Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests Owed $13000/ Won't pay! NEED Some IDEAS

Looks to me like Bartlett IL straddles the county line between DuPage County and Cook County. In which county were the sales you did located? Where is the scumbag's business office? Those might impact venue, or where a suit is brought and should be heard, and thus indirectly may affect where you should go searching for an attorney.

Oral contracts can be established and enforced. Gather your information on the "course of dealing" history between you and scumbag from contracts you performed on which he did pay you. Your attorney will want that info.

Even if attorney fees are not typically awarded in breach of contract actions without a written clause providing for fees to the winner, other procedural mechanisms may be at your lawyer's disposal which would generate attorney fee awards. I'm not licensed and do not practice in Illinois but did go to law school there decades ago. IIRC, Illinois' civil procedure rules allow use of formal "requests to admit" and proving the matters that a party refuses to admit after such formal requests can generate a fee award payable by the denying party.

Meanwhile, that the scumbag drives a ferrari or lives in a house on a lake means next to squat about collecting your judgment if/when you win, as those assets may be hocked to the hilt so that he has next to no equity in those assets. What do you know about where this clown and his business keep bank accounts? Is his business set up as a corporation? Be ready to talk with the attorney about factors which would allow you to 'pierce the corporate veil' and sue the scumbag individually along with his corporation.

But yes, you do not just want 'an' attorney, you want a business litigation attorney active in Cook and/or Dupage County, and I doubt he/she is on this CEG board. If the attorneys you talk to locally do not do or want this kind of work, ask them to give you referrals to attorneys who do.