Thank you for clarifying. For readers outside the US, this paints a more complete picture now. That "small claims"-ruling was definitely invented by a person who never had to worry about money to begin with... :|
So you won the case, but for the next 20 years the person in the wrong can essentially just ignore it and act as if nothing had happened.
Yatsufusa
Wow... O_O
I'm not a lawyer/solicitor, so correct me if I'm wrong, but... It is my understanding that in most places, the legal party who loses has to pay for the other sides' legal fees. If you sued him and won, those kinds of fees should be 'on him'.
Equally, if he does not pay you back, a marshal/bailiff would come knocking at his place and if he does not have the money, the marshal/bailiff would (in essence) mark stuff of theirs to be auctioned off in order to balance the bill. Is that not what happened?
Also: The tags will work out better with hyphens between the individual words.
Lumaillustrations
So he didn’t show up to court so it defaulted to our win. In my state what we spent for legal fees and stuff added to his total and from there he would need to pay back. Due to it being a small claims it isn’t “forced” on him but stays on him collecting interest for 20 years.
Also thanks I fixed the tags!