In a classic,and hilarious,David vs. Goliath story, Jeffrey Fox takes on a huge hospital over an outrageous bill, and wins.
The details of how he got to victory are super-entertaining… and enlightening.
He’s a bit of an expert in using small claims court to get satisfaction, and he’s got detailed instructions for all of us.
Here’s his first lesson: The other side,no matter how big they are, and no matter what they say to you,doesn’t actually get to make the rules. Not the LEGAL rules.
One thing they always do is: They always try to make it seem like their policies apply to you. They’re like, Well, no, our policy is blah, blah, blah. I’m like, I don’t care. The concepts of contract law ,what a court would say I owe you, is what applies.
I remember saying “OK, well, my policy is you pay me a hundred dollars every time you say something stupid. So, does that apply to you? If it does, you owe me about 400 bucks already. Keep going.”
Want more? Here are some extras:
- Our episode Can They Freaking DO That?!? describes how some folks have used just the THREAT of small claims court to get outrageous bills lowered.
- Law professor Christopher Robertson describes some of the legal theory behind this method in this post from a Harvard Law School blog.
- Jeffrey Fox posted documents from his case, and a brief narrative.
- Finally, here’s this episode’s transcript
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