Ok so I'm back now, and no it wasn't on People's Court
So in a nutshell coder didn't do any work, but today he actually shows up for court and has a fabricated printout of a "modeled database" for my site. This was work he made up after getting the summons and it was news to me.
I never gave him direction to start that and we had not even secured dedicated hosting to start the site and build it on.
So the moment of ownage was when he stated he had indeed done some work and that it was a database. So I told the judge, your honer that statement is false and the work is a fabrication and I can prove it. So I approached the bench with post summons dated emails where the coder admits the extent of the work done by him had been "thought & research" and that he could not START a database without parameters and directions from me.
So overall, not a terrible experience, don't get ripped off!