How do I know when it's time to take my neighbor to court?
That will depend on how urgent the matter is, how big a problem, how much it is interfering with your quiet enjoyment of your property or your ability to use your property, how many times you've tried to deal with the issue and whether you've looked around to see if there's other ways of doing things. You're also going to want to evaluate the consequences of going to court. Are you raising an issue that's going to cause your neighbor to raise some other issue that you don't want to have to deal with that may be more serious to you? A lot of times in the court system, what we find is that one party raises an issue not thinking that the other party, a neighbor or business partner is going to raise some other issue that's even more serious and they're going to create a bigger problem for themselves than the one that's been bothering them. So you want to take a look at the big picture and this applies to any kind of dispute, whether it's with a neighbor or with a business partner, with a contractor. You want to take a look at the big picture and see what's involved and make certain there aren't claims that are going to be made back against you. Part of the big picture and part of the decision making process is cost and something that people often don't consider which is how is this court procedure going to interfere with your life or your business. When you go to court, unless it's a small claims court, there are rights in the United States to what we call Discovery which is sending questions to the other side that they have to answer, requesting them to give you documents and then potentially taking a deposition which is testimony taken in a private setting, generally in a law office, where you may be questioned and it may be an hour or it may be a day or it may be several days depending on how many facts there are and how much money the people are willing to spend in the lawsuit. So one of the very important things before going to court in any context that people often don't consider, is what will be the interference with your life, your family, your business be if you do take that step and walk in the courthouse door with your complaint.
