of admitted liability, that is, the extent to which defendants admit some obligation to plaintiffs; they may admit no liability, partial liability, or full liability. This conceptualization was used in an empirical study of a small claims court. The results paint a portrait of the court that is at variance with most of the previous literature. Consumer issues constitute a substantial portion of the court caseload. On average, defendants, including individual consumers, do well when they dispute claims. Among disputed cases, small rather than large businesses predominate. Prior literature has suggested that, in comparison to adjudication, mediation of claims produces compromise outcomes and higher rates of compliance. This research shows that mediation yields a large percentage of all-or-none results, but to the extent that there is compromise and compliance, it can be partly ascribed to admitted liability characteristics. Some data on defaulted cases are also presented.