I don’t know anything about civil suits, but from the outside looking in it seems like it’s very easy for defendants to dodge, delay, withhold payment, hide assets, etc. When a judgement is handed down, how is it enforced? And how often, if ever, are assets seized/frozen?
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Judgement can be handed down, but if a person doesn’t have it, there’s not much you can do. I think that’s something we forget about in a lot of these lawsuits.
Edited to say that they can garnish wages and issue levy’s against your bank accounts and even sized your property, but if the person has nothing it not payout the way it was hoped.
If you win money in a lawsuit (at least in most of the US), you can use the court to attach and seize assets of the defendant. The exact process depends on the jurisdiction, but after a relatively small amount of time after a judgment (leaving appeal issues aside), the prevailing party can petition the court to seize assets of the losing party – bank accounts, brokerage accounts, real estate, businesses, cars, etc. Some things can’t be seized, or are a least subject to limitations, but just about everything else is up for grabs. Once the court authorizes the seizure (and again, depending on the jurisdiction), the prevailing party can get law enforcement to literally seize assets, serve notice on banks to turn over funds, contents of safety deposit boxes, etc. Losing parties can and do try to evade payment, but if there’s enough at stake, there’s an entire industry built around tracking down and seizing/recovering assets.
You get an Order allowing you to seize assets. If they don’t have assets, you get an Order allowing you to garnish their wages. If they don’t have assets, a bank account, or wages, good luck.
If the court hasn’t received your payment for a civil suit, they can do things such as send your debt to Tax Intercept, where they will intercept any money you would get in a tax return and put that towards what you owe, or garnish your wages. They could also send the debt to collections and let the collections agencies hound you for payments, and your credit score will suffer.
You take the judgment and attach it to assets. Most people with assets will stop screwing around at that point and come up with cash, even if they have to borrow it.
People who can’t pay it will file bankruptcy and work it out there.
It is fairly common to not bother suing people personally (not their insurance) when they have no collectable assets. This is called being “judgment proof.” If all someone has is a paycheck to paycheck job and a ten year old car and their personal stuff, it’s likely not worth the legal fees as a straight money matters
Along time ago, I went to small claims court and got a judgment of about $1600
It was against transmission repair shop, and they simply sent me a check
There’s an old saying – you can’t get blood from a stone. If someone has no money, a judgment is just a piece of paper.
But if they have lots of money, the position of the law is “the law says you must pay them and we’ll make it relatively easy for you.” Including holding people in contempt if they are hiding things.
I remember there was a story a number of years ago about a couple that successfully sued a major national bank for (I think) wrongfully foreclosing on them? Or *something* of that nature. Anyway, they won, but the bank never responded to demands to pay out, so the court gave them a court order saying they could seize the banks assets.
They showed up to the local branch with the sheriff, who read the court order to the bank manager and explained that, by law, the couple was allowed to start just taking stuff from the branch. They were allowed to seize the bank’s property, so anything inside that building was fair game.
The bank paid what they owed *very* quickly after the branch manager called corporate and let them know what was happening.
If the defendant has insurance coverage, and there is no appeal, insurance companies will generally pay after judgment without undue delay. When any defendant refuses to pay, the court can order seizure of non exempt assets like property, cars, bank accounts, stocks, etc.
My experience: class action lawsuits, usually ‘wage-hour’ cases where employees might be underpaid.
The vast majority settle out of court, usually at mediation. So in that case, the settlement is approved by the court, which includes attorney’s fees. The company pays the settlement to the lawyers representing the workers, or a third-party company that is an intermediary, and does stuff like keep track of all the former employees that are due money even though they left the company years ago.
So from that, the attorneys get paid, and checks get paid to the dozens or hundreds of people.
>When a judgement is handed down, how is it enforced? And how often, if ever, are assets seized/frozen?
In a small claims court, if you have a judgement against you and refuse to pay, in theory, the person who sued you can file a second case to demand payment. And that outcome is a court order that increases the amount to reflect extra expenses, and includes the ability to withdraw money from a bank account, or put a lien on someone’s house.
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