Possible judgment

it can i have heard

 

Although I realize that you fear the judgment greatly there is actually very little to fear. The courts themselves claim that a judgment is a "lethal weapon" but the truth is that less than 20% of them nationwide are ever collected on and if the public only knew the truth the number of them that would get collected would be much more like 1/100,000th of that maybe even less. Most are null and void upon their face.

I would take the attorney at face value.

Although again I feel relatively safe in saying that you probably won't want to take my suggestion but if I were in your shoes I would tell him to go pound sand.

Yes, it can. No problem.

It may not sound right but I can assure you that it is right. I would like to suggest that you not fight him and just tell him to go pound sand.

The reason I say that is because most judgments are null and void upon their face due to any one of a multitude of possible errors. The reason for this is that our courts are supposed to be both courts of equity and courts of law but for the most part they move in equity and often do not move in law to the extent that they probably ought to do.

While I can spout off enough legal mumbo-jumbo to make your head spin what you are finally going to have to do is to just use your own head and decide what you can do and what you want to do. No one can make your decisions for you. Attempting to hire an attorney to defend you would only result in your spending more money for nothing and you may not even find one that would do you any good.

 

Why are most judgements null and void?

 

I made some posts about that earlier in another thread. In most cases it is a jurisdictional problem and one would need to amount a collateral attack to prevail.

In my earlier post I gave 22 reasons why a judgment might be null and void upon it's face. Any one of them is sufficient to cause the judgment to be a legal nullity.

 

OK. What follows is strictly my opinion, like all other posts on this board and every person is fully responsible for doing their own research before taking or not taking action.

1. Bill's pointview is interesting but unconventional and unless you are willing to pay the price of following that path, potentially very dangerous.

2. A judgement is the rough equivilent of a BK on your credit record. I personally would avoid it at all costs.

3. What the lawyer is really saying is that is what he is willing to settle for. He could make an agreement with you and ask the court to dismiss the case w/o prejudice IF he wanted to.

4. Have you seen the Plaintiff's complaint and evidence? Have you filed an answer? Has there been any discovery? How much is the case for?

5. My personal suggestion is to file an answer and show up for court but I know next to nothing about your situation and the details of the case.

 

That is not a bad letter, but the chances of it having any effect is pretty low. The lawyer has already paid the filing fee and has a court date. If you do not respond he will get a default judgement. According to Bill that is a good thing. To me it is horrible. Reality is probably in between the two. In any event good luck.

 

You should be and if he gets the judgment it will be about 99 44/100ths percent likely to get there too.

Well, don't bet too much on that either. You won't have to worry at judgment time but it it goes to garnishment you will have to worry about just exactly that.

That is exactly correct.

Wrong again.

You can be now.

What you should do is largely going to depend on what you can do. If you can possibly get the money to pay it before it goes to judgment then I would do that by all means and more so since you pretty well lost all your other alternatives a long time ago. If you have no way to pay him in full before he gets a judgment then you have to take the next best shot which is going to happen anyway according to the lawyer. That is to let him get his judgment and hope to high heaven you can do something with it later. The old saying "Poor people only have poor ways" is what goes here. I'm not going to get stupid enough to tell you that letting him get the judgment is the best thing to do because it isn't. Not by a long shot. And getting the judgment voided could be a long hard fight and don't think it is going to be like a lark in the park because it isn't. You just sometimes have to do the best you can with what you have to work with. So if you can pay it off before it gets to judgment then above all do so.

It has been said that it is far better to be pissed off than pissed on.

 

First of all, he has not actually filed then? Secondly I think you are telling him way too much.

If he has not yet filed MSJ then I would go with validation and keep it simple above all. Do not go spouting a bunch of law to him or telling him how dismayed you are. In this case I would recommend using the following sentence.

This is not a refusal to pay but rather a demand for validation of the debt. Please comply at the earliest possible time.

Sincerely yours

__________________________

And that is just about all I would say to him.
Now he has got to wait at least 30 days before he can sue you provided you are still within the 30 days after his initial(first) contact with you. If not, he can move at any time. Just look at it as you would if a cop read you your miranda rights. "Any thing you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

You have a very dangerous situation here and you had best not goof it up.

 

If it has any effect at all it won't be to your liking.

That is exactly right.

It is if you have no other alternative or you already have it against you.

You got that right. It sucks big time.

 

If you are going to tell the guy to go pound sand then for heaven's sakes let your actions speak much, much, much louder than your words.

Don't get stupid and actually tell the guy any such thing.

 

Actually, medical debt is quite easy to validate. A bill will be plenty. What are you going to do? Perjure yourself and deny ever being in the hospital and then let them drop your entire case file on the judges desk?

 

I believe what is being offered to you is a stipulated judgment, also called a mediated settlement. The agreement would call for regular payments, with a stipulation that if you DO NOT fulfil the agreement the judgment will be entered.

You may, if you wish, take the advice of Mr. Baer and have a default judgment entered againt you, and then fight whatever legal garnishment or lien procedures your State would allow.

