legal question about liens on property / civil case (state of California, USA)

Factual Questions
1

We just sold our house in California (and trying to buy a new one.) The escrow company handling the sale of my house told me: there is a lien of $11,000 on your house dating from 2002. I say: WTF?!?!!! :mad: The escrow agent tells me he tried to call the attorney who filed the case but the attorney is long gone from that firm and so he will have to do more digging.

I need to get full details from the escrow guy tomorrow, like the case number, but from the name of the company that filed the lien, the only thing that this could possibly be related to, in my humble uneducated opinion, is a car accident that I was involved in, in 1997. My insurance company was fighting in court about it. I had to do a deposition etc.

So I went to the Los Angeles Superior Court website ( https://www.lasuperiorcourt.org ) and paid $4.75 to do a case search (the accident was in Los Angeles County). This is one time when having a rare last name is great, because I know that I might be the only person with my last name in the whole USA. When I do the search on my name, I easily found a court case relating to the accident I was involved in (no other cases showed up except another one related to the accident and that other one just says Status: Case Dismissed, “dismissed without prejudice”). The name of the plaintiff is the same name as the name of the plaintiff on the case that caused a lien on my house (an inter-insurance type of company from what I can tell.)

My questions:

Question 1
The court case has this information (I’m only entering the last items in the history)

Status: DISPOSED BY JUDGMENT
Histories ( Dates listed in descending order)
03/05/2003 WRIT OF EXECUTION RETURNED FROM LOS ANGELES COUNTY WHOLLY SATISFIED.
02/24/2003 ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF SATISFACTION OF JUDGMENT FILED .
07/03/2002 ABSTRACT OF JUDGMENT ISSUED. RECEIPT # FPS .
07/03/2002 WRIT OF EXECUTION ISSUED TO LOS ANGELES COUNTY. (MONEY) - (VSC) . RECEIPT # FPS .
…
06/25/2002 ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF CREDIT IN THE AMOUNT OF XXX (aw note: around 11,000) FILED. ... 03/15/2002 JUDGMENT ENTERED AS A FINAL DISPOSITION ON 03/15/02 . ... TOTAL XXX (aw note: around 11,000) .

Doesn’t this mean that the court case above is settled and that the plaintiff got their money?

Question 2
Is it possible that the lien on my house could be related to the above court case and that it’s a mistake that the lien is still on my property? If so, that seems like a pretty big mistake.
Disclaimer: I realize that anyone’s answer will not be legally binding, you are not my attorney, and I promise not to drag you into court if I don’t like your answer.

2

I don’t think that a lien gets removed automatically once a judgment is satisfied, but I could be wrong.

Just like the original lien had to be file separately with the county clerk, you’ll have to find what the procedure is for removing the lien. I would imagine presenting a document to this effect from the court and filling out some paperwork would be sufficient to that end but IDK.

3

If a lien doesn’t get removed automatically, then the people that put the lien there should be courteous enough to have it removed! How was I supposed to know there was a lien there? I went through all my paperwork about the accident and there was never any mention of a lien.

I suppose the lien is filed with the county clerk in the county where I live, not the county where the accident took place? My escrow agent will probably know what I need to do.

4

Let us know how it turns out. Might be useful information for someone else down the line.

5

If I end up running crazy, storming into an attorney’s office, throwing him to the ground and pummelling him, do you want to hear the update from prison? Will they even let me post to the SDMB?