Don’t Get Mad, Get Litigious, King of Small Claims Believes

Louis De George recalls that while growing up in a working-class Italian neighborhood in Jersey City, N. J., he often felt powerless to defend his rights.

The Van Nuys plumber said that in 1942, when he was 15, two police officers slapped him across the head and beat him on the chest with a rubber hose during an interrogation about why he was not in school. Complaints by his parents, he said, were brushed aside by authorities.

“I knew then that I had to fight back if I wanted to get anywhere,” he recalled.

De George, 62, said the experience gave him a lifetime aversion to being pushed around, which is why he files lawsuits in Small Claims Court when he feels taken advantage of.

He has filed more than 30 such cases and credits himself with 28 victories, including a recent $1,500 judgment against the producers of the television show “People’s Court.”

‘I Fight’

“I don’t let people get away with anything. If I feel I am right, I fight,” he said in his New Jersey accent. “If I feel cheated, I file.”

Some of those who have faced De George in court say he is an articulate speaker who can easily convince a judge that he has been the victim of injustice.

“He is very believable because he believes it,” said Philip Vandervort, associate producer of “People’s Court.” “He gets very righteous, and it’s the principle for him.”

Still, his adversaries say, De George’s convictions may stem from a limited perspective.

“He is compulsive. He focuses on something and convinces himself he is right,” Vandervort said.

For example, in his suit against the TV show, De George contended that he was promised $1,500 whether or not Judge Joseph Wapner ruled in his favor. De George zeroed in on a message left on his answering machine by a show researcher who “guaranteed” a $1,500 payment. But Vandervort said that in subsequent contacts with De George, show staffers explained that the payment was only guaranteed if the plaintiff wins the case.

De George lost on the show; he had contended that his apartment manager’s son broke the rear-view mirror on his truck.

“It’s selective hearing,” Vandervort said. “I’m sure he could pass a polygraph test.”

De George’s former electrologist said she suspects that he deliberately misrepresents facts to get money and free services.

‘Very Good Actor’

“I don’t have anything good to say about him except he is a very good actor,” said Ginger Graham, whom De George consulted to have hair removed from between his eyebrows.

De George sued Graham when the hair grew back after several treatments. He said that electrolysis had been advertised as eliminating hair permanently, and he won $72 in court.

But Graham said that it often takes repeated treatments before hair stops growing back and that the brochure De George showed in court as falsely advertising permanent hair removal was for electrolysis in general, not for her salon.

“He gets his kicks by getting things for free,” she said. “He anticipated the whole thing.”

De George denies that he has abused the Small Claims Court system. He said he files cases only when he has been “cheated, conned or tricked.”

And in many cases, he said, he seeks less than $100--money rightfully owed him by people who fail to provide promised services. He said he seeks punitive damages only if he feels that people have deliberately deceived him for profit.

“If you don’t fight, people will just walk all over you,” De George said.

De George’s victories include a $1,500 judgment against his former landlord, who a judge ruled had charged too much rent over four years; a $50 award from a doctor who had kept him waiting for nearly two hours, and awards totaling $2,692 from five car repair shops.

He also has won cases against a dry cleaner who lost his suit; the owner of a dump truck, from which a stone fell and cracked his windshield, and the American owner of a hotel in Mexico City, which was advertised as “first-class” but actually had a standard rating.

In his first suit--filed in 1957 in Jersey City after he read a newspaper article about Small Claims Court--he won $300 from a tailor who claimed to custom make shirts. De George said he had paid $300 for 10 shirts, but when he brought the garments home, he realized that they were mass-produced and altered to fit him.

The son of a truck driver, De George, a high school dropout, said he sees himself as a little guy protecting his rights. If he had not been forced to take a full-time job at 16 to help support his three younger brothers, he said, he would have been a defense attorney.

Contacted Official

Jim Cathcart, consultant to the state Senate Committee on Insurance Claims and Corporations, met De George several years ago when the man called to complain about the law requiring all drivers to have auto insurance.

“Sometimes he was a bit of a pain, but there was certainly enough of a rationality that I was obligated to talk to him. I couldn’t dismiss him because he had points that were correct,” Cathcart said.

Later, Cathcart, who said he admires De George’s tenacity and willingness to stand up for his rights, brought him to Sacramento to testify before the committee during hearings about insurance companies that were not complying with newly enacted Proposition 103, the insurance rate rollback initiative. An insurance company had canceled De George’s policy in violation of the new law, Cathcart said.

“There is a real need for these people in our society,” Cathcart said. “If we don’t have people like that, who is going to keep us honest?”

De George doesn’t always win his cases. In two he has lost, he failed to get a security deposit back from a landlord, and he failed to win damages against a car mechanic who, he said, had deliberately tampered with his carburetor so that he would order more car repairs. In the first case, he said, he did not have the documents to prove his case, and in the second, he lacked the technical background to explain his contention.

Still, De George attributes his generally winning ways to lessons he learned by reading “My Life in the Mafia,” the autobiography of Vincent Teresa, a New England organized crime figure.

De George, the grandson of immigrants from Sicily, said he admires the Mafia because “they made something out of nothing. They were all born with holes in their pants and in their shoes, and they amounted to something.”