[Photoshop or whatever you would like to use...I am the opposite of expert in this situation]

I'm an attorney that has a client who leases restaurant equipment. He had a customer lease some equipment from him and has since refused to pay and continues to keep the equipment. I'm about to take him to small claims court and it would be really nice if I could have the original invoice as evidence. Unfortunately, my client has misplaced the invoice. However, he does have a picture of the invoice that he took on his cell phone (he took the picture and sent it to the customer to try and get him to pay a while ago).

The two pictures are in my photo gallery under "Invoice 1" and "Invoice 2" (and below). Sorry for the quality, but this is what he emailed me.

I played with them about a week ago just to print them off so I could read them, which I was successful at, but I think I would struggle to get them to use it in court. The pictures below are the originals, not the ones I doctored up.

My task, to whoever is willing, would be to see if you could play around with the pictures and try to get it as close as possible to the original document. I'll paypal or send a check of $50 to whoever can successfully accomplish this. Sorry it's not that much, but even I won't be making too much off this case if it goes our way.





[Edited on November 25, 2010 at 9:11 AM. Reason : .]

11/25/2010 9:10:09 AM

why don't you have your client print them off QB again? Unless it's the owner's signature on the invoice and not your client's.

11/25/2010 9:24:38 AM

^yep,that is a QuickBook's generated invoice.

find the computer his quickbook's was running on and look for the QBW file. It has everything in it from sales orders to the pay roll.

and why doesn't he have a copy for tax purposes? i thought your suppose to have a hard copy of these things filed away from 5 years or something.



[Edited on November 25, 2010 at 10:14 AM. Reason : s]

11/25/2010 10:12:47 AM

This guy isn't the best at bookkeeping. He's kinda old and runs it mom and pop style. The fact that he even has, or had, Quickbooks at some point surprised me. He might have gotten rid of it, gone to a different system, crashed him computer and lost everything...I don't know. I've hounded him, and he has assured me that this is his only evidence of this invoice.

Just trying to explore a different route.

11/25/2010 10:21:19 AM

This is relatively easy to do (takes 30 seconds), but TWW reencodes the images when you upload them, which adds a good bit of extra noise.

You might want to put them on rapidshare or something.


[Edited on November 25, 2010 at 11:19 AM. Reason : ]

11/25/2010 10:52:21 AM

is this not, somewhat, illegal?

seems like it could be considered fraudulent evidence or something, even if the information is accurate

11/25/2010 10:53:47 AM

Copy of documents are allowed in court. I'm not offering it as evidence of being the original.

[Edited on November 25, 2010 at 11:16 AM. Reason : .]

11/25/2010 11:16:29 AM

Point is, if you are already digitally altering the image via photoshop who's to say you didn't take someone else's bill and photoshop the name?

In fact there's a whole business in "enhance that image" where they clean up security footage to use as evidence in court. They've got very strict guidelines, they can do certain things and they can't do other things. Given the strict rules those types of businesses are under I doubt a photoshop from a random person on the internet would be admissible.

Of course I have no idea what kind of cases it applies to and it is a bit apples to oranges (face vs. document) but I think the principle would be the same.



[Edited on November 25, 2010 at 10:40 PM. Reason : -]

11/25/2010 10:26:35 PM

^ Yeah, yeah, yeah...I get it.

Bottom line is this: My client can be a dumbass sometimes. He keeps shitty records and most of the time goes by someone's "word." This guy rented some equipment from him for a large event (I live in Charleston, it was the Family Circle Cup, a nig WTA event), tried to skirt by on some of the expenses, my client wouldn't have it, the guy tried to play hard ball, so my client comes to me to collect some money. The "customer" still has the equipment, he won't pay the rental fees, and he won't even let my client on his property to pick up the equipment (made threats like, "if you show up on my property, I'll _______"

Without the original, and this pretty weak picture of the invoice, I'm about 65% confident I'll be successful in small claims court. With a much clearer copy, I'm about 90% confident everything will come out positive (10% for a retarded judge).

I've "tinkered" with this on Preview on a Mac, and I've made it good enough for me to comprehend. I would just like to see if someone who is A LOT better at this than me give a shot.

11/25/2010 11:12:30 PM

Like moron said, you'd have better luck if you upload a higher resolution image to rapidshare/tinypic/imgur and link it in.

11/26/2010 12:13:17 AM

^try that and post the link.



Also I would visit your client's shop and look through his computer for the QB file. That might be easier. I've seen people "loose" their QBW files only to do a quick search and find in another folder or the name was changed.

11/26/2010 9:13:07 AM

Judge Judy would yell at you guys for not having a copy of anything.

11/29/2010 11:34:34 AM