Situation
You work for a manufacturing company in Halifax that sells its products to retail stores, who then sell the products to consumers. The company purchases raw materials used in the manufacturing process from various suppliers. The suppliers are also companies located in Halifax.
Your company has received an order from a large retail store. This order would result in $25,500 in profits for your company. In order to manufacture the products, your company has signed a contract to purchase raw materials from one of your suppliers. The raw materials were to be supplied by a specific date. Unfortunately, the supplier did not provide the raw materials by this date. As a result, your company could not manufacture the products for the retailer and it lost the order to another manufacturer.
The management of your company are not happy about losing the order. They are considering bringing a lawsuit against the supplier for breach of contract. As they would like to minimize legal expenses and have the matter dealt with quickly, their preference is to use the Small Claims Court. However, they are not sure if this is the appropriate court to use. They are also not familiar with how it operates. Therefore, management have asked you to do some research about the Small Claims Court and prepare a report for them. Although you are not a lawyer and do not know how to conduct legal research, you are confident that you can obtain the required information about the Small Claims Court by searching through the various links available to the public at the Nova Scotia Government website: http://novascotia.ca/
Your report should contain the following:
- Is the situation outlined above a type of case that is dealt with by Small Claims Court? Explain by identifying the types of cases that are not dealt with by the Small Claims Court?
- What is the maximum amount of money that you can claim in Small Claims Court? What things can your company make a claim for, and for how much?
- What is the document that you must complete to file a claim?
- What information must be provided in the document that is used to file a claim?
- After you complete the documentation, how do you file the claim?
- How much is the filing fee that you will have to pay to file a claim?
- After your company has made a claim, what steps must be taken to inform the supplier company that a claim has been made against them?
- What is the address of the court that you will use for your claim?
- What happens if the supplier company does not respond to the claim?
- If you win the case in court but the supplier company does not pay, what can you do?
