Small Claims Court Cant

Abstract

Small claims courts have traditionally been seen as a valuable institutional innovation for facilitating access to justice. In Quebec, the small claims court is particularly prized because most corporate plaintiffs may not be plaintiffs, because parties may not be represented by lawyers and because judges are to play an activist role in managing the litigation process. This article reports the findings of an empirical study of the plaintiff population of the Small Claims Court of downtown Montreal during 1992. It presents information on the socio-demographic characteristics of plaintiffs, the nature of claims brought, the dispute process followed, and the outcome of the cases. The article concludes that the use of the court is often correlated with those socio-demographic variables associated with social power and that structural modifications to processes of civil litigation designed to enhance access to justice do not significantly alter the character of any court's plaintiff pool. Whatever may be the benefits of creating systems of small claims courts, the empirical evidence suggests that greater accessibilty of official institutions of dispute resolution is not one of them.