Legal Question in Consumer Law in Illinois

I was served with a document at my home here in PA. It is regarding a small claims case in Illinois, from a business I owned more than 8 years ago in the State of Florida. I owned a flower shop in Florida, and signed a lease agreement for a credit card processing machine for My LLC business. My mother and I co-owned the business and both signatures are present under the guarantors for the business. A year later, during the economic downturn, our business folded and left me destitute. I lost my home, car, bank account everything. I was quite literally homeless for 3 months. During this time all of the papers and items in the shop were lost to me. I worked hard to get back on my feet and went back to school to work towards my MBA. Never during this entire time have I been contacted requesting any type of back payment or restitution for this lease. There are couple things that I should note:

I have lived in FL for 15years up till 4 months ago when I was brought to PA for work.

I have never done business in Illinois and have never been to Illinois.

I have no way to attend this Small claims case for $7000 in order to defend myself.

With this said, I now have a few questions:

Can they make me travel out of state to attend a small claims court case filed against me?

Can they garnish my wages or bank account based on this small claims case?

They are trying to force me to pay legal fees as well, but this is the first contact I have had with them, can they do this?

Do I have any type of defense for this case? I am not disagreeing with the contract, but rather that I am responsible for the bills incurred by the business.

Please help me if you can, I need to make some form of response prior to December 20th.

Thank you in advance for your assistance,


Asked on 11/25/13, 6:28 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Stephen Messutta

1. Travel...? The contract should be attached to the complaint. IF it says that Illinois law applies to it (governing law) and they can sue you in Illinois (submission to jurisdiction/venue or something like that), yup, or I should say you would have to complain in Illinois that it should be in Florida or PA, but that would mean having to initially defend in Illinois.

2. Garnish...? Only if and when they get a judgment against you, and if you and your job and pay and assets are in PA they would also first have to register the judgment in PA. The court costs and attorney fees to do so could be added onto the judgment amount against you.

3. Legal fees...? IF the contract entitles them to the fees if they have to sue you and they win, yup if the judge agrees. At a minimum there will be statutory interest on the judgment against you -- I think it's currently still 9% per annum in IL, but I haven't looked lately, and that's still a lot considering things today.

4. Who signed the lease? You say you are "guarantors" for the business. But IF a corporation signed the lease and you did NOT sign it personally, you may NOT be liable for the debt.

-- Point is that until somebody looks at the lease itself, no answer can be certain, and all the aboves are "IF"s only at best. Sounds like you didn't consider bankruptcy either, for the business or yourselves. Time to let an Illinois attorney look at the contract at the very least to see what if any "loopholes" there may be -- or how best to help negotiate the situation. If you do NOT respond a court could find you in default and eventually a judgment COULD be taken against you -- and then trying to undo the mess is, well, just a bigger mess.

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Answered on 11/27/13, 10:06 am


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