A number of individuals who had successfully sued Equifax (EFX) in San Francisco small claims court in January have won the appeal filed by the credit agency, cementing judgments between $5,490 and $7,440 each.

The initial victories, delivered to the plaintiffs en masse by a sympathetic judge, were thought to be up in the air, as other consumers had attempted to sue but were denied by other judges thanks to the vagueness of the damages — paying for credit monitoring, (justified) paranoia, and overall diminished security.

Furthermore, these verdicts had been delivered without the help of lawyers, which are typically not permitted in the informal environment of a small claims court.

On March 8th Christian Haigh and Christina Brandt Bernstein managed to triumph over the credit giant, disgraced by its data breach that had left 150 million people with exposed personal information, including Social Security numbers. Another plaintiff, Jason Wittig, won on March 1.

FILE PHOTO: Credit reporting company Equifax Inc. corporate offices are pictured in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., September 8, 2017. REUTERS/Tami Chappell/File Photo More

According to Haigh, who is not a lawyer but has informal legal experience through the litigation financing company, Legalist, Equifax arrived at the courthouse with a VP, an in-house counsel, and an experienced lawyer from King & Spalding, a top law firm famous for defending the Defense of Marriage Act for the U.S. House.

Haigh and Wittig did not have lawyers; Bernstein was represented by her husband, a lawyer.

The trials took around two hours and were somewhat contentious: Equifax came with a high-powered legal team to an informal setting usually reserved for petty disputes involving five-figure sums or less. (Corporate lawyers often charge $1,200 to $1,500 per hour.)

The arguments

According to Haigh, Equifax’s major objective was to convince the judge to apply district court rules to a small claims situation. Hearsay, for example, can be admitted if a judge wants it to in small claims; in district courts the standards are higher.

Equifax did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

“I don’t think they had been in small claims court all that much,” Haigh told Yahoo Finance. “It was very bizarre. Also amusing: It’s really like taking a square peg to a round hole. You don’t hire King & Spalding for small claims.”

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