Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

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If the business has a physical presence somewhere, it's not hard. In California, you can get an order to the Sheriff for a "till tap" or an "8 hour keeper". A till tap means a sheriff's deputy or two show up and take the money out of the cash register. A "keeper" means they stand next to the cashier all day and take in money as customers pay. There are fees for this, a few hundred dollars, and they're added to the judgement, so the creditor doesn't end up paying.

The keeper can accept cash and checks, but not credit or debit cards.[1] So, while the keeper is present, the business cannot accept card payments. This disrupts most businesses so badly that they desperately scramble to come up with cash to pay their debt.[2] It gets the message across to management very effectively.

I've done this once. I got paid in full.

[1] https://sfsheriff.com/services/civil-processes/levies/carry-...

[2] https://www.grundonlaw.com/the-power-of-till-taps-debt-colle...

“Court judgments are not self-enforcing. Solvent or honest debtors will want to pay soon after judgment is entered. A judgment will show up on credit reports and will be a matter of public record. This will be a problem for any judgment debtor attempting to borrow money. Most banks will require any unsatisfied judgments to be paid before they will lend new money. …

If the judgment debtor has only personal property and no real estate, the situation is very different. Personal property depreciates with time, can be damaged and can be easily hidden. Real estate is not going anywhere. One of two things will eventually happen with a judgment lien on real estate. If the debtor is financially viable, he will eventually have to pay off the judgment lien in order to sell or refinance the property. One day, the telephone will ring and someone will want to know where to send the check.”

https://fullertonlaw.com/enforcement-of-judgment

In some places you can show up with a police escort and just start taking their stuff until the estimated value is enough to settle your debt. i.e. you can foreclose on them.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/bank-america-foreclosed-...

(Consult a lawyer before trying anything like this)

You can't do this physically do this yourself in the UK (AFAIK at least), but I've heard of people taking businesses to the small claims court in the UK, getting a default judgment because the company didn't bother showing up, then when the company refused to pay the settlement, they got the court to freeze their bank accounts and appoint a debt collector to recover the money.

How would that work for a company like Anthropic, where there's no physical store, no cashier, and no cash, even?

Another enforcement mechanism that may be available is to go back to the court and get an order to transfer the money out of their bank account, then present it to their bank and they will do it.

Assume that all the avenues a company has to enforce debts against you, you also have those avenues to enforce debts against a company. It just usually doesn't happen that way around, in practice.

You go after their bank account, which is a slightly different procedure.

The main headache is finding their bank account. The best way to do this is to find someone they pay and seeing what source account was used.

No. You can actually request those details from them. But that's a very lengthy process.

We got to the point that the other party just didn't show up, and the judge just set a new date multiple times...

The judge could've gone for a bench warrant, where a sheriff picks up the person the day before to make sure they're present... But that also didn't happen.

If there's no physical store, just cross your fingers they pay the judgement

I now want to see the movie about this happening to Google:)

It happened to Bank of America.[1]

[1] https://abcnews.com/Business/bank-america-florida-foreclosed...

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