Judgments, again

As I said in a prior post, the Minnesota state court central administration has come out with an interpretation that requires a person with a judgment to pay a full filing fee in order to discharge a judgment entered against them, rather than the $5 that the statute (Minn. Stat. 548.181) calls for.  The full filing fee is $322 or $324, and it is very unusual for a defendant to have paid a filing fee.

I had hoped the Legislature would "overrule" this interpretation.  I thought it would have been reasonable to change the law and have the court system charge $25 or $40 or something like that, but $324 per judgment seems pretty outrageous.  After all, the defendant did not invoke the legal machinery of the court system, the plaintiff did.  (I will have a letter in to Jeff Shorba, the state court administrator, asking him how much money the state court system really collects out of defendant filing fees;   if I get a response I will post it here.)

Well, the Legislature has gone home for the rest of the year, so apparently we are not going to get any change in the law for the rest of 2014.

My thought, therefore, is to for the most part delay using the state court application to discharge judgments until 2015, in the hopes that the Legislature will take this up next year.

If you are going to any candidate forums this election year, maybe you could ask your candidate for State Representative or State Senator about this issue.