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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

This depends on your outlook.

You can stress about this and spend a lot of your time chasing down someone for repayment. This is the wrong approach IMHO.

Instead just sure in small claims court (limited to $5,000). This is done without lawyers. You simply present your lease agreement, bank statement and any relevant communications.

Once you get that judgment give it to a collections agency and forget about it. The agency will take a percentage of anything they collect.

Then just look at anything you get back as a bonus.

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I tried suing a landlord in small claims court. Their lawyer just had the court move the case to civil court so they could bring representation. It's a broken system imo.

> Instead just sure in small claims court (limited to $5,000)

Depends on your state. Here, small claims is limited to $25,000 with no limit for eviction suits.

Unless you need that money to pay the mortgage on the property. If so, then "oh well, I get what I get get and I don't get upset" isn't really where most people are going to land.

It's really not that simple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_proof

That’s why you assume the sun is a total loss and you spend no time chasing it. Let the debtor dodge collections agents and field those phone calls.

Wouldnt that be like only 2-3 months of rent for most people?

In coastal cities, sure. But in a lot of parts of the country it’s not.

Also, as others have noted, different jurisdictions may have higher limits.

But to go to civil court to recover $20,000 just isn’t worth it. Your legal expenses will be significant and you face the prospect of losing or being unable to collect.

So by limiting your potential damages you don’t incur litigation expenses, spend less time and stress on it and your net return may be similar.

What’s better? $5,000 it costs you nothing to get a judgement for (other than a nominal filing fee) minus 10-20% for the collection agency or $20,000 you may need to spend $10-20K to litigate?

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