An Oregon state prison inmate claims he nearly severed his right thumb on a defective barbecue grill from a Fred Meyer store in 2015, and the company still owes him more than $10,000.

Aaron P. Bostwick received a default judgment from Deschutes County small claims court, but Fred Meyer Stores Inc. won’t pay. Instead, the company has filed a suit in Deschutes County Circuit Court to stop what appears to be a scheme that Bostwick carried out in small claims courts around Oregon. Fred Meyer is seeking an order preventing Bostwick from obtaining fee waivers or deferrals in Oregon courts for 10 years and an order requiring Bostwick to copy the company’s attorneys with any documents he serves.

“Mr. Bostwick abused the small claims process by filing a complaint with the ulterior motive of obtaining a fraudulent default judgment against Fred Meyer and then collecting upon the same,” the company’s Portland attorney, Brian Hickman, of Gordon & Polscer LLC, stated in the May 15 complaint. Fred Meyer is also seeking reimbursement of attorney fees.

Bostwick’s tactic, according to the complaint by Fred Meyer, is to send material to the company’s registered agent. He filed a complaint against Fred Meyer on Nov. 16, and instead of serving the company, “he inserted irrelevant material” in an envelope, which he mailed to Fred Meyer’s registered agent for service of process, Corporation Service Corporation.

CSC signed the return receipt and received the mail, but the envelope didn’t contain any material referencing Fred Meyer or the small claims case, the complaint says. Then Bostwick submitted to the court the return receipt, signed by Fred Meyer’s agent, as proof of service. Finally, Bostwick filed a motion for default judgment, which he received in December.

Fred Meyer learned of the judgment when Bostwick served a writ of garnishment on Bank of America, and the bank notified Fred Meyer, the complaint says.

Peter Werner, the Deschutes County circuit judge pro tem who signed the default judgment, would not comment on the small claims process. “I used to work for an insurance company before I went to law school,” he said. “Fraud was everywhere.”

Bostwick has filed numerous small claims throughout Oregon and obtained several default judgments, some of which were later vacated when the debtors contacted the court about never being served with the complaint, Hickman stated in the Fred Meyer complaint.

Bostwick has multiple theft and forgery convictions on his record and has been an inmate at Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla since March 2016, the Oregon Department of Corrections’ website shows.

—Reporter: 541-617-7860, kmclaughlin@bendbulletin.com