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Hello everyone welcome to lecture three issuing a claim in Small Claims Court in four steps and this lecture is Step 1, Part 1. 

Let’s look at all four steps. Step 1: you will complete the Plaintiff’s Claim form which is form 7A. Step 2: you will gather all the evidence that you need to support your claim.  You will attach it to Form 7A. Step 3: you will visit the Small Claims Court office where you are required to issue your Claim and Step 4: you will serve the Issued Claim on the Defendant.

Once you have completed all the four steps then it is the Defendant’s job to file and serve its defense within the time period that is prescribed by the Court.

Step 1: you have to fill out Form 7A.  You can download this form.  I have provided the link here (http://ontariocourtforms.on.ca/en/rules-of-the-small-claims-court-forms/) and it’s also in the teachers notes. You can go to this website and it has all of the forms that relate to Small Claims Court. Let me see if I can show you these forms. If you go to this website you will see a page like this: Rules of the Small Claims Court forms and if you download and scroll down you will see all of these forms And here is our Form 7A which is Plaintiff’s Claim.  This is the the most recent one.  It is available in PDF where you can view it but if you want to fill out the information electronically then you download the word form. Let’s click on word.  It opens up the form and voila! this is what the form looks like. Let me see if I can show you the whole page. If you look at this form—this is page one. You really can’t read anything but I will take you to each section of this form. Page 1, Page 2 and Page 3.  There are only three pages in this form You can download it and can you see these gray areas? That’s where you can input information. You can electronically fill this form out and save it or you can print it and handwrite the information.

We are on page 1 of Form 7A. Let us start on the top right corner of the Plaintiffs claim. It says Claim number you do not need to put in anything here it is not very clear from the form but this space is for the Court to put the information about your Court file number. Your unique Court file number comes in here and the Court’s clerk will fill that information. What you do need to fill out is this section where it says Small Claims Court.  Over here you write down whichever Small Claims Court office you are issuing your Claims. If you are in Toronto then you write Toronto Small Claims Court here.  If you are in Burlington or Richmond Hill or any other Small Claims Court you write that down here. In the second part you write down the Court’s address and phone number.

Further down you see Plaintiff’s Information. If you are the Plaintiff, then this is your information.  If you are the only Plaintiff, then obviously it’s one person’s information. If you are more than one Plaintiff, then you check this box here where it says Additional Plaintiffs listed on attached Form 1A.  This Form 1A you can again download from the same website I showed you.  All it does is it gives you the space to write down the names for additional Plaintiffs or Defendants. If any of the Plaintiffs is under 18 you check this box over here. Last name of the Plaintiff, first name of the Plaintiff—if it is an individual. If it is a company, you write the company’s full name here.  If there are aliases or other names you write that down here.

To give you an example, let’s say your name is James Smith but you are also known as Jim Smith, you may want to write that down here in the “Also Known As” space. Put in the information for your address: city, town, province, phone number and if you have a fax number put that information also. Put in your postal code. This information is for your representative.  If you have a lawyer or paralegal representing you, then his or her name and the name of the firm comes here. LSUC number is the Law Society of Upper Canada number.  It is issued to every licensed lawyer or paralegal.  That information goes here. As you are taking this course you will not need to hire a lawyer or a paralegal to represent you.  This section you will then be leaving blank. No representative as you are managing this case all by yourself.

Important thing to keep in mind: who is the Plaintiff? In most cases it is very obvious who the Plaintiff is.  If you are the individual and you

have been wronged by the Defendant i.e., the person you are claiming against, then you are the Plaintiff and you put your name down—the correct legal name.

In some cases, you know it could be a company.  You may have hired someone on behalf of your company.  If that is the case, then your company is the Plaintiff not you. One of the ways to figure that out: is there is a written contract for those services or for whatever reason you’re suing.  If there is something in writing, you want to see who are the parties to that written agreement.  If you have signed the agreement in your personal capacity, then you are the individual who can bring a claim.  If you have signed it as a representative of a company then that company is really the Plaintiff.  In some instances, there could be multiple Plaintiffs.

For example., you hired a plumbing company to do some repair work in your house.  The house is owned jointly by you and your spouse.  You have both hired the plumbing company. Then both of you could be Plaintiffs.  This is something to pause and give a moment of thought: who is the correct Plaintiff?  You want to make sure that you put the right Plaintiff’s name in here because if you put in the incorrect Plaintiff the person would not have any claim against the Defendant because that person is not the right party.  You do not want to waste your time and energy in a claim for which that person is not a party.  Therefore, getting the Plaintiff’s name correct is important.

Underneath the Plaintiff’s name we have the section for Defendant’s name. Same kind of boxes except that this is for the Defendant’s information.  You put in the Defendant’s name here.  If there is more than one Defendant, you get the additional Defendants form 1A and put that information there.  By the way, the Form 1A goes behind the first page so first page is page 1 and then behind that you put in form 1A, which will now be the page 2 of your claim.

If any of the Defendants is under 18 you put that down here. Last name if it is an individual is here. If it is a company, you put the full name here.  First name, “Also known as” aliases you put that information here. Address: city, province, phone and fax (if available) number and postal code.

This is information for the Defendant’s representative a lawyer or a paralegal.  In most cases if you’re issuing a claim you would not know whether the Defendant is being represented and, if there is a representative, what their name and address is.  In most cases this information will be left blank.  Nothing here in representative LSUC number, address—none of that.  You will leave the section blank.  What is the important thing to keep in mind for the Defendant is that you need to know the exact name of the Defendant.  This is very, very important.  If you get a judgment against the Defendant and you have the wrong name, then you have to go and enforce that judgment against that wrong named Defendant which may not exist right.  Therefore, it is essential that you get the name right.

Some of the things to keep in mind is that if it’s a company: then is it a corporation, or is it a sole proprietorship?  You want to get the exact name.  If it’s a company, I’ve given three examples: (1) ABC Ontario Inc. and you see how Inc. is written here.  If that is the name you want to make sure you write it down in that way. (2) If it is ABC Ontario Incorporated (in the second example) – this one, then you want to make sure that you write that down correctly. Let’s see if it’s ABC Ontario Limited then you want to make sure that you write that down correctly.  Correct name of the Defendant is very important.

The Defendant may have multiple names so another example could be that the legal name is indeed ABC Ontario Inc. but the company may be carrying out business as ABC Plumbing, then you want to name ABC plumbing as a Defendant.  You want to make sure that you cover all possible names of that Defendant so that you are able to enforce the judgment if you need to at a later stage.

If there are multiple Defendants, by all means, write all of the Defendants names in the Defendants section.  You want to make sure that you cover as many Defendants who are obligated to make you the payment or the claim.  Get that down—it is very important to get the Defendants name right and you want to make sure that you do that.

Recap:

• you choose the right Court office: you know how to do that we taught you—you go to that Court office and you put that information there
• then you want to make sure that you have the correct /the right name of the Plaintiff or Plaintiffs and
• right name off the Defendant or Defendants

In the next lecture we will go to page 2 of Form 7A which talks about the reasons why you are issuing this claim, what happened, what is your story and we will tell you the best way how to write that down so that it is reasonable and it makes sense to a judge or a reader.  We will talk about that in the next lecture and if you have any questions or comments about this lecture by all means please send us your feedback by email or call us.  

Please bear in mind that we tend to provide additional information and teachers notes which is not required for the purposes of this lecture but that is additional information for your knowledge. Please check out the teachers notes for additional information and I look forward to seeing you in the next lecture thank you.