The student was never reimbursed, and without a binding contract, was powerless to contest the injustice done. She resumed the summer in mid-July, $500 poorer.
The lesson behind this all-too-typical story is the importance of awareness, without which the consumer or emplyee is at the mercy of private business. The field of consumer awareness is a relatively new and fast-growing one. New do-it-yourself consumer guide books spring forth monthly, designed both to alert the reader to potential rip-off situations and to offer well stocked appendices listing where to go and what to do after the fact. One of the best new books around is aptly entitled Fight Back... And Don't Get Ripped-Off by David Horowitz, NBC's leading consumer reporting specialist. The book boasts an exhaustive index of all federal, state and local consumer agencies, as well as a complete listing of the nations's numerous small claims courts, newspaper, radio and television programs and hotlines designed to bring grievances to public attention and create pressure for quick redresses. Nearly every paper across the country today has a consumer advocacy column, many with follow-up services where the paper calls up the offenders and publishes the results along with the original grievance letter. The Philadelphia Bulletin's "Mr. Fixit" column has been intimidating businesses and inspiring readers for years, and makes for some interesting, if occasionally bizarre, breakfast table reading.
For the student, however, the extent of private industry rip-off is liable to be less serious than for those making their way in the world, those who must confront daily landlord-tenant situations, bill payments, insurance claims, and other harsh realities which entail numerous rip-off possibilities. The Phillips Brooks House small claims committee, operating out of Roxbury's municipal courthouse small claims advisory service, provides a campus link to the world of everyday consumer problems, and a chance for students to help combat them. Emily Skoler '82, last year's PBH small claims president, describes small claims as "a people's court, for consumers to take grudges against other consumers and businesses both," adding that "we do everything from giving advice to hand holding."
Many of the cases that come up are unique and don't fall under the realm of any law, so lawyers become superfluous since cases are settled by a presiding judge. Paralleling the development of the small-claims-court system is the rise of Mediation Centers, a recourse for the consumer in which the prosecutor and the defendant settle out-of-court in the presence of an objective witness. The Mediation Centers have proved much more effective in collecting damages and solving cases happily, as their more informal nature allows the opposing parties to break through stumbling blocks like pride and anger and get through to the underlying problem, which oftentimes has little or nothing to do with the original grievance. The majority of cases, explains Skoler, are between acquaintances. Landlord-tenant cases abound, followed by longterm customer service cases and family or neighbor squabbles. Another common case involves the "I bought it; it broke" syndrome, though with a thousand variations on a theme.
The cases that come before small claims courts read like a dossier on human nature--normal, bizarre, humorous and, sometimes, personally tragic. One case that came up before the PBH group this summer gave new meaning to "problem solving". Known simply as the "skunk case," a woman brought her landlord to court for an unusual claim of negligence. The air vent in the ceiling of the woman's apartment had been falling off regularly; and the landlord then fixed it, to his credit. However, when a small skunk found its way through the roof and into the air vent, the grate didn't hold out and the surprised skunk came tumbling onto the floor of the apartment, spraying the entire room in fright. The apartment and all the woman's possessions were ruined beyond repair, and the furry little varmint got away unscathed; but the luckless landlord was fined the maximum of $500 and the smell of justice lingered on long after.
Another typically screwball case occurred again between landlord and tenant. The "refrigerator case" originated when a woman leased an apartment from a new landlord two weeks before moving in, bought a refrigerator and stocked it with groceries to have ready when she moved in. The woman arrived two weeks later and found no trace of food or refrigerator. The landlord, it turned out, was a heroin addict who had eaten all the groceries and then sold the fridge to finance his habit. The woman won the case easily, and moved in the next day.
A third, less serious case involved a woman contesting her hairdressers. The woman went for a fashionable "Bo Derek" cornrows hairdo, and, for $50 came away with a frizzy mess. Undaunted, the woman marched over to another salon where she got a much more satisfactory hairdo for a mere $20, but not before having her best friend take photos of the messy do for evidence. Handing before and after photos to the presiding judge, to the great amusement of the court, the difference was nonetheless striking enough for a reimbursement of her original $50 from the offending salon and the satisfaction of justice done, however small.
The above cases make up the standard fare of a small claims court. The restriction of payments to monetary (as opposed to equity) payments, limited to $500, exclude more serious cases of life and death or multi-digit law suits with multi-digit lawyer fees. Small claims provides a service to mete out justice in the everyday affairs of the consumer, and for a small fee ($5) anyone can bring forth his or her grievance. As for the hapless student ripped off by the tennis placement agency, she never got justice, but if she had tried a few of the alternatives, she might be