Indianapolis Litigation

I am an Indianapolis Attorney here at Alerding Castor Hewitt LLP.  This is my first blog post – so bear with me.  As a brief introduction, my role at ACH is working on our litigation team, both at trial and on appeal if necessary, on issues related to business law, probate litigation, SaaS litigation, and other technology litigation – just to name a few of the areas.

One area often overlooked in the litigation process is the area of collections.  Some lawyers might look upon the collection process with disdain because it’s not as “sexy” as doing other things.  But at bottom, bringing a suit is all about collecting money.  After all, a judgment is just a piece of paper.  At ACH, we pride ourselves on being able to assist clients in the collection process; it’s a part of our commitment to being a Partner in Success and we represent a variety of clients in business litigation and technology litigation in this process.

We often encounter situations where we have an out-of-state defendant who has breached a contract by failing to pay for services.  In fact, it’s not that unusual in cases for our SaaS law and technology law clients for this to occur.  Many times such a defendant will fail to appear to defend itself in the suit and we wind up obtaining a default judgment for our clients.  The question is, what do you do next?  Do you undertake a proceeding supplemental in Indiana to try to collect on a judgment when the defendant is unlikely to show, or do you take your default judgment (i.e., piece of paper) to the defendant’s state and try to domesticate it (in other words, try to collect there)?

I recently witnessed a couple of examples of this very situation.  The answer boils down to a matter of cost-benefit analysis.  In my humble opinion, it’s probably worth the minimal time and effort to undertake a proceeding supplemental in Indiana.  Plus, you don’t have to immediately take on the added expense of hiring another lawyer in the defendant’s state to do the job for you.            

The reason for this is that you never know what will motivate someone to make good on a debt owed to you, or at least negotiate some sort of payment arrangement.  While it doesn’t happen in every case, it’s not unusual for a defendant to try to resolve a case after receiving notice of a proceeding supplemental.  This is even more likely once they receive notice of one of the later steps in that process, such as an order to show cause why the defendant should not be held in contempt for failing to appear or a body attachment warrant to arrest the defendant.  And if it doesn’t work out, you’ll still have your judgment that you can take to the other state.