In the E. Jean Carroll case, the defendant was found liable by the jury and ordered to pay $83 million. He immediately announced that he would appeal the decision, but analysts have been pointing out that he would need to put that amount + ~10% in escrow in case he loses. When is that money due?
Rule 62 stays execution on a judgment for 30 days pending posting of a bond.
Rule 58 addresses the timing of an entry of judgment after a verdict. I can take a little while.
I assume that no judgment has yet been entered, but I don’t know that for sure.
I am curious what “posting a bond” means. I would think it is common that people/companies cannot write a check for the full amount of a judgment against them. Does this mean they literally must put the full judgement amount in escrow and if they cannot then they cannot appeal? Or something else? I do not know how this works.
In my cases the defendants purchase a bond from an insurance company. The insurer actual files a “bond” with the court promising to pay the amount of the judgment (and interest) if necessary. My understanding is the fee can vary a bit based on financial strength of the defendant. We don’t typically see what the cost of the bond was. Some defendants (like Trump in the first defamation case) prefer to put the cash in a blocked account.
The point too is that should he choose to appeal, he has to in some way produce/guarantee the funds are available by that deadline. Whereas, if he does not appeal, then I assume there’s an additional series of court processes to make him cough it up, which may or may not be dragged on for far longer should someone decide that delay is an available tactic.
How does one go about collecting from a lawsuit judgement? What happens if someone is slow in responding to the process? Would you then have to place a lien or foreclose on some protperties to recoup the amount?
(I recall the Goldmans would swoop in and ask for a freeze any time OJ Simpson appeared to be receiving any monetary income…)
That seems discriminatory because people who are economically well off have a privilege that poor people don’t. Instead, could they file for bankruptcy and have the judgment wiped out just like their other debts?
IAAL, but I am not an American one. But generally, it works the same in the US as here. The plaintiff gets a judgment, which allows them to get a writ, which then allows moving against the defendant’s assets. For smaller things, such as I have dealt with, it often involves garnishing wages, garnishing bank accounts or investments, or seizing assets, such as a car. Seizure must be proportional to the amount owed; you don’t seize a $90K car to settle a $10K debt. If you do, you owe the debtor the change. Note that in seizure matters, it’s best to engage a civil enforcement agency—let’s just say that they can deal with debtors who don’t want to cooperate.
Seizure can be done against real property, but as you might guess, appraisal and valuation will play a big role. In Trump’s case, in this matter, this would be done by independent third-party people, who would ignore his numbers, and find out what his property (properties) are valued at, on the open market.
Would he have to put up the bond in cash, or could he use the deed on, say, 40 Wall Street? In the latter case, would independent appraisers have to value it before he does? Does the source of any bond have to be made public? For example if he gets it from MBS (the crown prince of Saudi Arabia), would that need to be made public?
Well, poor people have a lot of problems rich people don’t.
I will say that I had a case once where my client was assessed attorney fees and cost by the court after the defense won the trial. We were able to get the judge to stay execution on the judgment pending appeal without a bond.
Agreed, but legalized discrimination shouldn’t be one of them.
Agreed. The much bigger problem in bail for poor people. Appealing civil judgments is not something poor people do very often, because they don’t get sued very much unless they have insurance (and in that case, the insurer posts the bond). No one sues an empty pocket. Or almost no one, I’m sure it happens sometimes.
Inequitable, perhaps, but not discriminatory. The victims needs come first.
IANAL but I know that the answer to “Can someone file for bankruptcy to avoid paying a civil judgment?” is “Sometimes”.
In Trump’s case, it wouldn’t work because he has enough net worth to pay the judgment. Unless he is much less wealthy than he says he is.
Brings to mind the famous quote:
The law in its infinite wisdom prohibits the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under the bridges.
The need to put up the money (usually, as Procrustus mentions) is that once a person has won a suit, then the general consensus (preponderance of evidence?) is that they will prevail on appeal. As mentioned, the purpose of an appeal is not “I want a second opinion - can we try again?” The appeal will determine if (a) errors were made in the trial or (b) that a judge or jury hearing those facts could not possibly have reasonably concluded what they did. They don’t hear the totality of the evidence all over again in the appeal, so issues like credibility (“Which witness appeared more believeable?”) were up to the original trial.
There are several other principles -
I saw this described once as the Kamikaze Defense - “Go ahead and sue, you won’t even recover your lawyer fees.” If anything, the most discriminated and at risk are the solid middle class or medium sized business, who have enough assets to seize - which is why libel chill works so well for some.
The upshot appears to be that Trump assumed that as a bigly rich person, he could afford $5M every so often in order to keep taunting Ms. Carroll. That was the point of $83M - to see if that was enough to make him shut up. It appears so far that it is.
As we saw with the Alex Jones case, or Rudy Giuliani, declaring bankruptcy does not clear a libel judgement if the court decides the libel was “actual malice”, i.e. intentionally intended to injure the other party.
Which also brings to mind another issue - In Trump’s civil fraud trial, the prosecution is asking for a fine in the neighbourhood of $370M. Given that this is a trial brought by the AG, not an aggrieved third party, if Trump loses would he still have to put up the amount of the fine as a bond in order to appeal, or is the Trump Org business itself at risk enough?
That’s too black and white and can work injustice. Enforcement of judgments takes a balanced approach.
Most jurisdictions provide exemptions from seizure under judgment: often the judgment debtor’s house, one vehicle, and personal effects are immune from execution. With wage garnishees, there may be a percentage or numerical limit on how much can be garnished per pay period. In some jurisdictions, like Florida, pensions are immune from seizure.
A judgment creditor can’t put the judgment debtor out on the street, homeless, naked and with no income.
Most orderly payment of debts processes do not allow garnishing that goes beyond leaving the garnishee a basic amount to live.
Well sure, I knew that, and agree with it, not sure why you’d think I wasn’t suggesting anything else.
It’s just that some people’s definition of “basic amount to live” their lifestyle may exceed what the courts consider sufficient. And the hoity-toity rarely seem to fail all the way down to food stamps, they always seem to land on their feet.
In Maryland, the max garnishment is 25 percent of disposable (i.e. after taxes) wages.
Also, the garnishee has to be left with at least 30 times the state minimum wage (currently $15.00/hr) per week.
edited because the minimum wage went up recently