I have some experience with civil court, although with lower stakes and less money involved. My mom's '64 galaxie which has a truly one of a kind paint job was damaged by her mechanic several years ago. He refused to cover the cost to fix it, and she sued. On his day in court, he didn't show up and she won the case. We thought that was going to solve things. When the paperwork was given to him telling him that he had to pay the judgement, he refused to pay it. This is the problem with small claims: winning the case is the easy part, collecting your judgement is a whole other beast. Several years later I got the sheriff to do a till tap levy, which got my mom some of the money she was owed. Had we known his bank info, we could have used a bank levy which is more likely to be effective, but we didn't. It's very difficult to deal with people that have no bad conscience.
