How things work on a court TV show

I work on the Judge Judy Show, and a lot of my job consists of looking through small claims applications and then calling potential litigants for the show. In case you're wondering: Yes! They are real cases with real people. (Though I do what I can to tweak the reality to suit the viewers' pleasure.)

Some background: any time someone files a suit in small claims it becomes a public record. All of the court TV shows have researchers combing through those public records in districts across the country, and they send copies back to their respective production offices. Those claims get split amongst the producers in the office, and we send out letters and make calls.

You may be asking yourself: why would anyone want to come on national TV to talk about their "dirty laundry"? Honestly, the vast majority of people I talk to don't want to get anywhere near a camera. But the sad and surprising fact is that nearly 80% of court-ordered judgments go unpaid every year. That means you can sue someone in small claims, a judge can order that the defendant pays his debt, and five years later, all you've got for your trouble is a framed court-order on your wall.

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There are several case-types that are very common:

• Landlord/Tenant - Either a tenant is suing a landlord because the security deposit was not returned, or a landlord is suing the tenant for unpaid rent or damages. These are by far the most common cases, and they are also the most boring. I generally try not to even contact these people. A more promising version of this is when roommates sue each other - here at least there is a potential for a relationship.

• Unpaid personal loans - These are also quite common. These have the potential to be more interesting since personal loans will usually be between people with a relationship, which means there could be some interesting drama. Even so, the vast majority of them are so clear-cut that there's not enough to talk about that will last more than three minutes of airtime.

• Dog bites - This kind of case is common, but much less so than the other two. These have potential, except that the majority occur because an owner did not have his dog properly leashed. And if that's the case, then that owner is automatically at fault, and there's nothing for him to argue. (And I'm sorry for any pit bull lovers out there, but a statistically relevant number of the cases that end up in the courts involve your breed.)

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• Other - It's usually in the "other" category where we find the most potential cases - these can be vandalism, assault, false restraining orders - all the interesting stuff. Of course, to paraphrase Spinoza, the more interesting, the more rare.

So, why would anyone want to air his dirty laundry on national TV? You can see that I deal with a bit of a paradox when talking to potential litigants: the more clearcut, impersonal, and non-dramatic, the easier it will be to convince them to come on the show. Of course, none of that makes for good TV. Alternatively, those cases that make for the most interesting TV - the convoluted, the personal, and the dramatic - make for the hardest litigants to entice on the air. So how do I do it? In a word: money. But it's not as simple as you might think​.

The show pays the judgment awarded in the case. That means that as a plaintiff, if you're suing for a large sum of money, and you don't think the defendant has any property for you to go after with your court-ordered judgment, it makes sense to argue your case on TV for a guaranteed payment (and by that I mean the show guarantees to pay whatever is awarded, but there is no guarantee that you will be awarded anything). Now, if you're simply suing for the return of a security deposit, you might be willing to suffer the discomfort of a TV show for, say, a $500 win. But if you're suing an ex-lover for falsely imprisoning you for 72 hours due to his lying to CPS about how you nearly poisoned your kids, you probably won't want to come on TV unless you have the potential to be awarded $5000.

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The same kind of thinking works in reverse for the defendant. If a defendant loses, the show pays the judgment. So he's not out-of-pocket for anything. But I can't do a case where a defendant comes on the show and says he owes money. He has to have a defense that says he owes nothing. So if the guy only owes $500, it may not be worth the hassle. But if the guy could potentially owe $5000, he may be willing to risk showing his shit-stained undies to a national audience.

Here's the funny thing: legally, the show has to pay each litigant an appearance fee. This is an amount of money over and above whatever the judgment awarded. And I think you'd expect that a multi-million-dollar show would pay a substantial appearance fee for its litigants - if only to make it easier to find and secure good cases. But I'm going to tell you something that blew my socks off when I first heard it:

The appearance fee for coming on the show is $100.

Now, if it's a really interesting case, I can work to get more than that. But honestly, it doesn't get much higher. A few hundred tops. And that's just mindblowing to me. And most potential litigants hear that, and they're like, uhm, what? Aren't you people rich?

The funny thing is, we constantly get criticized by the suits asking us to offer less and less money in the way of appearance fees. This means that an already competitive market - there are a bunch of court TV shows - gets harder and harder as the producers' hands are tied from above.

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Well, now you know a little bit about how things work in court TV. Are you suing anyone and being sued? Hit me up! I'm always looking for more cases.

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