Small Claims Courts: Getting More Bang for Fewer Bucks
| Publication year | 2010 |
| Pages | 32 |
Vol. 23, No. 5, 32. Small Claims Courts: Getting More Bang for Fewer Bucks
Volume 23 No. 5
Sep/Oct 2010
As the number of cases on district court dockets swell, so too does the temptation of the legislature and the judiciary to vest increasing amounts of power in small claims judges, who are usually judges pro tempore (judges serving temporarily in lower courts). With the jurisdictional limit on damage awards recently increased to $10,000, exclusive of court costs and interest, Utah small claims courts have the fifth highest small claims jurisdictional limit in the United States. See FreeAdvice.com, Small Claims Court Information and Links, http://law.freeadvice.com/resources/smallclaimscourts.htm (last visited Aug. 19, 2010). The overloaded district court docket, however, is only the most obvious of many reasons for attorneys to consider using small claims courts, even in cases involving controversies much higher than $10,000.
Because small claims judges adjudicate only civil cases, and do in minutes what may take district court judges months or years to do under the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure (URCP), the dollar sum of the cumulative civil judgments entered on a per hour basis by small claims judges exceeds the dollar sum of the cumulative civil judgments issued on a per hour basis by district court judges. See Western IP Law, Complete 2009 Utah District Court Judgment Statistics, Judgments entered, http://www.uspatentlaw.us/content/?page=49 (last visited Aug. 19, 2010). And claimants securing judgments in small claims courts have better odds of collecting those judgments than judgments from district courts. See id. Small claims judges can accomplish in an evening what it usually takes district court judges months to sort through under the URCP.
Effective September 1, 2010, pursuant to Utah Rule of Judicial Administration 4-801 (as amended), all new small claims actions must be filed in justice court rather than in district court, unless there is no justice court with jurisdiction. Small claims proceedings are governed by the Utah Rules of Small Claims Procedure. Utah Rule of Small Claims Procedure 7(d) provides that small claims judges "may receive the type of evidence commonly relied upon by reasonably prudent persons in the conduct of their business affairs. The rules of evidence shall not be applied strictly. The judge may allow hearsay that is probative, trustworthy and credible. Irrelevant or unduly repetitious evidence shall be excluded."
Utah R. Small Claims P. 7(d) (emphasis added). Small claims courts...
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