What reason would a judge have for dismissing a case "without prejudice"?

“Without prejudice” man that’s a hard word to spell! means you can take it back to court if you want.

When we owned the mower shop we were sued by a moron who demanded we rebuild the engine of his total POS Murray rider for $100. It’s a minimum of a $500 job, and he knew it. He just dragged it over with his pick up truck and dropped it off. It sat for 3 years…and then he sued us. Long story short, we finally agreed to settle out of court (in the hallway of the courthouse) for $400 just to make him go away. Then he got SERIOUSLY unreasonable (basically demanded an entirely new mower..he’d had lots and lots and lots of experience in small claims court. Had filed over 100 suits over the previous 5 years….) and we said “To hell with this. We’ll go to court!” And we did, about 10 minutes later.

I think that original out-of-court agreement worked against us because the judge ended up finding against us for $400 (I think the Consumer Protection Act was rolling around in his mind too…but the act isn’t designed for consumers to be allowed to sue businesses helter skelter, but he wanted to be safe….) I could tell he didn’t want to—the guy was a serious ass. But he did, and ruled “without prejudice” copy and paste!

Do you think he wanted us to bring it back to court?

Anyway, Judge Judy just made a ruling “without prejudice”...what is going through a judge’s mind when they do that?