Suing $30 for cigarettes? BC woman turns to court for return of unpaid loans
Large unpaid loans can be annoying, and sometimes, the tiniest extra fee can feel like the cherry on top. That seems to be the case for a recent decision by the BC Civil Resolution Tribunal.
Linda Carol Cantrill filed a lawsuit against Mario Zappala for $800 in unpaid loans for driving lessons. She claimed that she loaned $1,000 on July 6, 2022, and the agreement was for the loan to be paid back in instalments. However, she was only ever paid $200 back.
Zappala didn’t dispute her claim, and the court ordered him to pay the rest of the loan. The court also found that the debt was confirmed by the multiple texts from Cantrill asking for the money back, which Zappala never denied in the messages.
But the lawsuit wasn’t as straightforward as just the return of the missed loans for the driving lessons.
Cantrill also claimed $30 in debt for two packs of cigarettes she loaned Zappala, alongside a $250 charge for a missed meeting on April 16, 2023, where she expected him to make a loan payment.
Going to court for $30 is definitely unusual, to say the least.
Similar to the unpaid driving lesson loans, Zappala never denied the cost of the cigarette packs and agreed that he had not paid Cantrill back for them. However, heĀ did refute the cost of the missed loan payment meeting.
The court recognized that the missed meeting must have been “undoubtedly frustrating” for Cantrill but that her frustration didn’t quite meet the legal requirement for a $250 charge when no evidence of a verbal agreement or written penalty for missed payments was provided.
Cantrill’s claim for the $250 in additional fees was dismissed. However, the court did approve the extra $30 for cigarettes.
In total, Zappala was ordered to pay Cantrill $1,010.64, including $800 for the rest of the driving lessons loan payments, $30 for the unpaid cigarette packs, $55.64 in pre-judgment interest, and $125 in CRT fees.
Let’s take this decision as a reminder to pay our smaller loans as well as our bigger ones.
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