Hello all, I have recently found out that I have a Judgement on my CR (from AMEX, 03/2002). I was never served with anything for this (yes I do owe the $2100). Long story short, I settled with the CA for AMEX, but they said that they could NOT remove the judgement, only that it would reflect that it was paid. 1. Is there anyway to remove this judegement? Can I vacate? - they really never served me. 2. Should I have the CRA's verify the judgement? 2b. If so, who do they verify with, the CA or the court? If it's the CA then I have a chance that they will not verify, but I'm guessing the court will easily verify. TIA, HUV
Maybe. Probably even. maybe - Improper service of summons is one of the toughest to prove, usually almost impossible. You can. Apparently they come off every once in a while that way. I'm not really sure about that. The consensus of opinion seems to be that they hire people to do the checking for them. That seems somewhat improbable but so does just about any other explanation of how they do it. Larger cities have newspapers that are focused on public records and court filings, new contracts that are let, real estate sales and such. It would be logical that in cities that have such newspapers they would get their information from those sources simply by subscribing to all of them and then having inhouse employees do "clipping bureau" type work inhouse. In other cities they may very well use clipping services. There are lots of clipping services all over the country whose mission is to look through newspapers supplying various types of information to subscribers to their services. In some places they may actually hire county clerk employees to look up judgments for them. There are lots of ways they can get their information so I'd guess they use just about every way they can think of to get the information.
Get all previous addresses removed from your reports FIRST. Then, simply dispute with the CRAs as not mine.
I have already cleaned up the personal info. There was a ton if it. I'm not sure how they got some of the old adddresses listed! Anyhow, should I even bother to call the court house and see what I can do about vacating? OR should I just Dispute as not mine right away? THANX Everyone! -=huv=-
They are not going to give you any info about that. What you need to do is to go to the courthouse and pull court certified copies of all the documents in the case and review them to see if you can find reason to file motion to vacate void judgment. You probably don't have the expertise to do that so if you would like you can send them to me and I will evaluate them to see if I can find reason to file such a motion. I do not charge to do that so all it would cost you is the price of the certified copies and getting those photocopied since you don't want to let the copies you get from the courthouse out of your hands and then the price of sending them to me. The whole thing should cost you under $20 but that depends on how much paperwork might be in the court records. I've seen it run as high as maybe $100. What you have to figure on is that the 1st copy will likely cost you about $1 and the rest something like 50 cents a copy. Most judgments have maybe 1 to maybe 10 pages in the file. I've only seen a very few that cost much more than $10 or so. Probably less than 5 or 6 that ran more than that to get. But again, I will look them over for free and let you know what I think and then you would probably have to see an attorney to do the actual filing for you.
WOW! That is certainly a generous offer, one which I will definitely take you up on. I was going to contact you offline about some help anyway (I wanted to see if you could be of any service for the rest of my credit mess!) Only problem is that the court house the motion weas filed in is about 60 miles away, but i'll make time to get there! One quick question that maybe you know. In the state of NY do I physically have to be served with the documents? When I spoke with the CA they said that the papers were mailed to me, which I honestly did not get. Thanx again!
Temporarily you will have to contact me at bbauer1@netzero.net. I am apparently going to have to find a new host for my website and email as the one I currently have seems to be down for the count. I really cannot answer you about NY law. I can't give you legal advice at all anyway. All I can do is to look a judgment over and apply the reasons why a judgment might be a legal nullity and possibly voidable. You then have to take what I tell you to an attorney and get his opinion and see if he will take the case and do something about it. Or you may want to pursue it pro se. All I can do is to give you ideas, not legal advice.
I've done this a couple of times for friends so I can give you my experience with this. #1 - If a creditor is paid, they will almost never show up to oppose your motion to vacate. File the motion to vacate on failure of service of process. From what you've said, I'm pretty sure you can win on this. In the 3 times I've been through this, twice the judge vacated the judgement without even hearing the argument re: service of process. The one time he did, my friend showed a letter from the apartment complex noting the date he had moved and the judge saw that he was supposedly served after that date, and vacated it. If you really weren't served, find a way to document when you were at your residence and when you weren't. Oh, and as for the CRA dispute, I might actually try that first. From what I understand, judgements only make it to your report based on your name/address combo. Get the address deleted, or change your name, dispute and they're gone.
Hi, saw your response to another comment and wondered if there was any way to get a judgement vacated even though I was served (I am embarrassed to say that I forgot about the court date and missed it...thus a default). I got the Experian one removed first try by stating that it wasn't mine. The others are taking more time. I am moving in with my fiance soon, should I change my address to hers now, delete the previous addresses and then retry it? Thanks!
huvason's JUDGEMENT Ok, well I have looked over your judgment and I believe that there are quite a few things wrong with it. First of all, I see no motion for summary judgment signed by a judge. Don't see a judge's signature or seal anywhere. Only that of the plaintiff's attorney. It purports to have been signed by a Joseph Latona but nothing on the document says that he is a judge so we don't know who he is or what he does. Looks like just another attorney to me. Secondly I see where the attorney gives testimony before the court in the form of sworn statement and states among other things that if plaintiff sold the vehicle the defendant was credited with the net sum realized therefrom. Well now then, we can't very well say "if" because either it was or it wasn't and if it was then where is the proof that anything at all was in fact credited to the account in your favor? That statement would never stand up under a cross examination in a court of law. It claims there is a lease but there isn't anything in the record before the court that even purports to be a copy of any such document. Only the attorney's statement that it does exist and he can't give such testimony before the court. Seems to me there is still a lot more wrong with the judgment but of course there still might be other papers I don't have yet or something. I just find it difficult to believe that there isn't a document plainly signed by a judge in the passel. I've heard and seen a lot of strange crap pulled on people but this one is really hard to believe. I think you need to see an attorney.
