I was approached by this gentleman who was introduced by a mutual friend of ours from university. He had a RM 100k-ish claim owed to him by a neighbor.
His neighbor was running a manufacturing business at the time and had asked my client for a RM 100k loan for the "purposes of his business.".
Now, this was mostly verbal. No written contract and hardly any documentary evidence other than a few vague Whatsapp messages.
I told my client the lack of a paper trail would make this a challenging claim to litigate... but hey, who am I if not the most earnest debt recovery lawyer in the seven kingdoms.
We decided we would take a gamble by not only naming the debtor personally as a defendant, but also his company, as he had explicitly mentioned to my client that the loan was "for the purposes of his business".
The retaliation from the debtor was amusing:
1. He denied any involvement with the business, attaching a current dated SSM search showing that he was not in the list of directors nor shareholders
2. He threatened to countersue us for defamation for serving the Notice of Demand upon the business.
3. He threatened to make a police report against my client and I for harassment (baseless of course).
Thanks to SSM's wonderful database we managed to extract an SSM search showing a list of PREVIOUS directors of the business. And lo and behold, the fellas glorious name was first on the list.
This smoking gun; combined with the Whatsapp message saying "I need this for my business" was all we had, but my balls were big enough to push forward.
I put forth the evidence to opposing counsel.
Opposing counsel replied in two letters:
One maintaining the various threats against myself and my client. Gonna sue your for defamation, your claim is baaeless, yadda yadda yadda...
But the other marked "Without Prejudice" offering to settle the debt in 6 monthly installments.
In my years of experience, even when you have a legitimate claim, many debtors will still come at you with tactics that are just delay mechanisms designed to discourage you and see how far you'll actually go.
When you ignore the theatrics, stay on course and maintain persistence, most debtors will fold.
In many ways, debt recovery is like a game of poker.
The party with the strongest self-belief tends to win.
Rudi Cheu (rudi@rulecolaw.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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