If you do not show up in court they will file a judgement against you. Not easy to collect a judgement. But you’ll have it on your record
We filed small claims against a guy once - he was in his truck and hit my wife's car - clearly his fault, he had merged into her lane. He gave us all his info, only to have us find out later that he had let his insurance lapse. We tried contacting him a bunch, all we wanted was our $250 deductible back that we had to pay for our collision/uninsured coverage (whatever had covered it, can't remember, it was years ago), even though the actual repair cost was much higher, of course.
Well, most people let that stuff go, but I sure as hell don't. We filed small claims, paid the fee. We paid extra to have him served and he never responded to the filing, and never showed up. We got a default judgement and the "good luck collecting from this guy" notice from the court.
A few years later we got a letter from the guy. Turns out, the small claims court filed a lien on our behalf on the guy's truck. So when he went to sell it, he had to clear the lien in order to allow the transfer of the title to the new owner. And in order to clear the lien, the court had to receive a letter from US telling them that he had repaid the judgement to us. So we sent him a letter and made him pay us the $250 plus all of the court costs we paid, plus interest. Then we had the lien released.
Cool story bro version: If you have a motor vehicle registered in the state, they'll file a lien on it if you don't pay a judgement against you and you won't be able to sell it until it's paid.
