Interesting Trips to Local Courthouse - Lawsuits

[treehugger1]

I live in a somewhat remote area of my state. After thinking about all my debts and chargeoffs, I occassionally pay attention to civil suits being heard by a judge. Sometimes this is a "duty" judge, so the courtroom can have many plaintiffs and defendants awaiting their turns on the docket. If you have not done so in your area, and have the time to attend a few of these civil suits, I'd advise anyone to go listen in. At times you want to cry. At other times it is all one can do keep from bursting out in shear laughter.

Here is a summary of what can happen in a debtor exam.

Plaintiff had judgment out of county. Appears judgment was domesticated in county. Plaintiff's upstate attorney apparently sends written interrogatories to defendant. Defendant ignores. Many months go by. Attorney moves the court to serve the defendant for oral testimony. Defendant shows up.

Bizzarre questions begin to be asked by attorney after establishing defendant's identity, ssn, address,etc.

Defendant hands a packet of info related to assets and liabilities to duty judge. Apparently, the papers contain a listing of all personal property, and list each exemption by Statute number with appropriate references.

Attorney begins to ask strange questions. Who lives in your household? Where do your parents live? Are you married? You make good money, what do you do with it? Maybe 12 of these types of questions.

To each question plaintiff replies, "It's clear I owe this debt because you have a judgment against me. My financial situation is mine and mine alone. I don't understand your questions? If you would like to ask about MY financial situation, I'll answer to the best of my ability. I'll tell you everything about my financial situation. I will not share any other personal information with the court that does not appear to be related to the judgment against me by ##### financial institution."

Judge mumbles something to attorney about keeping the questioning focussed on judgment debtor and the asset search.

Attorney tries to circumvent judge with really dumb reasons as to why he needs other information. Lot's of bantering. It looks like judge would like to come off of bench and administer a good slapping.

Judge finally hands packet of info provided by defendant to attorney. "It appears that everything you are entitled to, directly related to the finances of the judgment debtor, is included here. The defendant is excused."

ROFLMAO!!!!!!

Entire scenario takes up 1+ hr of court time!

[justbroke]

Entire scenario takes up 1+ hr of court time!

It's called... earning your fee(s).

[treehugger1]

More on visiting local courts

This morning, while at the courthouse, I'm doing my usual search for any new lasuits against me. While I'm at the public court computer, I decide to enter names of plaintiffs (Chase, AMEX, CAP1, BOA, Citi, etc.) Now my county has only about 60K for population, but I thought I would see listings of many recent lawsuits. That was not the case for most. What I did see was "cases" opened in 2002-2004. These are not really cases. The vast majority of recent actions appear to be "domestication of judgments" in local jurisdiction. Some of the original suits begin in 2002-2004 but it is only now that judgments are being requested. From what I could tell the majority of these are requests from big attorney firms upstate. As I thought about the length of time from the original closed suits, I realized that the recent activity is aligned with the SOL in my state (6 years.) The original cases are cases filed, closed, and judgment entered from 4-5 years ago.

Since 2002, there are only about 12 CAP1 cases in the county record; the majority related to domesticating judgment and a very rare debtor examination. There are several CHASE and AMEX suits, but again many local records are related to domesticating judgments in the county. Almost NO BOA or CITI. As I think about this, in my case BOA did sell my accounts to JDB's. Maybe this is typical of BOA and CITI.

Next thing I did was type in known national CA's and JDB's and collection law firms representing national CA's. Doesn't happen!

I type in the local collection agency and there are pages and pages of small claims and circuit court suits related to local debt or regional debt (nearby state small banks and credit unions that the local CA is willing to take on assignment.) Still, the length of time from "time of service" to judgment, of those who answered, is years for the non-small claims suits.

My point is that I keep hearing that suits are rare. While I don;t know if suits are that rare, my local court suggests judgments related to national class creditors, CA's and JDB's, can take a long time to eventually be domesticated in my local county; a requirement before any action related to garnishment or seizure can occur.

Maybe I'm fortunate to live in the outback of Oregon. On the other hand, I'd love to hear what others discover related to their region of the country. What I discovered is that there are plenty of judgments on the record. However, The majority of these appear to still be marked as "unsatisfied."

[treehugger1]

Justbroke, I still bet the "underling" from upstate legal firm got a good a**-whooping when they returned home!

years ago, I raised m daughter as a single father for 15 years. I moved to a very remote region of the coast here. My daughter hated it! I finally relented and allowed her to go live with her mother in BB's state, Washington.

Six months later, I was served for child support! A hearing was set for a WA superior court. I decided I'd better get my act together and defend myself against an enormous amount of monthly dollars my ex's attorney firm was demanding through the superior court.

At the time, very few people realized that there was an incredible amount of info just coming on to the web related to forms, answers, etc in the Washington court system. I learned how to build documents with the appropriate "paragraph" format. I sent tons of sh*t to the local superior court and ex's attorney. Keep in mind that I spent 15 years as an illterate logger on the West Coast, but I also had graduated from a very liberal university, and I was thankful. I figured you could teach old dogs new tricks.

On the day of the hearing, I was there! The "powerful" law firm was represented by a guy that I swear looked to be about 15 years old. LOL. He had no clue as to what to do if the defendant actually showed up. The superior court judge was very gracious. He took the time to listen to my story of raising my daughter for 15 years without any help from the mother (who had a good job, by the way.) For me, it was never about how much money I expected from the mother. It was not even relevant. What was relevant was my contribution to the lifestyle and future life of my daughter. In the end, my legal child support payments were quite small compared to my income. I did send far more money to my daughter than what the legal determination expected of me.

The greatest thing I took away from that lesson was that in some states where judges are elected from among the community/county, the judges have a sense of an interpretation of law that is not necessarily in line with how one might literally interpret state codes/statutes. In addition to that, I will always remember the kid attorney stating, "Mr. #### arrived here in a new Jeep. Clearly, Mr. #### can afford a large monthly payment."

My response was clear and honest. "Your honor, I arrived here in a 7-year old Jeep Cherokee. It has 188,000 miles on the odometer. You should feel free to examine this. (It was raining about an inch per hour at the time in North Bend, WA.)"

My point here is that it appears in small circuit/superior courts, where the judges are elected, there can be some latitude given to the defendant who attempts to provide an answer in Good Faith.

[justbroke]

I like small town judges, and that movie "My Cousin Vinny" was perfect. While that was a criminal matter, it was billed -- at least in the "small town judge's view" -- big city lawyer versus small time law.

In any event, I like people who stand up for themselves. If more people did so, these default judgments wouldn't be so easily obtained. You're right... the big law firm expects no issues and no defendants.