Out of court settlement

A friend of me is in deep mental stress with the legal system. He used to employ many people including haitians several years back. He lost everything and closed his business for five years. very recently he had restarted the business in a small way. All of a sudden he was served lot of legal papers on behalf of haitians that they had several years including the period when the company is closed and asked for lot of compensation. The worst part is that he do not even realize that many of the persons had worked with him. It is clearly abuse of the law and he would win definitely if he contested in the court.
But he is tired of going behind the court and the lawyers. the reason is in an earlier similar case he had won in the first court. It was about 4 years back and he forgot about the case and he did not received any papers from the court. But the opponent appealed and his lawyer received the papers but did not follow or let him know about that. The opponent won because he did not show up and he sent the judgement copy. Now he had to follow that and to avoid all these frustrations, he struck a compromise with the opponents and want to settle the matter. But some lawyers are distracting him that if he does that then it would mean he voluntarily accepted his earlier contradictions when he opposed the case in the lower court and the opponent would seek contempt of justice. Is this possible? He is foreigner and lost all his fortune after entering into business in this island. Now he wants a peacefull life in this island. He had very famous lawyers argued his case earlier and was tired of them. Any suggestions would be appreciated. thank you all in advance.

Anastacio said:

Phwoa, sounds like a nightmare. If he is keeping it small he should have just trundled off to another part of the country and keep his business below the radar, out of sight, out of freeloaders minds. Relocate.
Sounds like he has brought it on himself a bit. If he would win in court then why not just allow them to take him to court at their expense. If he wins then he should only have the cost of his lawyer to pay, and if he is as sound of a win as you say, should not be so much work/cash.
Infact if he looks into it then there may be some kind of claims timespan cut off thingy, so they can't claim now after all this time. I dunno, I'm not a lawyer, but I'd not be paying people if I didn't need be, for an easy life or not.
Good luck with it.

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Thank you for your quick response. In the newer cases he is following in the court. But in the case he lost because he did not show up due to the fault of his lawyer, now it is his turn for appeal and he had to bear the bond etc and all other expenses. It is definitely the problem he invited into himself because he is new to the island and his advisors mislead him. And now he had consulted several people and each one has his own interpretation of the law and procedures and got confused.

DMV123 said:

With any legal case you MUST stay on top of the lawyers. And if your friend lost touch or stopped paying those lawyers they would have done nothing for him at all.

IF it is a labor case he needs a new lawyer immediately with instructions to negotiate and settle! He will not win.

IF it is a labor case and he went out of business regardless of the reason the first time then the odds are he needed to have paid those employees in the first place.

Being in business here is NOT easy. You better know all about running your type of business AND about doing business in this country. AND then you better learn the labor code and its implications.

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Thanks for all your inputs. He had to face it because he got hold of the tiger's tail.
The main problem is when he closed the company he had struck a deal with his employees and paid them the negotiated compensation. He had the proof that he had paid them and none of his Dominican employees had gone after him. Now he has problem with only the Haitians and as they did not reveal the correct name when they worked with him now he do not even realize who are they. He is having another case with the same lawyer and was visiting almost everyweek and the lawyer had never told about the appeal. Now he accepted his fault but it is late. Another thing he came to know that the haitians who had won in the appeal did not know about that.