Can I still sue for or recover my monies or, am I too late?

If you or your business has an unpaid invoice, court judgment, contractual or negligence claim against another party, it may not be too late to recover those amounts.

Generally, you would have 6 years to commence proceedings for a claim in contract or tort. For example, if you have an unpaid invoice from up to 6 years ago, you can still issue proceedings against the defaulting party as long as the court documents are filed before the 6 year period is up.

However, calculating this 6-year period can be tricky and would depend on the type of claim that you or your business are bringing – in a breach of contract claim, the time is calculated from the date of the breach. Additionally, if a part-payment is made, the time starts running from the date of that payment. So, keeping this in mind, if you believe that the 6-year period is not up, it is still not too late to speak to your lawyer about your rights and the prospects of recovery.

If you or your business has successfully obtained a judgment against a party, you have 15 years from the date of the judgment to take further action to recover your monies. It may be worthwhile to revisit some of the judgments that have been obtained in the past to check if the other party has come into any monies or has purchased real property. If so, you may wish to consider taking the next steps to enforce your judgment to recover your monies.

It is important to keep in mind that you may have other types of claims as well. The time periods for the claims that we commonly see are:

• Defamation: 1 year
• Personal injury: 3 years
• Contesting a Will: 6 months
• Building Defects: 10 years

How we can help

If you have an unpaid invoice, court judgment, or contractual or negligence claim against another party, our Litigation team can help you. Email us your question.