Re: consequences of being sued (if you're` skint)

Graeme wrote:
"halfanorange" <halfanorange@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:1133474571.507989.188100@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Graeme wrote:

I have no real assets and I'd be lucky to make minimum wage.


<begin quote>
Bankruptcy and/or being made to pay weekly/monthly amounts of whatever
you can afford. If you're not making that much you could end up having
to pay something like £2 a week. It's not in their best interests if
this happens so I would get in touch with them and let them know you're
situation and they may decide it's not worth suing you. IANAL

<end quote>

So they can take whatever little I do have? Obviously if I am running a business I do have some money.

They won't take a lot of stuff - household goods, record collections, personal ***, tools of trade, a cheapish car worth say £4k.
They will take stocks, shares, savings, equity in a house, a nice car - say a porsche worth £20k, basically anything that will realise enough cash to raise reasonable funds. These arn't the baliffs that take a £50 telly to sell to make £10 - they want something worth £5k before its worth the effort of them accounting for it.


What about if I ever at some later stage make any money. Could the two pound a week be increased in the years to come if my salary should increase?


In principle, you go bust and owe figure X.
Your receiver would take into account all earnings/outgoings at time of receivership and take everything over a certain figure.
Three years ago this was around £21k pa, anything earned over this they would take off you. Not sure what figure is now.
Any pay rise (not accompanied by extra living expenses would be taken from you).

At the end of the bankrupcy - now a year AFAIK - whether you have paid £1 or the full amount it is over and done with.


As to the amount of damages and costs - then maybe you wouldn't even need to go bust.
Damages are what the other person claims to have lost because of your actions - so if you have sold 3 widgets for £5 instead of the RRP of £10, then the distributor can only claim at most £30 (1) - the money he has lost in profit on NOT selling three widgets.
(1) assuming he makes them for nothing and sells them at RRP, obv his actual profit will be somewhere lower.
Of course, if you sold 100,000 widgets - his claim for this element would be much higher.

Another element would be a 'punishment' for him losing face and respectibility in front of his customers - again the value of this would depend on how much trade you took off him - if you sold three items then he can hardly claim to have been damaged by you - if you sold 100,000 then a much higher figure might be imposed .

A third element would be the costs of taking you to court which are not insubstantial.



So as you see, if you have made a very minor impact on the distributors trade, then most of the money awarded against you might be the court cost element and if they realise that since you have done very little actual business they may well end up spending thousands to save pennies and thus hope that a few threatening letters will put a stop to you.

They (and you) have a decision to make based on the volume that you do - is it worth them spending money on courts to stop you knowing that if you can't pay, its their money they waste. Or are you over the threshold where profit saved is worth costs incurred (even if again they can't recover the money from you).
They may have course have several other thorns in their side like you and decide to take one to court as a willy-waving excercise just to show they can be tough.


I've been through this a few times and touch wood, the nasty letters are just a bluff - they hope you will be scared off for the sake of a few solicitors letters - they don't want the cost and timewasting caused by actually going to court.
I wrote back (or at least my solicitors did) and said 'Ok, we'll change this , but if you're not happy take me to court - and they backed down.





























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