You could, of course appear and contest the judgment on whatever grounds you may have, i.e. improper billing to your insurance etc.If you have any proof of your grounds for NOT being responsible for the bill, it is what I would suggest.

Validation letters are not appropriate ,in my opinion for a FILED case with a court date set.If you are, however, within the 20 days to file an ANSWER then you should do so, with a copy to the lawyer and a copy to the court, and a notice of appearance,this will provide you with any information on further legal action.

 

How on earth would one go about perjuring onesself if one does not show up in court? Can you answer me that? I didn't think so.

 

That is an excelllent idea indeed. If you can get the lawyer to agree that no papers of any kind would be filed with any court so long as your payments were current then that would be as good a solution as any. However, if no written agreement then the danger that you would be sued by accident would be great.

 

Or you may take the alternative approach offered by the latest and greatest legal advice expert wannabe and go to court with a ludicrous defense no judge will listen to such as

That one is a real peach since the hospital forms state that you are the party ultimately responsible for the bill. In their rush to jump on somebody and appear as if they are actually thinking human beings they will use any bright ideas they can come up with to deride someone else. Insurance companies are not the ultimate responsible party. You are. They are simply an alternate form of payment in lieu of cash just the same as a check or a credit card is. If your check don't clear you are the responsible party not the bank. If your credit card don't pay off you are the responsible party not the credit card company and if your insurance company don't pay off you are the party ultimately responsible for the bill. If your insurance company fails to bill you or refuses to pay then you are the responsible party and if you have a problem with them then you need to take that up with the insurance company, the government or you go get a lawyer and sue them.

All smart alec advice to the contrary, the only question before the court is going to be do you owe the bill or do you not owe the bill.

Obviously if you had any such grounds or even imagined you had any such grounds you would have been stating that long ago in your original message or two. So let's move on to see more great thoughts from the latest and greatest on the net.

Of course not. Obviously since I asked you that question in an earlier post with that exact point in mind froggie didn't read any better than she thinks.

Great bit of non-advice. Fast to tell you what you should or should not do but they aren't prepared to tell you that filing an answer with a court of law must follow a specific legal format and that it must be filed with the clerk of the court and that there are rules of procedure that must be followed. One can always spot the difference between someone who knows what they are talking about and some wannabe. All you have to do is to ask them to help you prepare the necessary paper work you need to do what they suggest and they will be as hard to find as snow on the north side of a barn in August.

They will tell you to go hire a lawyer and spend more money than it probably would have cost you to just pay the bill in the first place. So let's just forget the fringe around the flag or high water mark on the courtroom wall ideas and get down to some serious common sense answers.

If no papers have been entered on the court docket then you should try to work out a settlement without any such thing as a stipulated judgment because a stipulated judgment is still a judgment and is still a matter of record. Most attorneys don't want to fiddle with stipulated judgments because if the defendant fails to meet the obligation he then has to go to the extra paperwork involved in filing an affidavit of non-compliance and an application for execution of the judgment and that is a lot of extra paperwork they don't want to have to do. The attorney also knows that if he allows a stipulated judgment to go forth and you default and he does file an affidavit of non-compliance you would then have the opportunity to file an opposition to the motion and further delay collection with whatever argument you could dream up.

So in most cases attorneys will either not fool with such silly ideas as suggested because there are simply too many barriers that could get in the way of his collection effort later down the road.
His current course of action is clearly the best for him. Either you pay up or he gets a judgment and no matter what arguments you have he is going to win and you are going to lose. That is the bottom line.

So if no papers of any kind have been filed and it is still within the 30 day period after his initial contact then a validation demand is in order. If the 30 day period has passed or a motion has been filed then valdation is not a viable option at all. That is what I said in the first place but I guess that in her anxiety to seem like some kind of expert while trying to deride me and cause hate and discontent instead of giving viable answers froggie either didn't see that or didn't want to see that. Whichever.

All other silly answers aside, you have just 3 choices at this point in time.
1. Pay up and get this behind you.
2. If you can't pay up then see if you can work out some kind of payment plan to keep you out of court. But it would be adviseable to have some kind of meaningful down payment to offer for starters to show that you are serious.
3. If you don't have any of those options then going to court is not likely to get you anywhere and you will probably have little other options left but to just shut up and let them do it to you and then see if you have any options later to get rid of it.

If you attempt to go to court and come up with answers you will probably have to file an answer to even get the judge to listen to anything you have to say. Some judges will let you just appear and argue and some won't. Whether they will or not can depend on the rules of the court. About the only thing that will work is proof you paid the bill already.

Just about all the arguments offered in an attempt to put me down go in the same category as arguments about the flag having a gold fringe around it or the courtroom having no high water mark upon it's walls and is therefore not an admiralty court. Another one you might use along with the stipulated judgment suggestion is that the black robed magistrate proves that this is a British Crown court and you are not a British Subject therefore the court has no jurisdiction over you.

 

Re: Re: Possible judgment

You have mentioned the auto vs health twice, but am I missing something? I don't follow what you are talking about?