When you one day unfortunately receive a letter heading a law firm’s name, you may be in big panic, first by the wordy passage, and second by the legal consequence stated out for non-compliance with the letter. The first reaction should be, what the hack should we do?! Reply or not reply?
When a person is going to write a letter to you through a lawyer, the person is not taking the issue lightly and there are all possibilities for the person to proceed further such as initiating a claim in the Court. The first thing you should do, besides finding your right lawyer, is to see whether the allegations of the other side is substantiated and find all the previous conversations and evidence against the allegations.
Say the other side requires you 14 days for reply. Then depending on the seriousness of the allegation, you shall consult a lawyer first. You can type in the situations here and give us a preliminary background.
From a lawyer’s point of view, it is best to react with some threatened legal proceedings, because if you don’t react, the threat will materialize, and silence is always not ideal as if you have something to oppose, you should have opposed it outright.
However, this is not a strict and hard rule and it really depends on the situation. That’s why hiring a lawyer who is reactive and responsive would be important for your interest. Lawyers usually deal with arguing and discussing in letters, and a good lawyer can write all the possible rebuttals to each allegation professionally, of course based on your instructions.
What may happen next, if I don’t respond or the other side is not happy with my response?
There are different courts in Hong Kong dealing with different dispute, such as family court, lands tribunal, labour tribunal, district court, high court, small claims tribunal.
When you’re formally a Defendant
Depending on the nature of the dispute, different court could have jurisdictions on matters. The first step for the opponent is to send you a writ / or a notice of the proceedings. After receiving such notice, if you don’t want judgment to be entered against you, you shall indicate to the same court you wish to contest ASAP, so as not to give a chance for the opponent to enter into judgment against you with the least costs.
The typical format say for the district court is to file a Form 14 (or the case may be in other court) and indicate there that you wish to contest. Afterwards, the other side shall state out their brief backgrounds of claims and you can respond on each and every allegation if you have any, in your defence. But because of the complicated nature of litigation and evidence, it is strongly advised that you are legally represented to do this.
Court shows some leniency in terms of procedure on people acting by themselves without lawyers, but it is still advised to instruct a lawyer for you because every step counts. And an admission may look small, but can cause huge trouble later on. Also you don’t want your case be killed by your oversights or so.
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