I won a default judgment BUT....

The statutory amount is UP TO $2500. I'm guessing that because of the costs, you filed in small claims and therefore your ruling is not (for the most part) appealable.

May that judge have his or her identity stolen, maybe then s/he'd realize it's a serious issue.

 

What was your damage?

 

That's often the problem with permissible pull cases. Without some type of ascertainable damages (which is difficult in any FCRA case) or identity theft, which would go hand in hand, it is not likely to get a decent award. However, nominal damages can be used as a basis for a punitive award if the violation is repeated.

Sounds as if you only had one instance of a non-PP pull and this was the judge's way of saying keep this out of my court.

 

What to do with your judgment

Ok, so you now have a judgment for $64.00. Hardly worth doing anything with, right?

Not necessarily! Remember that there is a good possibility that under your state laws you might be able to charge somewhere around 10% per year in interest. You will have to check your state laws to find out whether or not that is true and exactly how much post judgment interest you can collect.

To make it easy to figure out what that will amount to, let's use the 10% figure.
First year is $6.40 interest. Now they owe you 70.40
Second year is 70.40 plus 7.40 =$77.80 and so on almost forever.
How is it that the interest can accrue almost forever?
First of all, you have a statute of limitations for judgments in your state. Let us assume that the statute of limitations in your state is 7 years which you must renew the judgment before that time or the judgment is uncollectable but you can renew for some period of time. Lets say the renew gets you another 10 years. Your state law may say that you have to make some attempt to collect before the time to renew has expired. You may have to file a motion for garnishment in order to be able to renew. Your state may or may not require that.

You may think all that won't work but debt collectors often file lawsuits and garnishments that are as old as 20 years or more.

Yes, you should have filed your case in Federal court rather than in state court but you didn't. Maybe you can still do that too. You would have to do some research to find out whether you can still file a federal case as well or not.

In the end you will have to file for garnishment, probably call them in for an assets hearing before you can collect anything. A judgement is nothing more than a statement by the court affirming that they owe you the money but it don't say they have to pay you anything. It takes garnishment to enforce the judgment.

 

It's not always the best move to file in Federal Court. First, it's more expensive than filing in State Court. Second, the jurisdiction may be more consumer/plaintiff friendly and thus, filing in Federal Court negates that advantage. Third, filing in State makes defendant's remove to Federal, thus, presenting another hoop and driving up their costs. Moreover, you can oppose removal if your Complaint is plead in the correct fashion.

If I were you, I'd file once more in State and include the FCRA counts and if applicable, the FDCPA & Rosenthal parallel to it.

No sense in spending more money than you need to in filing costs. If they want to remove they will and they will bear that cost. If they plead Res Judicata, your still fine because a default is not heard on the merits.

Get some damage before filing this time if possible and don't forget to throw in the intentional state law tort claims.

Again, there is much to be said for filing in State Court. This is a common misconception in that people purport that Federal is always better. It isn't. Moreover, there is a huge difference between state "trial" level courts and small claims.