Hi, I’m Alan Yu and I am the owner of socialmediajustice.com. I created this site for the purpose of sharing my experience with the BC provincial court system.

While I believe I had all of the evidence to support my claim, I have witnessed first hand in regards to the public’s concerns about our court system ranging from topics such as it accessible? Do judges really enforce the law? Is the court process just redundant to the point where simple logic and common sense seems to be thrown out the window?

By sharing my experience, I believe I will help shine a light on this issue as I believe the court system needs a major overhaul to adapt to modern society and that no one should have to go through what I did. I hope to do this in a responsible and professional way to expose the justice system enough where people will start looking to change the system for the better.

The Scenario
The messy thing in this case is that this is a “He said, she said” battle to a certain extent since it was a verbal agreement in the end and you don’t know who is telling the truth normally. Fortunately, I have extensive e-mail records of the situation.

What helped me a lot as well is that before I actually filed the court papers, a demand letter was sent. In reaction to this, the defendant tried to come up with a scheme to counter it and his accomplice accidentally sent a word document to his old e-mail address that he was using for business before which resided under my domain. It was labeled along the lines of “Important fill in Blanks!!” This had detailed information on the story he was essentially planning to tell the court and how he has been slandering me to so many people.

Of course, he had no knowledge that I read this which helped me a lot as it made it clear what type of arsenal I needed. Example, from what I gathered he was going to try to claim that he was putting an average of 10 to 12 hours a day in doing the business specifically for my benefit and that I “forbidded” him from doing work elsewhere. So, I knew attaching e-mail documents such as multiple incidents where I was helping him write resumes and cover letters to try and find a job would help my case.

Due to the nature of the case, I was originally supposed to take my former friend to the supreme court of BC. As well, with the legal advice I received it looked like I could have taken him to court for possibly more too. This experience definitely was hurtful too.

However, after looking at the cost and complexity of the system it just didn’t seem very accessible or reasonable financially. In fact, it was even suggested to me at one point where for many people if their case wasn’t worth at least $100,000 that you should just forget about it. That definitely showed me that the supreme court was more like a privilege and not a right. Another sentiment that many people expressed was even if I did have the best case in the world that is no guarantee that I will even see a penny back even if I win the case.

Therefore, I opted to waive my losses to a small claims court limitation setting of $25,000 while not pursuing charges on other items that require the supreme court of BC. To me, this had a lot to do with principles too as the truth is the justice I was seeking. It was fortunate that I was able to get some pro bono help as well until it seemed like the funding got cut and therefore I was on my own.

My Challenge To You The Reader-
I strongly believe that this case could have been over in about 2 hours or less. Regardless of which side you believe, take a look at the facts and logistics as you follow the categories on the right. Openly share your thoughts on how you would have handled the situation if you were a judge/citizen trying to uncover the truth. Is there a point or fact where you can confidently say “This is so obvious who is lying” for example?

After going through this process, one strong belief I have is that the system in place is more about processing cases as oppose to trying to find out the truth and granting swift justice. Another thing to keep in mind is that small claims court is supposed to be simple, cheap while cutting straight to the point where people are encouraged not to use lawyers in court. Do you believe that is the case as you read what happened?

This made me wonder, how different would it be if we truly had an open court system that was accessible for everyone? I call this site “Social Media Justice” as I want to see how real and everyday citizens who’s lives don’t revolve around being paid within the legal profession would handle a case like this.

Would cases like these truly cost us tens of thousands of dollars and hours to solve? I say no and I think what I present is very alarming to show you how things are handled with the system I went through.

Other Stories-

If you have an interesting factual based case as well feel free to contact me to see if it is something suitable for the public to evaluate how they would handle the case as well. I will also be blogging about other stories as I discover them. At the end of the day, it’s about creating awareness to promote change.