The Math That Almost Stopped Them From Suing at All

The situation

Ines worked as an early childhood educator and Senthil worked as a security guard, and together they ran a small side business supplying cleaning products and equipment to offices and commercial kitchens around Sault Ste. Marie. It was steady, unglamorous work: mops, floor machines, sanitizer concentrate, paper products, delivered on a running account that customers paid monthly. Between their two day jobs and the business, money was never loose, and every dollar owed to them mattered.

One of their longer-standing customers, a commercial cleaning company owned by Abirami, had been ordering supplies for over a year without issue. Payments came late sometimes, but they always came. Then, over the course of a summer, the payments slowed, then stopped altogether. By the time Ines and Senthil sat down with their invoice folder to add it all up, the unpaid amount came to roughly $58,000 spread across eight months of deliveries — dish machine chemicals, floor stripper, restroom supplies, all shipped and signed for, none of it paid.

Phone calls got promises. Emails got silence, then partial replies blaming the cleaning company's own slow-paying clients. A final demand letter, sent by registered mail, got nothing at all. Ines and Senthil kept working their regular jobs through all of it, doing the collection calls on evenings and weekends, watching the amount owed sit there unchanged while their own supplier bills kept coming due on schedule.

They came to Treadstone Law wanting to sue for the full amount. It was their money, fairly earned, clearly documented in invoices and delivery records signed by Abirami's staff. The question was never whether they were owed it. The question was what it would actually take, in time and money, to get it back — and whether the business on the other end of the claim would still be standing, with funds to pay, by the time any judgment arrived.

The decision that mattered most

In Ontario, the amount you can claim in Small Claims Court is capped. Anything above that cap has to go through the Superior Court of Justice instead, using regular civil procedure — statements of claim and defence, discovery, motions, and eventually a trial if the case doesn't settle. That process can resolve a $58,000 debt. It can also cost a meaningful fraction of that debt in legal fees and take well over a year to reach a result, especially if the other side defends, delays, or has few assets to actually collect from once a judgment is obtained.

Small Claims Court, by contrast, caps recovery at $35,000 but moves faster, uses simplified procedure, and costs far less to run. For a debtor of unknown means — and Abirami's cleaning company showed no sign of being a large, well-capitalized operation — the practical question was not just "can we win" but "can we collect, and will the cost of trying eat the win."

Treadstone Law laid out the trade-off plainly. Suing for the full $58,000 in Superior Court meant a longer, costlier fight for an amount that might not even be fully collectible at the end of it. Capping the claim at $35,000 and proceeding in Small Claims Court meant giving up roughly $23,000 of the debt outright — there is no practical way to later come back and sue for the difference once a claim has been framed and pursued this way — but it meant a faster process, lower costs, and a real chance of collecting most or all of what was actually claimed.

This is not a calculation clients like to hear. Ines and Senthil had records proving they were owed $58,000, and being told the sensible move was to formally ask for less felt like losing before the fight even started. But the honest advice was that a $58,000 paper victory in Superior Court, against a debtor who might not have $58,000 to pay it with, was worth less than a $35,000 judgment obtained quickly and enforced while the debtor still had assets and cash flow.

What we did

1. Reviewed the account in full before recommending a forum. Every invoice, delivery record, and email exchange was pulled together to confirm the debt was solid and well-documented — a weak paper trail would have changed the advice entirely, since a fast forum is only an advantage if the claim itself is strong.
2. Assessed the debtor's likely ability to pay, not just the size of the debt. Public business records and the pattern of the account itself — a mid-sized local cleaning company, not a large corporation — suggested a judgment for the full amount might not be meaningfully more collectible than one capped at $35,000.
3. Recommended capping the claim at $35,000 and filing in Small Claims Court. This meant formally accepting the loss of roughly $23,000 of the actual debt, a decision Ines and Senthil made only after seeing the cost and timeline comparison laid out side by side for both forums.
4. Filed the claim and served it properly. Abirami's company was served with the claim and given the standard period to respond. When no defence was filed within the required time, Treadstone Law moved for default judgment rather than waiting to see if a late response might still arrive.
5. Obtained judgment and moved quickly to enforcement. Once the default judgment was granted for the $35,000 claimed plus court costs, the firm moved directly into collection efforts — a garnishment against the business's bank account — before the debtor had time to move funds or wind down operations.

The outcome

The strategy worked. Because no defence was ever filed, the case never became a drawn-out fight — it moved from claim to default judgment in a matter of months, not years. The garnishment reached the business's operating account and recovered the bulk of the judgment amount within a few months of enforcement starting, with the remainder collected over the following months as further funds became available and further garnishment notices were served.

Ines and Senthil ended up recovering close to the full $35,000 claimed, plus most of their court costs, for a fraction of what a Superior Court action would have cost to run — and considerably faster. The roughly $23,000 they gave up by capping the claim was real money, and it was not an easy number to accept walking in. Senthil later said the hardest part of the whole process was signing off on a claim for less than what the invoices actually showed. But set against the realistic alternative — a longer, costlier Superior Court claim against a debtor whose ability to pay the full amount was genuinely uncertain, dragged out over a year or more of procedural steps — it was the version of the fight they could actually win and actually collect on.

There is also a version of this story that ends differently. Had Abirami's company filed a defence and fought the claim, or had it folded before the garnishment reached its account, Ines and Senthil could have ended up with a judgment worth little more than the paper it was printed on. That risk exists in any debt collection matter regardless of forum, and it was part of the honest conversation from the outset — a fast, cheap win is still a win, but no lawyer can promise a debtor will have money in the account when the sheriff or the garnishment notice arrives.

They also changed how they run the business going forward. Credit terms are now capped for any single account, with a lower ceiling before a customer is moved to prepayment or shorter payment cycles, and monthly statements are now reviewed together rather than left until a debt has grown large enough to notice. It is a small operational change, but it means the next unpaid account, if there ever is one, will already sit comfortably within what Small Claims Court can resolve — no hard trade-off required next time.

What you can learn from this