QLD Enforcement of a Default Judgment on Debt Dispute?

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NotABabe

Active Member
31 March 2017
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0
31
Hi,

After a long battle, we obtained a default judgment against one of the defendants about a month ago. We, the Plaintiff and the defendants, are all companies not individuals. Somehow my current lawyer has not tried to pursuit further after the default judgment was granted. Instead he said we had to go through a trail to win the case.

We were not aware that we could pursuit the debt by Credit Statutory Demand before we filed the Magistrates Court case. When we first got in touch of our lawyer, he suggested us to file the CSDs against the defendants, and of course later on their solicitor threatened to struck out the CSDs because we had the court case ongoing.

Now we have a default judgment granted against the second defendant, while the debt against the first defendant is a much larger amount. As the defense filed by the first defendant was not a good defense (according to our lawyer and even in our own view), our lawyer firstly suggested us to go for a summary judgment.

After a couple letters going in between their solicitor and ours, which we fought back pretty good to prove that his client did not tell him the whole truth, now the defendants went all quiet. And somehow our solicitor thinks the defendants will fight hard and the summary judgment won't be successful and we may go to trail, so now he is not willing to pursuit further to the default judgment we have on hand. And he wants money in his trust before he prepares for the trail.

We are happy to put money in and prepare for the trail. But my perspective is that, why can't we enforce the default judgment first, as basically the defendants are all under the same director, if we can get one of them then the rest may fold.

If we can request an enforcement hearing to find out their financial position, there is a good chance that they will rather pay the debt off, based on the 6 years relationship we had with them and knew them pretty well. They have done lots of doggy things on their book, I really don't think they will choose to go to the hearing.

Other than the above reasons, with the evidence we have on hand (that their account manager said in the email that they never paid based on our invoices but based on what their managers filed; a recording of one of their managers stating that she was aware of the debt and they would pay; more emails from their head manager guaranteed that all payments were arranged to pay to us) I think we have a good chance to get a summary judgment.

At last, if we do go on a trail, our account was crystal clear that there won't be a problem to be forensic examined. We were owed about 100G, and our lawyer said this could cost us 50G. I thought it is still good to keep fighting, but he is trying to tell us to give up because "it's not a million dollar case".

My questions are:

What steps can we take when we were granted the default judgment (there is no sufficient info on the court website), can we still use the CSD that's in place as an enforcement, do we need to register interstate judgment (we are in QLD, they are not), can we request the court to grant a money order?

We really appreciate any help we can get. I don't understand why our lawyer gave up on us now.
Thank you.
 

Clancy

Well-Known Member
6 April 2016
973
69
2,289
Where i work, the first action we take against a defaulter is a winding up order. Did you do that first? That eventually results in administrators being appointed who then return X amount per dollar to us. Usually they decide to pay before winding up though. Afterwards, we may then pursue directors individually if they signed our directors guarantee which is usually required if we are giving credit to any company..... which basically means they personally guarantee the debt if the company goes bankrupt.