Lying gets you everywhere?

A follow up on the blog post: Never really occurred to me...

I decided to empty out my savings account and file the small claims court paperwork. I felt strongly enough about getting taken advantage of that I knew it was the right thing to do. I went down to the courthouse, paid my $60, filed the paperwork and waited for them to issue me a court date.

About a month later I got a court date in June. I got all of my stuff together, printed out all of the emails, examples of the work I had done, the works. I got a phone call 3 days before the date from the court telling me that the defendant had tried to file for a continuance due to medical reasons, but that since it wasn't 5 business days before the date it was inadmissible. They wanted his contact information so they could call him and told me to come to court as planned.

I figured as much that something like that was going to happen since he wasn't an upstanding guy in the first place, so I just planned on him not showing up, having the judgment default in my favor and being done with the whole thing. I contacted the other designer who had been involved with this whole garbage and told him what was going on just to give him a heads up.

I appeared in court that day among all the other small claims cases. I checked in with the clerk. When they were calling the default cases, I told the referee (since they are not judges) that I was the plaintiff. He said, you're the defendant? I said no, I'm Giesla, I'm the defendant. You're (the name of the business the claim was against)? I said, NO, I'm THE PLAINTIFF. This concerned me, but it wasn't the first time people had problems with my name so I shrugged it off. He called the other cases and then got to me. Once again I had to emphasize that my name was Giesla, I was an independent graphic designer who was filing a claim against a company that used my work and didn't pay me. He asked me if I was surprised that the other party didn't show and I said no, not really. He said the case was dismissed and I went on my way.

As I walked out the door it played back in my head. Dismissed? Doesn't that mean it's over? As in no judgment? I've watched enough Judge Judy and Peoples' Court to know that dismissed means it's over. I figured TV court isn't really indicative of real life so I let it go. I got an email later that day from the designer I had contacted who told me that the defendant had had hernia surgery that past Friday and so his medical excuse was legit.

A couple weeks later while I was in Colorado for an art fair, my mom called me and said that the judgment came in the mail. She said the plaintiff's case was dismissed with prejudice. I was completely confused about what that meant and decided to just look at the paperwork when I got home. When I finally arrived home, I saw that the paperwork had marked the plaintiff (me) as not appearing and the defendant as appearing. My case had been dismissed because according to the court, I hadn't shown up.

The next business day I called the court and spoke with the clerk. I told her that I had indeed been there and there was a mistake. She told me that she was the clerk who had checked me in and remembered me and told me she would speak to her manager to see what they could do. She called me back and told me that they would nullify the judgment, issue me a new court date and waive the appeal fee of $50. So a new court date in August was set.

I got all of my documentation together and headed to court. It was a full court room so I was hoping that I wouldn't be there all day as I wanted to get this over with since at that point, this had been going on 8 months. This time he did show up, as I feared, and knew he was going to come in weaving a tall tale. Luckily as the plaintiff I had the first and last word.

I explained the situation, that he owed me money for work that I had done, and showed the email documentation from the first email that I had sent outlining my design fees to the emails with the invoices attached. I explained how we had met and everything that I detailed in the previous blog.

Then it was his turn. He lied and said that he brought me on for my photography skills, not my design work and that I offered to do mockups for free. He said that I told him the retailer I work for part-time was cutting my hours and so I wanted to make up for that by working for him for the same wages as the retailer pays me (which is about 1/3 of what my design fee is). When presented with examples of the work that I had done and asked if it was my work, he said no. He explained that this other designer that was interning for him was doing all the work and that I was just assisting. When asked if he opposed my rates so vehemently why didn't he respond to the email that outlined my fees and tell me that there was no way he was going to pay me what I was asking, he said that his business was getting "thousands of emails" at that time from vendors for their gift baskets in addition to resumes from applicants for intern graphic design positions so he never saw the email.

To me, that seemed pretty transparent. That and he couldn't complete a few sentences without using the phrase "and stuff". He came off to me as unprofessional and stuttered and stammered his way through most of his statements.

I left the courtroom shaking mad but confident. Surely it was obvious that he was a liar. I had stacks of evidence that he was trying to dodge me. I had proof of work that I had done. In my own mind, I had put forward a good case.

And then I got the judgment today. In favor of the defendant. Because the evidence strongly suggested that the work I did was for marketing purposes to negotiate a contract.

21 hours of work.

That was used.

On top of that there was a sharp conflict as to what, if any, work I did at all.

Despite me bringing in examples of the work that was done. Which, as I said, he denied me doing.

For the record:

This is one of the catalog pages I designed:

And this is what is on their website as of today (with a tiny "version 3" notation in the bottom):

Needless to say I will be contacting an attorney to see what my avenues are because I'll be damned if I'm letting this go any time soon.

In addition, I strongly urge you to not buy gift baskets from target.com (an outlet for this company's products) in support of boycotting companies that steal work from designers.