From the people’s court in the Byron Y. Appleton Honorary Courtroom in Santa Monica.
A $50 lawsuit may seem like a waste of time to some people, but for Santa Monica bookseller Etan Boritzer it was a matter of principle.
Unfortunately for him, the small claims judge who heard his case didn’t see it that way. The judge last week ruled against Boritzer and called his lawsuit a “supreme waste of the court’s time and resources.”
“To put the whole system through this,” said Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Pro Tem Sheldon Cohn, “is not right.”
Boritzer, publisher and author at Veronica Lane Books in Santa Monica, originally sued Wilmington-based book distributor World Education Guild for $471.60 for a shipment of children’s books delivered last March.
A month before going to court, World Education Guild settled its bill with Veronica Lane. They returned the portion of the books still unsold and wrote a check for the remainder.
So Boritzer agreed to dismiss the claim, but asked the laggard distributor to reimburse his filing fees and other court costs, totaling $50.
When the distributor refused, Boritzer decided to keep the court date and let a judge decide who should foot the bill.
Reuben Reinoso, an accountant at World Education Guild, claimed he returned the unsold books and paid for the others before the suit was brought against him, and therefore should not be held responsible for the court fees.
“I took care of everything, wrote the check, and then I was served (with court papers),” said Reinoso, who made a $25 settlement offer to appease the bookseller, but refused Boritzer’s counter-offer of $35.
“He just wanted to waste my time,” Reinoso added. “That's what I really think.” Boritzer denied receiving payment before he filed suit. “This is not our practice, this is not valuable for our time,” Boritzer said. “If I had the books in hand and the check, I would not have (filed a lawsuit).”
The book distributor let numerous messages go unreturned and did not respond to his invoices, Boritzer said, calling their refusal to pay court costs “ridiculous.”
Judge Cohn was not sympathetic. After reviewing tracking records showing Veronica Lane received the books three days before Reinoso was served with court papers, he ruled against the plaintiff and scolded him for wasting the court’s time.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 21, 2002. Read the original PDF.