Will You Get Paid If You Win Your Case?

In the real world, it’s not a good thing to get ahead of yourself. What must be done at the beginning should be considered first, before worrying about the obstacles or challenges at the end of the task.

But in law, there is a big exception to that: getting paid on a judgment. Even before a lawsuit is filed, before a trial starts–before you even know if you’ll win your case or not–you want to know whether or not if you do win, you’ll ever get paid in the judgment that you just won. Otherwise, your judgment is just a piece of paper.

No Real Way to Know

There is no 100% guaranteed way to know whether you will get paid on a judgment that you may win.

Yes, there are legal ways to figure out what the other side has, and to collect and if needed, liquidate the other side’s assets and bank accounts if necessary–but that can be an involved procedure, and ultimately, if they have nothing, you can continue to try to find their money or assets, but as the saying goes, you can’t get water from a rock.

Consumer or Commercial Debt

Collecting can be especially troublesome, when there is a consumer, and not a business, on the other side. Consumers, for consumer related debt, have numerous exemptions they can rely on, and property that they can protect from collection. Business-related debt, has no such protections, and thus, there is no real worry about exemptions.

Big Companies

Legally you are not entitled to learn about the other side’s ability to pay for a judgment, or their finances or assets, before you actually get a judgment.

With larger companies with offices and assets and hundreds of employees, you can rest a little easier; even if you had to collect on and liquidate every piece of office furniture in their corporate offices to pay your judgment, there would be enough there to get that done.

Insurance

Some companies may have insurance to cover what you are suing for. This is limited, as not everybody carries this kind of insurance (for business related claims), and if they do, they may have limited coverage, or what you are suing for, may not be a loss that is even covered under their policy.

Nonetheless, the existence of insurance by the party you are suing for the losses you are alleging, is a good sign that you will get paid on your judgment.

Preserving Assets

It does sometimes happen that while your lawsuit is pending or you are awaiting trial, you may fear that the other side, anticipating a loss, may try to hide, destroy, or transfer assets.

If you have evidence that this is happening, and you can identify what you feel is being destroyed or hidden, you can go to court and ask that these assets be protected, monitored, or watched over, to ensure that they are not lost by the time you obtain your judgment and need to collect.

Make sure you have legal help from start to finish in your case. Call our Fort Lauderdale business law litigation attorneys at Sweeney Law P.A. at 954-440-3993 for help.

Sources:

floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/florida-exemptions-and-how-the-same-may-be-lost/

nationalnotary.org/florida/insurance/errors-omissions?srsltid=AfmBOorFxDgdHC7zLUOJv5LTf4dYLy7oBxq6L2MF4bWhgMfWzXGfhv9Z