Legal Question in Technology Law in California

Re: Piracy lawsuit counter-claim

If your wages are being garnished, this is a clear sign that the case is over, and you lost. It may be too late to countersue. You should call a lawyer and make an appointment and find out for sure.

Re: Piracy lawsuit counter-claim

As Mr. Stone points out, the case may be over. If there were facts to prove that it was a false claim, and that you should have pevailed, the proper way to bring those facts to light would have been by conducting "discovery" prior to trial. Discovery permits a defendant to ask interrogatories (fact questions), demand the production of documents, ask for admissions of facts, and conduct depositions. Discovery is the only way to obtain the other party's information against its will (before trial, at least).

Another procedural consideration is whether you answered the complaint or not. If a person is served with a summons and complaint, and fails to answer, the plaintiff may obtain a judgment by default, without trial. If this is what happened, you may be able to petition the court to set aside the default and hear the case. If the case was tried, and you lost after trial, the procedurally correct thing would have been to file an appeal. The appeal process starts with filing a notice of appeal in the lower court, and if this isn't done in time, your right to appeal expires.

In addition to all of the foregoing, whenever a defendant has a claim against the plaintiff, the defendant may, and often must, raise that issue by means of a cross-complaint in the same lawsuit. There are time limits for this, too. If you had a possible complaint against the plaintiff, but failed to raise it as a cross-complaint when sued, you may no longer have the right to sue. Usually, this situation arises when the defendant's claim against the plaintiff arises from the same set of facts or the same transaction or occurrence. If the cross-complaint arises from completely separate matters, the right to sue is not cut off by the failure to cross-complain.

A $6,000 complaint (if not cut off as set forth above, or barred by a statute of limitations) can perhaps best be brought as a small-claims matter, where the jurisdictional limit is now $7,500.