Costa Rica News – When was the last time you dropped a 50 or 100 colon piece out of your pocket and just decided not to pick it up? I know that I have from time to time dropped spare change in both the USA and Costa Rica and thought to myself do I really want to reach into that puddle of water or touch that bathroom floor to save that money?
Multiple times in Costa Rica I have had between $5 and $200 taken from me. Sometimes it was lending money to the wrong people and sometimes I was just duped. Not once in any of those cases had I even thought about taking the time and spending the money to take this to the inefficient Costa Rica legal system.
I asked a lawyer one time after getting threatened a lawsuit for something I did not do, “Do I have anything to be worried about?”
His response….let her sue you. It will take at least a year before you are contacted to give your statement and it will cost her upwards of $4000 for a good lawyer. Then it will take another year to two years to go to trial.
However this trial in Costa Rica might be the most ridiculous trial I have ever heard of. It is the first trial ever over .07 cents! The prosecution is against INS, the National Insurance Institute, for failure to pay a complete settlement in the case of a negligent injury suit.
The victim was to be paid ¢438,053.07, however, the deposit was made without the .07 cents. The president of INS, Guillermo Constenla, said that rounding is done in accounting worldwide.
The case started when a 60-year-old woman fell because a bus driver started the vehicle as she was walking down the stairs. The woman sued the driver and filed a civil action complaint against the bus company.
The parties originally agreed to settle out of court, but it went to court anyway because of the failure to deposit the full amount. The bus driver’s lawyer argues that there are no coins for one or two cents, so how can they pay? The judge decided to leave the matter up to the Office of Civil Defense, because the cost of having a trial is much more than the amount being petitioned for.
