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Clavus: In the future, I would do a few things differently-for example, collecting the sales tax in advance in an escrow account and/or adding a provision in the sales contract that says if you have to bring suit agaisnt other company, venue and jurisdiction in VA and you get to collect your attorney's fees for having to bring suit...but what good is hindsight, right?? lol. Anyway, VA probably has what's called a "long-arm" jurisdiction statute that may allow you to file suit in VA, even if it is a CA company. Long-arm jurisdiction allows you to bring in an out of state defendant if there are "minimum contacts" with the forum state (VA). A lot of this will have to do with whether they contacted you, where the contract was signed, how the shipping was arranged, payment, etc. Unfortunately, I doubt you will be able to file mulitple small claims actions because that would defeat the idea behind small claims. You are supposed to bring all claims together...but if the claims arise at different times (i.e., they were supposed to pay $5k each quarter) you could bring a claim each time they breach. I am not sure what the courts are like in VA, but this will probably either have to be brought in County or District Court in VA. You would hire a process server to serve them in CA. If they get an attorney, he may challenge the jurisdiction question and you could spend a lot of $$$ fighting that issue alone. You can always bring the lawsuit where the Defendant is domiciled, so if it was me, I would hire a CA attorney to file in CA. If the agreement is solid on them paying sales tax, there would be no need for a trial and you would probably just get a declaratory judgment against them. Once you have the judgment, you can levy the other company's assets and do all kinds of fun things. Of course, maybe they will just pay??? Let me know.
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