Step 3: Summary Judgment

STEP 3:  SUMMARY JUDGMENT

If a debtor refuses to pay after we have issued a letter of demand then we can apply to the Court for summary judgment on the basis that there is no defence for not having paid the expired payment claim under the Construction Contracts Act.

We have a great deal of success using this process to get debts paid in full.

The Act is specifically designed to ensure that, if you have to pursue debts, you are not prevented from doing so because of legal costs. The Act makes debtors pay for any legal fees if a Summary Judgment is found against them.

Because of our experience, and high success rate, we take the risk that we will get our fees paid by the debtor.

We don’t charge you our legal fees - even if the debt is not recovered

Under the Act, we can recover all of our legal fees and any disbursements from the debtor. The only costs you will be responsible for are the filing fees and document service fees (paid to the courts and document service agent). These are typically around $700 - and these disbursements are also collected from the debtor.

Our aim is to make debt recovery cost neutral. We do not take a success fee or a percentage of what you recover.

You do not need to appear in court in this process. We will need you to execute an affidavit in support, which is a statement that we draft on your behalf briefly describing the contract arrangements, that the work was done, and attaching a copy of the expired invoice. We will post that to you with instructions on signing it.

This process takes anywhere between 1 to 6 months to recover payment depending on the speed of your local court registry and whether the debtor attempts to delay the process or dispute the validity of the expired payment claim, or if the debtor is difficult to locate.

We are experts in filing and recovering debts in this manner. If your payment claim is valid, resistance from debtors is almost always futile and ultimately costs them more.

Actions you can take right now:

If this is the next likely step in recovering your debt – we will have probably already issued the Letter of Demand on your behalf, and we will have already been in touch with you as we track internally when Letters of Demand have expired.