THE company asked him to pay up and served a statutory demand notice on him.
The notice is one of the steps towards declaring a person bankrupt.
However, Mr Ng Pian Ying, who left school before he even took his Secondary 4 exams, was not cowed.
In order to set aside the notice, he had to go to court.
The feisty 60-year-old technical consultant decided to take up the case himself, with no legal help.
And he won.
The New Paper had highlighted his problem last May.
Mr Ng thought he was buying a 14-year-old Honda Civic from GV Credit, a second-hand car dealer, for $22,800 inclusive of 3.5 per cent interest on hire purchase terms.
So he signed the form in October 2005.
However, when he received the hire purchase forms later, he saw that the loan amount stated was $31,385 inclusive of 4.5 per cent interest.
Mr Ng, married with four grown children, refused to pay the monthly instalments. In February last year, the dealers repossessed his car.
STATUTORY DEMAND NOTICE
Two months later, he received a statutory demand notice of $11,560 from GV Credit's lawyer.
This was the amount due to the company at that time.
'I found it extremely ridiculous that they wanted compensation when they were the ones who should compensate me for the trouble I went through instead,' said Mr Ng.
Mr Ng then went in search of lawyers to represent him.
But he did not want to pay lawyer's fees, which he said were quoted in the thousands.
NO IDEA WHERE TO START
'I earn less than $2,000 a month, so I decided to litigate on my own,' said Mr Ng, who lives in a four-room flat in Sengkang.
But it was tough going.
He said: 'When I decided to take my own case, I was lost and had no idea where to start.
'The only thing I was certain about was that, I knew I wasn't in the wrong.'
So by day he was a technical consultant and by night he turned lawyer - drafting affidavits (sworn statements) and preparing court documents.
Mr Ng did his own research at local libraries in preparing court documents.
Over the eight-month period, he estimates he would have spent four to five days per month working on the case.
'I would start after dinner, and I worked on it till 4am,' he said.
Mr Ng ploughed through all the law books he could lay his hands on and took references from past court cases in both local and overseas courts.
'It took me time to understand legal jargon before I could go on to read cases and know what was going on.
'I then noted down important points from the books.'
He said he spent about $500 on printing and submission of court documents and other expenses like travelling to court and libraries.
He also had to take leave from work to attend five court sessions held in chambers at the High Court.
'It was quite tedious. Several times, the court rejected my documents because either they were not in order or they were written amateurishly,' he said.
Last week , the court finally ruled in Mr Ng's favour and awarded him $600 for his costs.
REPAIR COSTS
However, though happy that he had won the case against GV Credit, Mr Ng is not planning to let the matter rest.
'I still want them to return the $500 deposit I paid for the car, and the car repair costs that I had forked out,' he said.
The New Paper contacted GV Credit's lawyers through e-mail for comments last week , but they weren't received by press time.
Source
He fights own case in court & wins 
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