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Judgment Enforcement: Legal Stalking

As a creditor, you need to put enough pressure on the debtor that they need to live under a rock, or give up and pay up.

Enforcing a judgment can be just as important as obtaining the judgment, but sometimes enforcement can be much more difficult. However, there are a significant number of tools — depending on your jurisdiction — available for judgment creditors to enforce a judgment, many of which amount to legal stalking.

One of the first cases I worked on out of law school was a case involving collection of a judgment for a case I had helped successfully try while I was still in law school. Judgment collection is not something you are taught in law school, and to say it is different from the rest of litigation is an understatement.

While judgment enforcement is rarely necessary where a large corporation is the debtor, enforcement is often necessary when the debtor is an individual or a smaller company. One of the best things an attorney can do when enforcing a judgment is not necessarily collecting the money from the debtor, but rather putting enough pressure on the debtor to convince them to just pay the judgment (assuming they have or can get the money). This is also why settlements are so important; obtaining a settlement where the defendant — and future debtor — agrees to make payments, even if it is for less than you think a judgment would be worth, is often worth not having to pay for judgment collection.

How to — and How Not to — Stalk the Debtor

The firsts step any judgment creditor should take — aside from filing the judgment in the proper jurisdiction — when attempting to enforce a judgment is to perform a comprehensive asset search on the debtor. This will let you know where certain assets are and how much they are likely worth. Depending on the debtor this may also require filing your judgment in additional jurisdictions.

What you should not do once you receive information such as the location of the debtor’s home(s) or work is go full John Cusack in Say Anything and stand outside the debtor’s window blasting “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel on a boom box until they pay. Rather, I suggest “Money On My Mind” by Lil Wayne, as it will get the point across better. While this may successfully annoy them, it likely will not result in them paying you and may ultimately result in a restraining order, noise complaint, or any number of other misdemeanors.

But standing outside the debtor’s window is not far off from what you will need to do to either collect the full judgment or put enough pressure on the debtor to make them settle.

In the judgment collection action I mentioned previously, we managed to find approximately 4% of the total amount owed during judgement collection. But, what my colleagues and I did do while hunting for assets, was put enough pressure on the debtor that they effectively had to live under a rock, with no liquid or other readily accessible assets for the better part of a year. Once the debtor had enough, they contacted our firm with a settlement offer that ultimately would save our client money in not having to further pursue judgment enforcement, while also getting nearly the entire amount they were owed in their judgment.

Stalking the Debtor

While the goal of judgment enforcement is always to get the full amount owed, it makes little sense to get an additional $100 dollars at a cost in fees and expenses of $1,000. Rather, it makes sense to agree with the debtor to turn over $90, where the only fees will be for communicating with the debtor about the transfer of funds and the settlement agreement. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Money often costs too much.”

A lot of litigation — and in some people’s belief too much litigation — is based on personal beliefs; judgment enforcement is entirely about the bottom line.

The reason I say that judgment enforcement is like stalking the debtor is because by the end of enforcement you know everything there is to know about the debtor. For example, in the case I discussed above, I knew what kind of car the debtor drove, his monthly payments, and even the car his girlfriend drove; I knew where he lived, where he owned property, who owed him money, and even how often he was physically in certain jurisdictions, and things as personal as — not because I was looking, but because those sort of things come up when searching for the appropriate information — prior arrests.

With all of that (somewhat) non-relevant information, came a lot of relevant information that allowed us to continuously put pressure on the judgment debtor’s assets, ultimately leading to a favorable settlement in our client’s favor. As a creditor, you need to put enough pressure on the debtor that they need to live under a rock, or give up and pay up. This can seem useless at times, such as when you are only pulling hundreds or thousands of dollars out of accounts on million dollar judgments, and barely making a dent. But know that every time you pull any amount of money from the debtor, that is something they were counting on, that money is less that they have for whatever they had previously put it away for, and while it may not be a lot towards your judgment, it goes a longer way than you think towards ending the matter.

Once you have broken the proverbial camel’s back, you can stand outside their window playing “Money to Blow” by Birdman.


brian-grossmanBrian Grossman is an attorney at Balestriere Fariello. He graduated from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in June 2016. Brian represents clients in all aspects of complex commercial litigation and arbitration from pre-filing investigations to trial and appeals. You can reach him by email at brian.l.grossman@balestrierefariello.com.

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