The Basics of How to File a Lawsuit in Small Claims Court...

The actual process of how to file a lawsuit involves more than a phone call, followed by a day in court. There are certain things you have to do, papers you have to fill out and other papers you have to serve.



Your local court clerk's office should be able to help you follow the steps. (The tasks you’ll have to do differ from one area to the next.) Then, once you’ve filed your lawsuit, there will be a fair amount of preparation before your hearing.

Once you've decided to file a suit in small claims court, you'll go to your local court and meet with a clerk. Granted, the clerk’s office won’t always be in the court building, but you'll be given directions to their office in your initial phone call.

When you meet with the clerk you'll be given some papers to fill out. The lawsuit you file is called a complaint. On the papers you fill out, you'll be called the plaintiff. This means you're the one who's doing the complaining. The actual process here is that you're formally complaining that a person, persons or business caused you damages in some way.

Remember, make sure you're suing the right people. This may sound like a silly thing to bring up, but matters can sometimes get confusing. You've spent a lot of time dealing with an insurance company and you may have forgotten about the other party involved in your injury.

When you file a lawsuit though, you're not suing the insurance company. You are in fact taking the actual liable party to small claims court. Since the insurer will be the one paying the damages, they'll be the ones representing the defendant in court. After all, at this point it's still the insurer's money on the line.

You’ve seen on television dramas how people get served with court papers. Often a lawyer, or bailiff, will hand the papers to whoever is being sued. This doesn’t really happen in the kind of small claims court lawsuit you’ll file. Still, there are different regulations on how you actually serve the papers. That means it isn’t always as pain free as dropping them in a mailbox.

Whatever the regulations, remember you're going to be serving papers to the person you're suing, not the insurance company that represents them.

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