A Texas writ of garnishment can be your friend.

This is a story of how powerful of a Texas writ of garnishment can be when we have good information.

We represent an insurance company that provides group health insurance to large employers.  We went to trial on a case for them where the defendant, an employer of approximately 500 people, alleged that our client failed to properly handle claims and to properly debit the account of the defendant for premiums.

After a two week trial the judge granted a judgment in our favor and awarded full attorneys' fees.

Once we received the judgment we received a call from the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the defendant asking what we could do to settle the judgment. They were a big company and clearly had the money. The phone call was insulting. We told him to pay each and every penny owed on the judgment and the matter would be over.

He then requested a settlement of half the judgment amount to resolve the judgment. His best argument was "don't you just want to make this go away?"  Our response: No, not really. Then he asked, "Aren't you tired of this one?" We told him that we were actually quite excited about "this one." What he did not know was that we had already sent a writ of garnishment to their bank to freeze their accounts.  We had also sent a large amount of post-judgment discovery to get the ball rolling.

Well, once the garnishment hit the bank and their account was frozen, the conversation changed dramatically. They hired one of the most respected appellate lawyers in Texas to appeal their case and began to resist us on several fronts.  We have worked with this lawyer in the past. We have been opposed by this appellate specialists many times. Eventually, the appellate lawyer realized the defendant's predicament and the judgment was settled for 97% of the amount of the judgment, paid in cash.

If we have bank account information, the process is almost always less painful for our clients. This information is provided to you by your customers when they pay their invoice.  Do you save that information or do you discard it?  In this case, it might have been the difference between a two-year fight after obtaining a judgment and a two month fight after obtaining a judgment.