What is the difference between motion to vacate and dismissal with prejudice? At court, I received a dismissal with prejudice because the amount was paid prior to court. Will it appear on my credit reports? I guess I should have asked what dismissal with prejudice meant.....
ok...so motion to vacate means it never happened. Dismissal with prejudice means they won't/can't come back with the same charges. Then, did I receive a judgment? If I have a dismissal with prejudice, will it appear on my credit reports? The date was 2/10/04. I just got new copies of my reports, and it doesn't show yet. Am I in the clear?
If the collector was trying to initiate a case to recover from you and you had paid the debt prior to the court proceedings then there was no merit to thier complaint. The Judgement to Dismiss with Prejudice means that the cause of action (the creditors gripe) on this issue WON'T be heard now and can NEVER be retried in any court. (this of course could be subject to appeal if they wanted, but I doubt that a superior court would agree to hear it. As far as your credit report goes it shouldn't be on it because in essence a trial and judgement never occured.
I've been working to help someone with their credit. She was self employed a few years back and acquired bills that could not be paid. An insurance company, West Bend, filed suit and the court date was 2/10/04. She contacted the lawyer on the bottom of the summons, and paid the lawyer a certified check made payable to the insurance company a few days before the court date. She did not appear in court. He promised her, and actually did it, that he would file a dismissal with prejudice with the court. She received the paperwork back a week ago. Now we are wondering if it will appear as a satified judgment on her credit reports. Since it was dismissed, it looks to me like no judgment was made, therefore it can't be listed. Does that make sense, or am I missing something?
I've been working to help someone with their credit. She was self employed a few years back and acquired bills that could not be paid. An insurance company, West Bend, filed suit and the court date was 2/10/04. She contacted the lawyer on the bottom of the summons, and paid the lawyer a certified check made payable to the insurance company a few days before the court date. She did not appear in court. He promised her, and actually did it, that he would file a dismissal with prejudice with the court. She received the paperwork back a week ago. Now we are wondering if it will appear as a satified judgment on her credit reports. Since it was dismissed, it looks to me like no judgment was made, therefore it can't be listed. Does that make sense, or am I missing something?
I think you are talking about 2 different things. because the legal proceedings were dismissed with prejudice they shouldn't show up as a public record. This has no bearing on whether or not it will be listed on the tradeline as a paid collection. The two are not related unless the person you are helping had an agreement with the attorney to both dismiss the case AND not report negative information on her file.
So far so good. It never has appeared on the report as a collection either. Maybe because it was a business debt. But, the judgment would be against her. I'll check in another few months and let everyone know.
A motion to vacate is what you do AFTER you get a judgment where there was improper service, omissions, mistakes, acts of bad faith, void, etc. A dismissal with predjudice means there was no judgment made by the court. The judge basically just tossed the lawsuit and said "Ok your done, get the hell out of my court room, you cannot file again, next!" I have to add your friend is damn f*cking lucky too. Most attorneys would have proceeded and got a judgment anyway even aftr the debt was paid because she didn't show up in court.
Re: Re: Dismissal vs. motion to vacate? Most attorneys are ethical and if they get paid, they're not going to file a judgment ... it's very unethical to do that. If it does happen, it's usually a screwup from improperly unsupervised paralegals in the lawyers' office.
