Law & Justic

Archive for April, 2010

I am not a lawyer - I am a judgment broker. With that out of the way, a judgment is a legal document that needs proper “care and feeding”. If the debtor named goes bankrupt, or the time limits have expired (e.g., ten years in California, five years in Wyoming), or there is a successful court action to cancel it, the judgment can die. Also, if all laws are not followed during the enforcement of your judgment, you may end up owing the debtor money.

Anyone that enforces a judgment must take care of it. This article is for judgment owners considering who should enforce their judgment. Here are the five choices, with the pros and cons of each:

1) You can enforce your judgment yourself. The pro parts are that you are in full control of everything, and that this is usually the cheapest way to enforce a judgment. The con parts are that judgment enforcement requires a lot of time and money. Be polite, use common sense, and have patience. Each state has its own laws on what you can and cannot do to enforce a judgment.

2) Hire a lawyer on contingency - the pro parts are that it may not cost much to get your judgment enforced. The con parts are that very few judgments are accepted on contingency by lawyers. Also, the lawyer may give up if the judgment is not easy to enforce, wasting a lot of time. Also, many lawyers who take a case on a contingency expects the Judgment Creditor to pay all court costs up-front before taking your case. Court costs can become expensive.

3) Hire a lawyer by the hour – the pro parts are that when your judgment is large and you already know where the debtor’s assets are, you can save a lot of money. The con parts are that usually things are not so easy, and often you end up spending a lot of money with no recovery on the judgment.

I was once approached by an elegant English lady who had a problem with her plastic surgery because her surgeon botched her breasts and had given her an uneven, unappealing look. All along we’d planned to use full color pictures of the breasts in question. However, in the courtroom, I decided they didn’t convey the full horror of what had happened. So, I asked the court to allow my client to physically display her damage to the jury. He conceded and allowed me to do so in his chambers. My plaintiff disrobed and stood before all the members of the jury in her glory and horror.

No matter how many times a case of botched breast surgery comes to court, there is no amount of compensation that can make up for both the mental and physical scars these people have to live with. I’ve tried so many cases where the injury to the body needed to be portrayed in court. Putting these injuries on exhibit is sometimes a necessary evil. However, in my entire legal history, this case was by far the most dramatic.

Although there is only one letter separating the two words, a legal tort is nothing so sweet as a tart. It actually comes from an old French word and translates more or less into twist or turn. It seems appropriate from a modern sense, I guess, since most victims of a tort are often bowed, bent, broken, and/or twisted out of shape in some sense or another. However, the real meaning of tort refers to any type of injury to either the mind or body. Both personal injury matters and malpractice lawsuits against doctors or lawyers constitute torts. The reasons that you have contact with the law could come from a bad contract, will, real estate entanglement, or even a crime.

But don’t be surprised if a rich man’s Mercedes knocks you down at some time in your life, and you find it necessary to call upon the services of a tort attorney. No matter the experience or reputation of the tort attorney, there is one set price for both the inexperienced or the highly reputable. The way this is done is through a contingent fee arrangement, which is impermissible in England and Canada. Once you find an attorney you want to work with and he agrees to represent you, then you sign paperwork agreeing to give him between one-third and forty percent of the proceeds made from the case. If you do not win your case, then you owe no attorneys’ fees.