Consumerist
A NJ man successfully sued DELL in small claims court using a unique approach. He had the court papers delivered to a DELL kiosk in the local mall.
When DELL failed to show in court, Pat Dori, of Hackensack won $3000 by default. A ruling allowed court employees to close the kiosk and confiscate equipment if the judgment was not paid.
Dell settled out-of-court with Mr. Dori under an undisclosed arrangement.
The victory came after five-months and 19 phone calls to Dell after Dori's laptop fan broke. When he turned it in for repairs, Dell lost his laptop and returned just his hard drive. To compensate, Dell offered a refrubed laptop without an extended warranty.
"My big issue was, they never wanted to talk to me, never wanted to hear me,'' said Dori. "The little guy found a way to hit them in the head with a rock. You get their money, you get their attention. God only knows how much their legal team cost them.''
— BEN POPKEN
NJ Man's Lawsuit Against Dell Settled [1010 Wins] (Thanks to Stefan!)
Comments
This is very interesting. Small-claims court, at least here in Virginia, is straightforward to use, as long as you can serve the offending company properly. I am certainly no kind of lawyer, but it seems to me that a kiosk is a physical business presence, likely to satisfy the legal requirements for service, but also likely to be staffed by boobs who won't pass the service along to the corporate attorneys.
Think of all the cell-phone company kiosks...
I'm confused, did they settle or did he win in court?
Delivering to the kiosk is brilliant for the reason mentioned above. The kiosk is technically an arm of the company...the papers are served to a repressentative of the company. Said rep probably throws them in the trash...you win your case.
I would presume he won, and they settled rather than trying to appeal.
That is freaking awesome, great idea for a new tactic. Can we do this to cellphone kiosks too?
I don't think this would work for a cell phone company, as often times the kiosks are a franchise, or seperate company. Not to sure how it all works, but I think it is as if they are a company licensed to sell Cingular (or whatever) service and phones.
In this case, the Dell kiosk was set up by Dell, hand had employees who recieved their paychecks from Dell.
Cingular has corporate-owned stores, so this might work for them.
Good story, but their legal team is probably in-house counsel that didn't cost them anything.
Why would he want a refrubed laptop anyway? Jeez! He probably sent it to Dell because it was frubed in the first place!
Why would he want a refrubed laptop anyway? Jeez! He probably sent it back to Dell because it was frubed in the first place!
So to do this...you need the proper address. Did he just use "Dell Kiosk, by the food court, Paramus Mall, Paramus, NJ 22222"? In NYC, the address to serve papers has to be the proper legal address - this is where it can get tricky. Anyone else had any luck with this?
Baz,
This is way late, but every piece of property that is rented out has a proper legal address, Kiosks and all. Otherwise another legal document, the lease, could not be written.
It may well be some contrived address with an odd "unit number" or some such, but it's still legal.
Baz, also way late. But you don't need the 'real address'. But you do need to be able to show you correctly 'served' the notice.
And leases can be written without a 'real postal office address'. A map can be draw which identifies the location; 'the land known as kiosk 26B and highlighted in red on map.....'. again, IANAL but I do have such a lease !
It's unethical to serve someone in a manner that's "legal" but yet cases the receiving party to miss the hearing. I don't care if the defendant *is* big bad Dell.
And everybody is judging the merits of this case by listening to one side only. There may be more to the story.
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