Selling a used item out online may seem like a rather mundane and everyday thing. Thousands of people do it, especially out at Craigslist. When Doug Costello, 66, of Massachusetts, decided to sell his used printer for $40 out at Craigslist he hardly expected the legal nightmare that he would find himself in for more than six years.
Back in 2009, Costello sold his used printer for $40 to Gersh Zavodnik, 54, a Ukrainian national living in Indiana. Seemed like a simple thing but not so as Zavodnik has a reputation for bringing frivolous and damaging lawsuits to practically every one he has ever done business with. Most of these abusive suits are aimed at people he has had online transactions with. He seeks them out. He is a predator lawsuit filer. He is even well known by the justices who sit on the Indiana Supreme Court where he has been called a “prolific and abusive litigant”.
Doug Costello
Zavodnik, who has been in the country since being granted political asylum in 1987, claims that the printer was broken and missing parts and that Costello had defrauded him and just kept his money. His original suit, for $6,000, was thrown out by the judge because he no longer even had the printer. He had thrown it away. Was the Ukrainian discouraged? No, he filed another suit against Costello charging fraud, deception, false advertising and emotional distress.
“I figured that was it,” said Costello. But, no, no, no. Now I am in another Twilight Zone.”
Zavodnik filed the suit suing for $30,000 but the court threw it out along with another 26 lawsuits that Zavodnik was in the process of prosecuting. The paperwork kept coming to Costello. Zavodnik wanted him to admit that he had a conspiracy going with the judges and wanted $300,000 in damages for it. Because Costello didn’t respond in 30 days to these requests, as stated by Indiana law, he, essentially, admitted to them by default.
Gersh Zavodnik
Costello finally lawyered-up and the case dragged on for six years until, in 2015, when a special judge in the case awarded Zavodnik $30,000 for breach of contract even though he no longer had the printer. Costello, who owns a forensic accounting firm, was outraged and appealed the ruling.
The appeals court was outraged as well and the judge in the case dismissed everything and stated that Zavodnik’s case “has no basis in reality.”
Costello says that he will never sell anything online ever again.
PHOTO CREDITS: USA Today / The Indianapolis Star / Pixabay