A woman from BC claimed she left an unpaid loan inside a BBQ after being sued by the man who gave her the money.
James Carl King had loaned Teresa Joy Henry $1,650. King claimed that Henry signed a promissory note requiring them to pay King the loan’s interest-free balance by June 30, 2021.
King claimed they weren’t paid back by then, but Henry suggested they did, which, unfortunately for her, the court didn’t believe.
Henry says they paid King back on June 5, 2021, putting the cash into an envelope and leaving it in King’s BBQ.
The verdict from the BC Civil Resolution Tribunal was an interesting one.
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King loaned Henry the money in February of 2021. Because the promissory note was proven to be signed by Henry, it was on her to prove that she had paid the loan back as she claimed.
After King loaned Henry the money, the two parties occasionally texted or shared messages about the loan over the following months, with disputes over the repayment, until King eventually filed suit with the tribunal.
The tribunal decision suggested that leaving money in strange places, like BBQs, wasn’t out of the norm.
“The parties explain the applicant helped manage the respondent’s rental property and regularly collected rent from the respondent on behalf of a third party. The applicant acknowledges that, from time to time, he would give instructions to the respondent to put rent money in an agreed-upon location in his backyard,” reads the decision.
The decision added, “He [King] says that did not happen here.”
King added that he didn’t even hear mention of the repayment via BBQ until Henry filed her dispute response with the tribunal.
The tribunal determined that it all boiled down to an evidentiary tie since there was no proof either way.
“The respondent says they repaid the money, and the applicant says they did not. As noted above, the burden of proving repayment is with the respondent. Since they have not met that burden, I find the respondent owes the applicant the loan’s full amount.”
While the unpaid loan may have been interest-free, Henry ended up being ordered to pay $1,888.16 to King due to tribunal fees.