I entered an agreement with a friend, where I allowed him to rent my p.a. equipment for his side work as a wedding DJ. We had an agreement on the price he would pay, which was later modified to a lesser amount. In the end, he quit paying altogether and I am now getting my equipment back, some of which was damaged under his care.

The agreement was for a piece of his flat rate and he covers the costs of any damage incurred to my equipment. My mixer has a damaged channel, now, and he hasn't paid me in awhile. I don't know how much the repairs would add up to, but the $$ owed is in the $4-5,000 range.

Is this contract legally binding in Ohio (Hamilton county)? Am I able to take legal action against him for the money owed me?

For that kind of money you may be better served with an attorney and make him pay for that too. It sounds like this goes beyond a small claims court and local laws apply for damages, which you haven't even documented and got repair costs for. By chance did you have insurance on your equipment?

Thanks for your reply, Talaniman.

No, no insurance on the equipment. It's old used, from ages ago, when I was in a band. It would probably cost more to fix the bad channel on the mixer than to just buy a new one, but I haven't looked into that yet.


I think my biggest hurdle in this situation is that this was a friend of mine, so I wasn't aggressively seeking my due payment. This has been going on for some time, now. Most of his jobs were weddings and a Friday night gig at a local dive bar. In all of these gigs, he's paid in cash and, in the case of the bars, cash + $150 bar tab. There's no paper trail of payments or jobs he's done, so that adds to the difficulty.


I was hoping for a little bit of knowledge before I broach the topic with him. I'm OK with getting lawyers involved, but I don't want to say that he's legally bound if, in fact, he's not. So, before I say something to him, I'm trying to find out if I might have a legal leg to stand on. I don't want to waste my time, or the time of an attorney, if I'm s.o.l.

A FREE consultation can't hurt, especially if your damages are higher than what you could sue for in small claims court. I'm no lawyer, but a friend would return my stuff and maybe we could work out something we could both live with, like reduced payments for longer, and get it in writing. Suing and winning are different from actually collecting which would take another trip to the courts.

Verbal agreements are usually enforceable. Judgements are rendered all the time, but collecting is the hard part if he has no job. Yeah I would talk to a lawyer, and know what the options are before you confront your "friend".

Thanks, dude. Will do.