On August 15 I took part in a remote trial in small claims court seeking to recover several thousand dollars of damages to the heating element in the water pipe serving my home. It was caused by the negligence of a local water and well repair company.

Early on, as I apparently failed to properly follow courtroom protocols, there was some tension between me and the magistrate. But it’s the reasoning for the decision in my case which has caused me to put pen to paper.  If it is in any way emblematic of how magistrates are approaching their duty in deciding the cases before them, then the system is broken, at least as I think most of us would like to think the system should function.

But before I offer a thought or two about what I think may help to fix that brokenness, let me share some context.

I’m 70 years old and for the 25 years I lived in New York City. Before moving to New Preston in 2008, I was involved in two small-claims cases, one against an auto repair shop and the other against a landlord.  Upon moving to Connecticut, I brought two other claims: one against a furniture store and the other against a restaurant.  And though I only prevailed in three of the four cases, I thought the process in each was fair, and critically to the point of this piece, more concerned with dispensing justice than with rigidly adhering to legal formalities.

In this case however … well, here are a couple of hints of what was to come:

During a settlement conference before an arbitrator prior to the hearing, the attorney for the defendant acknowledged the damage but offered less than a pittance to settle.  As I rejected that, we then went before the magistrate.  There, when the issue of the damage was again raised, I responded that the attorney had already acknowledged the damage. 

Oops, whatever is said in the settlement is not admissible, I was told by the magistrate.  OK, fine, but I told him that I had the damaged element available and could present it to the court.  Oops, again.  No more evidence allowed as, after all, he had earlier stated that all evidence must be presented before the substantive arguments began.

Curious (to say the least) about this ruling, I subsequently queried Chat GPT and learned that even in venues where one might consider legal process to be more important than in small claims court, exceptions to a “no further evidence” rule may be granted for “good cause” or “to prevent a miscarriage of justice.”  But not here, I guess.

Chat GPT, though again after the fact, also challenged the magistrate’s decision to uphold the attorney’s multiple objections to questions I asked his witness because they required “speculation.”  AI will tell you, however, that when a witness is considered an “expert,” speculative questions are allowed.  And this witness, ironically, had been qualified by his own attorney as an expert.  But Perry-Mason-like, I guess I had to object to his objection.

Though other examples abound which might warn one that even in small claims court you better have your favorite AI bot by your side to navigate the legal thicket, how, in the end, did the magistrate rule?  Did he rule that I failed to show that the damage had occurred, or that the defendant had caused the damage, or that I had retained a professional to repair that damage at a cost of several thousand dollars, or that, in fact, the professional had performed the repair?

No.  The evidence which was admitted was just too overwhelming.

So then why did the magistrate rule against me?

Because even though I testified that, of course, I had paid the several month-old bill submitted by the professional I had hired to repair the damage, I hadn’t included in my papers a copy of the cancelled check to that professional.  In other words, though the magistrate didn’t question the defendant’s negligence and the cost to repair the consequent damage, he did question whether I pay my bills.  So, he denied me any relief.

Fortunately, there is a process for opening a judgment in small claims court.  I followed that process and included with it a copy of the cancelled check to the professional who had billed me.  Given the magistrate’s straightforward reason for denying my claim, I thought that with this incontrovertible proof that, as I had testified, I pay my bills, it was a slam dunk.

Unfortunately, though, guess who gets to incontrovertibly decide whether to open the judgment.

From his pen to mine in ruling against me: “The fact remains that the case is now complete and judgment has entered.”  In other words, even if I was wrong in not believing that you pay your bills and even if it cost you a bundle, you lose.

So, what might help in fixin this kind of result?

First, it should be a “slam dunk” that if a magistrate denies recovery because of a specified lack of evidence and if that evidence is then offered when a motion to reopen is submitted, then that motion should be granted regardless of any current legalistic excuses not to do so. Lacking that, the existing process to reopen judgments is not just seriously neutered, it seriously undermines one’s faith in the system.

Second, to assure an implicit check on power and possible bias, the motion to reopen should be handed over to a set of eyes other than those of the original magistrate.

For the past several years, I feel, as I’m sure do many readers, that our institutions and the people with power over us are failing us.  I just never expected to feel it quite so personally, especially from one institution which I think all of us thought was for justice and fairness over process and empty formalism.

James Cornelio lives in the New Preston section of Washington.