Kathy McLeroy Quoted in Missouri Lawyer: “The Judgment Is the Easy Part — Collecting It From an LLC Poses Problems”

Kathy McLeroy was quoted in a Missouri Lawyer article titled “The Judgment Is the Easy Part — Collecting It From an LLC Poses Problems.” The article discusses collecting judgments from limited liability companies (LLCs). According to plaintiffs’ attorneys, winning a case is often the easy part. Collecting the judgment, however, is a long, painstaking process filled with bureaucratic red tape and hurdles for lawyers to navigate.

“First, judgment enforcement is sort of a long game and not a short game. … You may spend a number of years researching and collecting information over time before you actually find assets that can be applied to the judgment,” McLeroy said. “And I say that because the fact that you obtained a judgment and that the person or entity against whom you got the judgment didn’t consensually pay you, means that there’s work ahead in order to get it done and sometimes you’re operating without a lot of information about where assets might be. You’ve got to develop that information and then determine effective ways to capture the assets.”

The second thing attorneys should keep in mind is to use their judgment with respect to the money they spend on researching and investigating while trying to obtain the judgment.

“There’s no guarantee you can collect and so sometimes you need to be somewhat measured by how much additional money you spend in researching, both in attorney’s time and in actual out of pocket costs in trying to determine next steps, because judgments are good for a number of years,” McLeroy said.

Attorneys need to be realistic about what might be available to collect, she added. Arguing that it would not make sense to spend more money on costs than one could ever hope to recover if they non-consensually captured assets.

Read the article. Subscription may be required. This article was reprinted in the Minnesota Lawyer, North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, and South Carolina Lawyers Weekly.

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