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Higbee Associates Letter & Lawsuits Forum / Re: Judge Awarded Higbee & Associates $48,000 for Use of 1 Photo!!!
« on: November 21, 2018, 05:20:15 PM »Many of the principals/owners of those legal entities will likely abandon their legal entity. It ends up being a paper judgment against a paper legal entity. Whether it becomes anything more remains to be seen.
Ok, I'll bite. I clicked on each of the judgments listed on Higbee's website and this is what I found:
Alex Wild $15,000 judgment - Against a corporation.
Chris Sadowski $30,000 judgment - Against an individual.
Michael Grecco $45,000 judgment - Against an individual.
Michael Grecco $60,000 judgment - Against an LLC. I posted about this earlier this year but now that I look into what Higbee posted on his website, it is a lot more interesting. Higbee didn't actually post a judgment, but he posted a court order denying defendant's motion to set aside the default judgment which had already been entered. Looks like after the default judgment was entered, the defendant tried to challenge it and get it set aside. The judge really chided the defendant and its attorney:
Quote
Defendant concedes it received actual notice of the filing of the action, and the record indicates that Defendant intentionally failed to answer. Defendant offers no reason, much less good cause, why Defendant did not answer or respond to a motion for default judgment when it knew such a motion was pending. In light of the Defendant’s silence on these key issues, the record indicates that Defendant waited to see how the Court would rule on Plaintiff’s motion for default judgment before Defendant decided to appear in this action. Then, only because the Court’s judgment was not in Defendant’s favor, Defendant decided to respond to Plaintiff and appear in this action months after its answer was due. In doing so, Defendant undermined the adversarial process and has attempted to take advantage of Plaintiff.
I posted a while ago on this one, but it appears that the Defendant ponied up the money and paid off the judgment after Higbee attempted to collect.
Sadowski $50,000 judgement - Against a corporation
So of the five judgments, two are against corporations, two are against individuals, and one was against an LLC and was apparently collected after a failed attempt to get it set aside.
My point in making these posts is that I feel like a lot of the opinions on here promote a laissez-faire attitude toward getting sued or having a default judgment entered. The best course of action is always to deal with it (whether that means to fight or pay) rather than sit back and assume that you can just deal with it after the fact. You can't just "walk away" from a judgment against you individually. You would have to file bankruptcy (and nuke your credit), and liquidate most of your assets to pay your creditors (including the judgment you are attempting to avoid by filing bankruptcy in the first place).