What are my rights when a Judgement by default has been entered?
Full Question:
We have been dealing with a vendor for approximately 10 years and have always had an understanding that we would buy during the year and then place a large order before Christmas. We would then pay as we could and then return any item that we did not sell. This past year
was no different, except we decided with the salesman to set something up weekly/monthly. We then sent the company post dated checks for $250.00 a week. After approximately 10 months, an attorney called us and said they no longer want to do business this way and was going to return all of our post dated checks and the company wanted to now be paid in
full. We have tried make payment arrangements with them, but they do not want to hear it. We do have $7,000 worth of jewelry that we could return leaving a balance of $9780. Can they just change the way we have done business for all these years and just demand payment in full and not allow us to return goods we have not sold? They have also filed judgement by default in District court last week and have added court costs and prorated interest.
05/01/2009 |
Category: Judgments |
State: ALL |
#16510
Answer:
It will be a matter of contractual intepretation for the court to decide if the arrangement was an open account or single transaction and what terms of payment apply, based on the terms of the contract. In some cases, where the parties haven't specified in detail the terms of a transaction, the court will enforce a promise made when the promisee justifiably relied on the promise, to their detriment, and the other party would be unfairly benefitted by not enforcing the promise.