[Mrs Nicholls]

in reference to my previous post about a deceased business owner, and if i should chase payment.

well the bank sent me a chq to say owner had deseased.
i emailed his company to ask about their products (in a different name of course, as you do)

I got an email from the said deceased person! how odd

I think this is a matter for the law, what do i do now? I'm definatly going to chase payment now, its not a massive amount of money but hes not cheating me out of anything after being so sly and underhand and well breaking the law i should imagine.

[martin19842]

hi there

might it be that the bank have made a mistake???  i know its unlike them to do that.

regards

martin

[*Chris Browne]

As martin said, get the details correct first but then i would go to small claims court,(do it on line about 50 quid) if the payement is well overdue.

chris

[DP]

Actually banks make massive mistakes all the time and something like this is quite possible.

I personally handed my bank manager (who was nothing less then a regional manager for Nat West) £5.5k worth of cheques to open a new account at a meeting in my office.

After 3 weeks and no show of the cheques on my statements, I contacted him to find out that not only had he not deposited them, but he had managed to loose them to boot. Seemed odd then that they had all been cashed!

Back to the point:
To declare yourself deceased is a very serious criminal offence especially in respect of financial issues (I think) so I would guess a mistake is more likely, unless the individual is a complete idiot (which is always possible) .  

[Cleaning Resource]

I took my accountant to court, you just have to phone your local court and tell them that you intend to take someone to small claims and thay will send you the forms to fill in it cost me £30 but it depends on how much your claiming as to how much it will cost. If you know you got a good case (sounds like you have)i would rack up the expenses with a decent solicitor cos he`ll have to pay your expenses too, when you win the case

[DP]

Caution on the "other person will have to pay my costs if I win" stuff. Sorry but that’s just not entirely correct, I have been involved in many commercial court cases. Only in some circumstances can you reclaim costs if you win and they certainly have to be justifiable, i.e. "no open cheque book".

County Court is really straight forward and you can certainly include the initial court fee within the dept. However if its defended and you employ solicitors, then it can be very expensive and you should consider the amount as well. I defended a claim once and won, however it cost me £350 more then the claim which I couldn’t recover, it would have been cheaper just to have paid, irrespective if I was in the right! 

[Cleaning Resource]

i stand corrected :

[Cleaning Resource]

sounds like you get sued alot, are you doing something wrong

[Davie T]

Make sure that there is not a father and son with the same name !

[DP]

sounds like you get sued alot, are you doing something wrong 

How can I explain this?
My reference referred to a previous level of industry where to sue and being sued were completely acceptable. You didn’t have to do anything wrong (what a simplistic perspective - bless) but was always about money i.e. one party trying to reduce the money they had to pay or the other trying to get as much as possible.

Almost completely decidable on contractual documentation and whoever had the cleverest solicitor. Nothing personal it was always "just business", with many parties continuing their relationship quite happily.

Service companies who continue to grow in the corporate sector will eventually experience this, usually with maturity.