PIRG to Establish Small Claims Office

Mass PIRG East, the student-run consumer activist group, plans to establish a small claims court advisory center for Harvard and Radcliffe students, as well as Cambridge residents, within a month.

Paul Rosenberg '75, an organizer of Mass PIRG East, said yesterday that small claims courts were set up as an "uncomplicated, plain-language, inexpensive procedure for settling minor grievances."

Now, they are being used less and less by the people for whom they were established, he said, and more and more by corporations and collection agencies employing lawyers.

The volunteer advisors will not act as advocates for individual cases nor as amateur lawyers, Rosenberg said. Instead, they will try to inform people about small claims courts' potential through personal contact and published material.

The center will be located somewhere near the Square, perhaps in a room Phillips Brooks House has offered, Rosenberg said. Although Harvard University is not a member of it, the Eastern Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group--(Mass PIRG), PIRG members felt that an advisory service would help both students and other citizens, Rosenberg said.