Judge not lest ye be judged

Judgements are a big part of my life.

I judge what the weather is going to be like in the morning (and whether I can trust the weather forecast) before I decide what I’m going to wear for the day.

I judge what mood my teenage son is going to be in – is it worth trying to have a conversation with him (even if he only responds with grunts) or will I actually get some real words out of him!

And, of course, I deal with court issued Judgments, which are great when you’re the one obtaining them, but not so great when you’re on the receiving end, particularly if you don’t believe that the judgment is justified.

Recently a client of mine was on the receiving end of a judgment that should not have been entered, due to an error of judgment by the other side.  Obviously, I’ll be going after them for costs (and getting a judgment against them!) but in the short term, I’ve got to deal with the practicalities.   The fact that my client has a judgment against his business that should not be there is clearly going to be damaging to his credit rating, as the Judgement would appear on the public Registry.

So, the urgent thing was to get a consent order to set the judgment aside and get it removed from Registry.  Getting the consent order was the easy bit because the other side had no reason not to sign.  The difficult thing, however, was getting the court to seal the order, because until it’s sealed, it has relatively little value.  After weeks of chasing and harassing the court, the sealed order came through, and everyone celebrated.

Everyone, of course, except me!

What should happen is the Court should automatically send a copy of the sealed order to Registry, but without wishing to pass judgment, I know that you can’t rely on Courts to do what they are supposed to do, when they are supposed to do it.  A call to the Registry confirmed that they had not received the order from the Court but were happy to accept it from us and my client’s blemish free record was duly restored.

It’s easy to sit back and judge others, but it’s much better to be proactive (or have solicitors who are proactive on your behalf) and make sure that all of your paperwork is in order so that people don’t pass judgment on misinformation.

Kleyman & Co Solicitors.  Judge us on our actions as well as on our words.