Selling A Judgment
I am a first time poster here and hope this is the correct place. I apoligize if I am in error.
I won a (default) judgment last year in January for a motorcycle accident that was not my fault. I live in California. I am planning to sell the judgment and have had a couple of interested parties. Both are offering that they earn 50% of what they can recover from the lady who hit me. The judgment is worth just over $100,000 so I'd be forking over just over $50,000 which seems WAY too much. Am I able to negotiate with each and possibly have them bid against each other? I am not familiar with the legal system (I am a mathematics instructor) and do not feel comfortable with working with legal issues. Any information you could share would be appreciated.
VFRMike.
VFRMike,
You could net substantially less than 50K on this. What if the lady only has 10K in assets. IF they are able to collect this amount only, you could net only 5K. My guess is that when they approach her, their initial offer would be to offer her a settlement for 40cents on the dollar of the overall judgement thich would net you only about 20K.
Just guessing though.
Good luck,
Jeff
Judgment recovery specialists usually charge 50% of recovered amount as their premium. Keep in mind - this is for the services - this is NOT the price of the judgment they are willing to pay. If you want to sell the judgment, you have to shop it around to the specialists. Give them all the info they need - in order to get the top price, they need to do some work to discover the LIKELYHOOD of the recovery and the amount of the recovery. I suggest you find an attorney that will handle the collection efforts for you for 25-30% of the judment amount, and if you will succeed, you will end up pocketing much more money than if you sell the judment.
Oh, and if you think that $50k is a lot of money to fork for the judgement recovery, consider the fact that most judments are not worth the paper they're printed on, as the defendants have no assetts to pay them.
Thank you for the replies thus far. I am aware that many (most) are not worth really anything at all but I am trying to plan as if I will receive a substancial amount. Maybe I'm just dreaming.
Again, any and all information is appreciated.
VFRMike.
You can sell the judgment for whatever you want. There are a lot of people in the business of collecting them. I would recommend not even bothering with an attorney. A lot of lawyers would require you to pay by the hour regardless of whether they are able to actually get anything or not. Second, if they do take it on a contingency basis(ie a percentage), they wont give it the attention it deserves if it turns out to be a little difficult to collect.
Have you ever considered trying to collect it yourself? Do you know where she works or banks? Would you be willing to question her in court? Do you know if she is married? Where her husband works?
Ryan
Ryan,
I appreciate your insight. I have seriously considered collecting on my own. Given that she caused the accident, never appoligized, made me pay all the vehicle and medical deductables, and never showed to court I'd have no problem testifying. I'm simply not sure where to start. I have a police record indicating the names and driver license numbers of the two people involved in the party but I am not sure where they went. They skipped town for sure. I am wondering what services out there are available to retrieve this type of information?
Mike.
You can hire a skip trace service to find current information on them. If they use a debit/credit card, it'll show up. move forward from there.
Jeff
I would consult with an attorney. There is a process you can go through to garnish wages and possibly force the sale of certain assets. It is my guess that the lady doesn't have much to collect on in terms of assets so I doubt you'd ever see a penny.
Hiring a private detective (skip-tracer) to track down the person and also track down any assets this person has is probably worth the cost.
You may also be interested in posting your note for sale on www.papersourceonline.com as they do allow advertising in their forums and you may find a buyer for it. I'm not sure if there is a huge market for it though.