NEW YORK — If you feel cheated by a big company and complaining gets you nowhere, what can you do? A handful of recent cases suggest that consumers can, if they’re motivated enough, win against big companies in small-claims courts.
These “David vs. Goliath” battles were won against the likes of AT&T, Honda and others, without resorting to lawyers. The plaintiffs paid minor filing fees, gathered their own research and presented arguments in quick hearings that resemble the average “Judge Judy” episode.
And now, thanks to the Internet, these victors are connecting with other consumers in hopes of helping them replicate their successes. If the practice catches on, it could amount to a big-bucks difference in payouts by these giant corporations.
“It is a significant undertaking,” says Heather Peters of Los Angeles, who sued Honda because her Civic Hybrid didn’t meet its claims for gas mileage. She won $9,867 last month.
“But with the Internet, it’s a whole different world,” said Peters, a former lawyer who just reactivated her license. “It just takes one or two people like us who are the anal-retentive, compulsive people to do all the work and are magnanimous enough to say: ‘Here you are! Go get ’em. You do it too!’ “
Other success stories include Matt Spaccarelli of Simi Valley, Calif., and Henry Brown of New York, who both sued AT&T Inc.
Brown won $1,587.50 in October after suing the telecommunications giant for frequently dropping his wireless calls and charging him an early-termination fee when he wanted to get out of his contract.
Spaccarelli was awarded $850 last week after successfully suing AT&T for slowing down the data service on his iPhone when he hit a limit for downloads, even though he had an “unlimited data” plan.
Peters and Spaccarelli have put up websites that feature copies of the documents they used in court.
Peters says hundreds of people have expressed interest, and she knows of at least six consumers who have filed cases. Dozens of people have contacted Spaccarelli, and he recently filed suit on behalf of his brother, who has the same problem with his iPhone.
Their victories aren’t necessarily final. Honda says it will appeal Peters’ award, and AT&T is appealing Spaccarelli’s.
But the new hearings will basically be reruns of the first ones. They will feature similar and relatively informal rules. So there’s no way the companies can use their resources to take a small-claims case to a jury trial and force the consumer to rack up enormous legal fees.
The small-claims process is by no means easy. For Brown and Spaccarelli, the hearings were harrowing. They felt intimidated by AT&T’s representatives. AT&T’s lawyer postponed Brown’s hearing three times before agreeing to a hearing date, months after the suit was filed.
There are scant data on the number of small-claims cases filed in the U.S. each year or on the number of cases that feature consumers suing big companies. A study by the National Center for State Courts, published in 1992, found 40 percent of cases in the 12 courts studied were consumer complaints. The same study found that 67 percent of individuals suing businesses or government agencies won their cases.
