4 ms·

Don’t you kind of have to make them pay through a sheriff’s auction or something?

• olliej 4y ago
  That sounds awfully like “does the US legal system force companies to pay their debts in the same way it forces individuals”, to which afaict the answer is no.
  • everforward 4y ago
    They can, and it has happened though it's rare [1]. To my understanding, it's partially because there's sort of an upper bound on this method. I.e. if the company owes you $10k you can probably seize enough stuff to satisfy that, but if they owe you $250k you likely won't be practically able to seize enough office equipment. The other side is that for a loss low enough that someone could seize enough office gear to satisfy the judgement, the business would probably rather just pay the judgement out. Having $10k in gear seized may lead to losing a lot more if the office can't function without the gear. There are definitely divides, though. E.g. for large liabilities it might make sense to spend $X on lawyers to delay paying out for years, because the returns on that capital are worth more than the lawyer fees. That's almost never the case for individuals, who are more likely to not have enough money to even pay a judgement that large. 1: https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bank-america-florida-foreclosed-angry-homeowner-bofa/story?id=13775638 https://abcnews.go.com/Business/bank-america-florida-foreclo...
    • olliej 4y ago
      I mean a company in the US can always just split into multiple new companies, and have all the assets in one set, and all the debt in the other, and then have the debt, fines, and liabilities disposed through bankruptcy.