Practice Areas

Collections

Unpaid commercial debts arising from a contract, note, sale of goods or services, loan, or extension of credit. If you are owed more than $25,000 by another business, this is the front door.

The typical file is an unpaid invoice stack from a customer who has stopped returning calls. We sue on the contract, on an account stated, and where the facts support it on common counts, then move to judgment as quickly as the court's calendar allows.

Bad Debts & Loans

Defaulted promissory notes, lines of credit, and credit extended to a business that has stopped paying.

Note cases move faster than most because the obligation is usually undisputed on its face. Where the note carries a confession of judgment, an attorney-fee clause, or a personal guaranty, the leverage improves considerably. Send the note and the complete payment history together.

Unpaid Sales

Goods shipped or services rendered without payment.

Where the paper trail is clean — purchase order, bill of lading, signed delivery receipt, invoice — these are among the fastest matters we handle. Set-off claims and allegations of defective goods are the usual defenses, and we would rather hear about them from you at intake than from the debtor's answer.

Construction Debts

Unpaid subcontractors, suppliers, and general contractors.

Construction claims carry remedies most collection matters do not: mechanics liens, stop payment notices, and claims against payment bonds. They also carry hard statutory deadlines that can extinguish those remedies. If your claim is construction-related, call sooner rather than later.

Judgment Enforcement

You already have a California judgment. It has not turned into money.

This is a distinct practice from getting the judgment in the first place. We examine debtors under oath, levy bank accounts, garnish wages and receivables, place abstracts on real property, seize and sell assets, and where warranted seek the appointment of a receiver. A judgment is a license to collect, not a payment.

Sister State Judgments

A judgment from another state, enforced against assets in California.

California has a streamlined procedure for domesticating a sister-state judgment. Once entered, it is enforceable here as though a California court had rendered it. The debtor gets a limited window to object, and the grounds are narrow. Bring us a certified copy and we can usually move quickly.

Foreign Judgments

Judgments from courts outside the United States.

Recognition of a foreign-country judgment is a separate analysis from sister-state domestication and turns on whether the rendering court had jurisdiction and afforded due process. More work at the front end, but the enforcement tools afterward are identical.

Arbitration Awards

An arbitration award the losing party has simply ignored.

An award is not self-executing. It has to be confirmed by a court and reduced to judgment before any enforcement tool is available. The petition to confirm is usually straightforward, and the grounds to vacate are extremely limited, but there are deadlines that matter.

Manufacturing & Distribution

Receivables inside supply-chain relationships.

These files often involve disputed set-offs, returned or rejected goods, chargebacks, and long course-of-dealing histories. They reward careful document work at intake. We look closely at the credit application, because that is usually where the venue, attorney-fee, and guaranty terms live.

Recovering Attorney's Fees

Getting your fees paid by the other side.

Where the contract has a prevailing-party fee clause, or a statute provides for fees, we pursue them. Courts frequently award fees under schedules so low as to be unrealistic — often 6% to 8% of the debt — which is one reason a contingency arrangement usually serves a creditor better than relying on a fee award.