Legal Question in International Law in California
I'm a freelancer from Bulgaria. I do web development and had done a job for a client in California. The agreed price for the project was a few thousand $, but it's been over 18 months now and the client still finds reasons to delay the payment. The last two were waiting for his company exemption application to get approved, and now he claims that there is some crises going on there. My question is do I have grounds to file a lawsuit, do I have to be in the USA or I have to look for my countries legal laws and file the lawsuit here. Could such an international case take long to finish and could there be any more complications. Are there any steps I can take to make the process easier and faster?
1 Answer from Attorneys
You can certianly file a court action against a California based company in California and if you have not been paid for services rendered you have grounds to file a lawsuit. Your biggest problem is that if you are only suing over a few thousand dollars, the lawyer fees would cost more than your claim. We have a court where people can represent themselves in small matters, and the cases are handled quickly and simply, but the people have to come into court in person. You could file the action by mail or overnight delivery services, but you would have to be here for the actual court hearing. You might be able to file something in your country, but even if Hungarian courts would have jurisdiction over a CA company, unless they have assets in Hungary, you would still have to enforce the judgment in California.
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