Won at Small Claims Court - cheque sent is short. Advice?

Pollycat

KateBrown said:

Fortunately I don't believe in Santa and am not worried about being naughty or nice. I just care for the legal position.

Consult a solicitor.

olgadapolga

Maybe we could have a whip-round or crowd-fund the missing cash for the OP?

Korkyb

While I appreciate the OP appears to be very angry with this organisation and wants to stick it too them my opinion is that life really is too short.

nyermen

I was wondering same as grumpy chap about possible vexatious consideration.
But having worked closely with comm ops & general council teams as part of work over the years, I've never had them concerned about the actions or possible CCJs, the only concern has ever been financial ie. impact on P&L.

prowla

The amount doesn't particularly matter - the debtor hasn't cleared the debt and is mocking the court.

MarvinDay

prowla said:

The amount doesn't particularly matter - the debtor hasn't cleared the debt and is mocking the court.

How can you possibly know that is the case?
As the cheque was sent by the debtors solicitors, it might be that they were instructed to pay the correct amount but one of the solicitors employees simply made a mistake or it could be down to an error by the court themselves if they screwed up and wrote down the incorrect amount on some of their paperwork.

Alderbank

We don't know the actual amount but if it was e.g. £5173.02, rounding to the nearest pound would simply be in accordance with standard HMRC practice.
The OP asked  'I just care for the legal position.' The legal position, as others have already said, is 'de minimis non curat lex'.

lucy03

prowla said:

The amount doesn't particularly matter - the debtor hasn't cleared the debt and is mocking the court.

It does matter and this isn't that rare an occurrence, in situations where interest is added daily there can be confusion about a few pence. There's no reason for the court not to just accept evidence that the payment has been settled in full because there's no practical recourse here about their decision, the court isn't going to hear about a case or complaint referred back to them for 2p. I also see no evidence of mocking the court, probably just a transcription error which is of no real consequence in this case.

MobileSaver

Alderbank said:

The OP asked  'I just care for the legal position.' The legal position, as others have already said, is 'de minimis non curat lex'.

+1

The legal position is that this is highly likely to backfire spectacularly when the court orders costs against the OP for wasting everyone's time on such a trifling amount.

Murphybear

Alderbank said:

We don't know the actual amount but if it was e.g. £5173.02, rounding to the nearest pound would simply be in accordance with standard HMRC practice.
The OP asked  'I just care for the legal position.' The legal position, as others have already said, is 'de minimis non curat lex'.

“ too small to be meaningful or taken into consideration”