Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Georgia
I am a member of LA Fitness and I initially signed a contract with LAF to receive personal training. The trainer who I signed up with asked me if I wanted to pay him under the table for my training instead of going through LAF. I verbally agree to pay him "under the table" for the training & continue to use LAF as my workout facility. I had 7 days to cancel my LAF contract, which I cancelled in 6 days. This week I found out that the trainer had been fired from LAF. I never trained with him "outside" of LAF. I paid him $1000 dollars. He now refuses to reimburse me my money after I told him our original verbal agreement was no longer valid since he could not agree to work with me at LAF as we had discussed. He now states that the money is non-refundable & that he will only refund me $175.00. I would like to take ime to court, but I don't have an address for him & of course LAF cannot give me that information. I never signed a contract with him. What recourse do I have now?
2 Answers from Attorneys
It likely will be a lesson learned. First, from your post, you knew this trainer was most likely dishonest and cheating his employer. Why would you ever think he was not going to do the same to you? Why would you think he would be employed there much longer? Also, beyond the question of why you would trust him with any money at all, why would you pay him $1,000??? It looks like you just made poor decisions all the way around. You can try small claims court and maybe he won't show up and you win that way, but if the Judge hears the facts you won't get much sympathy because both of you were probably violating contracts with the gym and trying to cheat them out of their cut.
To reword your question, you conspired with him to cheat L.A. Fitness and you now expect the courts to help. A basic principle iof the law is to seek equity you must do equity.
There is a good possibility that even if you find the person to sue him, and even if he has any assets, your misconduct will get you thrown out of court.
If you can find him, and he has assets, you can sue in small claims court. But you have no certainty of a win, and I think you may do best to treat this as a life lesson - when you cheat people, as you did, expect bad things.
Related Questions & Answers
Looking for something else?
10,200 active attorneys ready to answer your legal questions today.
Featured Attorneys
Earn additional revenue and grow your business.
