Pri: My guy (and his wife) thought they were untouchable. He actually taunted me on the way out of the courtroom, the day I beat him, and told me that I would never collect. At that point, it did become personal.
He was a contractor who had burned a buddy of mine (which is how I got mixed up in this whole sordid mess) and then me. I invested to help my friend out (having been told by my friend and the contractor that this was a “short-term cash crunch”) and then had to sue after he blew me off and refused to honor the promissory note.
One other thing I did was some research on this guy, figuring he’d been sued before. Sure enough, he had about a dozen plus previous judgments against him, all the way from Small Claims to Superior Court. I went around and bought up a good chunk of these for about $.10 on the dollar, through the Assignment of Judgment process. At 10% interest p.a. on the outstanding judgments, I nearly doubled the amount I was pursuing, when added to my judgment. He actually tried to “appeal” this with the judge, arguing that this was “harassment” and “vexatious” on my part and the judge basically laughed him out of court.
One really important thing: That JDX process does two things, (1) Failure to comply by the debtor constitutes contempt of court and judges take a very dim view of that shit (hence the brief stint in County) and (2) It saves you from having to spend an excessive amount of time and money on asset searches. The Subpoena Duces Tecum is to be used in conjunction with service/notice on the JDX and thus it carries the full weight of the court behind it. If he/she fails to disclose any of the items requested on the subpoena, not only are they in contempt of court, but they run the risk of criminal and civil penalties as well.
I dealt with the judges down in East County and, let me tell you, they don’t screw around at all. I had my guy in tears at one point, begging the judge to stop an asset seizure (the wife’s Honda) and the judge was totally unmoved, saying, “I bet you didn’t show this sort of passion went it came to paying your creditors back”. I was in hog heaven at that point. End of the day, I collected just under $100K, including interest, on my $50K investment from about four years earlier. I had spent another $5K +/- on expenses and purchasing the other judgments, so $55K all in.
