I'm assuming this is small claims court and it's already past mediation. 
I was on the other side of such a law suit - I was suing someone for work performed that they didn't pay that they authorized.
 
I showed up in court with 300+ pages of emails, invoices, etc and he showed up with about 10 pages of documentation.  I laid it all out chronologically, tabbed it so it was easy to follow and presented one to the judge, the defendant, and had one myself (the look on the defendant's face was priceless).  It clearly documented what we agreed to, what was paid and on what basis, and every other detail required to prove without a doubt that my version was the truth.  Each side got to question the other in front of the judge and I did a pretty good job of talking the defendant into a corner using facts he did not dispute.  It helped that I managed to get the defendant angry without getting angry myself. In the end it came down to the defendant admitting that he'd received and paid previous invoices and that he received and didn't pay the one in dispute.   I won and got paid.

Since then I've had a contract to spell out what was agreed upon and screened my clients and who I work with much better.
Your friend needs to spend a considerable amount of time collecting the documents to prove his side of the truth.  Specifically anything that states what they actually agreed to.  It might be worth it to split the difference considering how much time it takes to prepare.

JD
--
JD Austin
Twin Geckos Technology Services LLC
jd@twingeckos.com
480.288.8195x201
http://www.twingeckos.com


P. J. O'Rourke  - "If government were a product, selling it would be illegal."

On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 10:32 PM, Jim March <1.jim.march@gmail.com> wrote:
Not exactly Linux but then not exactly "not" either.

Got a friend who got involved in a business deal that went south, now
he's suing.  The guy he's suing sounds like a real winner and is
claiming there's a couple grand worth of expenses my friend never
agreed to.  Except the guy we'll call "the bad guy" for now has what
he claims is an EMail in which my friend authorized the expenses in
question.

The bad guy has produced this EMail for a court.  It doesn't include
header data - just the timestamp received at COX (late Jan. 2009),
to/from info (allegedly from my friend's MSN.COM account to their
COX.NET account), subject line and text.

He says the EMail in question is fake, he never sent it.

They could have easily faked it any number of ways, but the header
data would of course be much harder to fake, and these guys ain't all
that smart.  Right now he's telling the court it's a fake EMail (under
oath on his part, sworn declaration) and he's doing a request for
document production for the header data.

Now assuming he's telling me the truth and he never sent that, I would
assume the other side will claim they purged their electronic copy so
they have no header data, if they're at all smart.

Can he ask his paid ISP (msn bleah on a dial-up account paid to them
gag) to show that they have no log for his outgoing mail of that
subject line at that time, and that there would be one if the message
is fake?  I would guess that as an MSN customer he doesn't need a
court order to track data he allegedly sent?  OR if MSN doesn't keep
such logs, is it possible COX does and he gets a court order for their
logs, would COX keep that kind of thing?

Any other thoughts on cracking this?

I'm BCCing the friend...

Jim
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