Hard of Hearing In Philly
One of the tough things about running your own company - in my case, my law practice - is dealing with administrative issues. It’s incredibly time consuming and you don’t get paid for it. I’m not complaining (exactly) because I realize that if someone else was calling the shots, it wouldn’t really be my own business. It would simply be a place where I worked. So, I do it. I whine a little. But I do it.
On Monday, I’ll be making my way into Center City to deal with one of these administrative issues: a lawsuit. That’s right. Our law firm is the plaintiff in a lawsuit in Municipal Court.
Interestingly, although I am a lawyer and file suits on behalf of other clients all of the time, I have never filed suit on behalf of myself or my law firm before. This is a first. It is a first that I’m not particularly excited about.
Like any good plaintiff, I’ve hired a lawyer. You know that I hate litigation and I would be miserable in Municipal Court where I am not familiar with the procedures; I am perfectly content to appear in Orphans’ Court where I’ve pretty much mastered the quirky rules (well, as much as one can). I’m meeting with my lawyer tomorrow morning just before the hearing to go over what’s involved (ick).
What’s involved, however, should be pretty simple. It’s a very easy case. Here’s the scoop…
In 2006, our firm decided to throw a wine and cheese party for our 6th anniversary. We hosted it at our office. To make it more interesting, we selected local artists to show their works during the party.
A week before the event, our caterer backed out, citing personal reasons. We scrambled to find another caterer to provide the hors d’oeuvres (the wine and beer were taken care of already). We found someone, they were very accommodating and all was well.
The new caterer sent me a detailed invoice and I gave him my credit card number. He sent me a fax showing the amount and stating that he had charged my card for the amount. It was all taken care of and the event had been a success.
The very next week, I had a baby and went on maternity leave.
While I was gone, Chris was in charge of paying the bills and making the deposits. I was going to take care of the rest upon my return.
In late fall, I started getting our accounting in order to give to our CPA to do our taxes. When reviewing the statements, I saw a curious thing: on the day that our credit card was charged for the catering, it was charged for the full amount not once, not twice but three times. I assumed this was an accident. On the next week, the same catering company had charged our card an additional amount.
I called up the company and spoke to the manager. He seemed genuinely perplexed and asked me to send him a copy of my bank statement, which I did. He promised to investigate.
Over the course of several months, we made several phone calls and sent a number of letters, sending over documentation as requested and even suggesting that we’d be okay with a payment plan.
One day, the caterer stopped returning our calls. There was no further communication.
We called our bank to find out what could be done. Since the window had passed (it’s apparently only 30 days), we could not challenge the fees.
We had no choice but to file a lawsuit to get our money back as it was a fairly substantial amount of money - and that matters to a small firm like ours. After we filed, their lawyer called our lawyer and promised to pay. They didn’t.
Months passed. And so here we are.
Blech and blech.