Small claims court

A small-claims court is a court of limited jurisdiction created to hear civil disputes between private litigants involving relatively small amounts of money, sometimes operating under a different name such as a county or magistrate's court, and typically capping the judgments it may award at a set monetary limit, often in the thousands of dollars or pounds. Such courts exist in numerous countries, including Australia, Canada, England and Wales, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, and the United States, and are built around simplified, inexpensive procedure: litigants are generally expected to represent themselves without a lawyer, jury trial is excluded, and costly steps such as depositions are usually unavailable.