Librarian wins surprise judgement against Equifax in small claims court

Re:Librarian wins surprise judgement against Equifax in smal... by pmoriarty on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @10:01PM (#17308671)

Is there a way we could see what your court filing looked like (with all the personal info redacted, of course)?

I'm considering making a filing myself, and would like to use yours as a model (if that's allowed).

Also, does anyone know if precedent matters in small claims court? Would a small claims court in California care that another small claims court in Vermont ruled a certain way in a similar case?

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Re:Librarian wins surprise judgement against Equifax in smal... by jessamyn on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @10:09PM (#17308701)

I think I put the bulk of it on my Medium post you can read here. It was surprisingly not a lot of stuff.

https://medium.com/@jessamyn/suing-equifax-in-small-claims-c...

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Re:Librarian wins surprise judgement against Equifax in smal... by jkaplowitz on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @11:04PM (#17308936)

I'm just a non-lawyer law geek (and former law student), but my understanding is: precedent does matter in small claims court to the same extent as in regular court, but rules of procedure and evidence are relaxed, the ability to appeal the judgment can be limited (not always zero), and the judges sometimes have less training than in regular courts. A lot of these specifics are determined by laws which vary by state, but I don't think any states formally take a different approach to precedent in small claims specifically.

As for California vs Vermont, those are in different states and under the jurisdiction of different federal courts of appeals. Therefore the only directly binding judicial precedents shared between them would be from the US Supreme Court (and some from England at the time of US independence).

However, if there's no controlling binding precedent, most courts would be willing to consider other states' sufficiently relevant judgments at a persuasive but non-binding level.

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Re:Librarian wins surprise judgement against Equifax in smal... by pmoriarty on Wednesday June 13, 2018 @11:13PM (#17308973)

"if there's no controlling binding precedent, most courts would be willing to consider other states' sufficiently relevant judgments at a persuasive but non-binding level."

It sounds like it could be useful to have some sort of database or clearinghouse of data breach cases won against Equifax in small claims court, so they can be referred to in one's filings as relevant judgements.

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