“You can’t get blood from a stone” is an expression I often hear, but it’s often untrue in the judgment collection world. We were recently confronted with a tricky situation against a judgment debtor that owed over $20,000 related to shoddy contractor work. The original judgment creditor had all but given up hope that they would ever see a dime of this money. Not to mention, the case had gone to court way back in 2009! To make matters worse, this judgment debtor was permanently disabled and unable to work again after he fell through scaffolding on a construction job. We levied on his bank account and captured a measly $65, so at that point, we were getting ready to chalk this one up as “uncollectible” and move on.
The debtor’s brother, however, wasn’t disabled and he wanted to help his brother deal with this issue. We told the brother we’d subpoena him to come to court and testify about the debtor’s financial ability to satisfy the judgment. Realizing that this judgment wasn’t going away, and that we were “relentless”, the debtor’s brother worked out a settlement for $15,000 to make this go away. All things considered, this was a fantastic result for a case that had little to no promise, with a debtor that had no means to pay his judgment and who could’ve just as easily declared bankruptcy to make the entire debt disappear.
