What if the contractor didn't abandon the job, he just did it badly?

This represents a meaningfully different type of claim than a straightforward abandonment case, and it's valued differently as a result. Rather than measuring your damages by how much of your original deposit is unaccounted for, a defective-work claim is valued by the actual cost to fix or redo whatever was done incorrectly, which you'd typically establish through a second contractor's written estimate for corrective work.

This distinction matters practically because it can push your claim size beyond what small claims court can handle. If the reasonable cost to properly redo or repair the defective work runs above $12,500, the individual small claims cap in California, you're pushed out of small claims entirely and into limited civil court instead, which involves a different filing process, different forms, and generally benefits from more formal preparation than a straightforward small claims filing.