How can I recover a judement from an officer or founder of a corporation that was administratively dissolved?

Question

I won a default judgement several months ago against a Tennesee corporation that never paid a dime. Now I find out on the Tenn. Secretary of State website that the corporation was administratively dissolved, and its assets liquidated. How do I recover the judgement? Can I recover it from the "owner" of the corporation (CEO)? or am I dead in the water?

Answer 1

Admistrative dissolution is not Bankruptcy, it means the state disolved their corporate standing them for other reasons, such as not paying their annual franchise fee or filing an annual report. An administrative dissolution does not mean the assetts were liquidated, so I assume you got that information from somewhere else. They can have their corporate standing reinstated.

The state corporation laws, protect sharedholders and the board of directors and other employee's from liability of the corporation. That is why they incorporate. You would not want to be held liable for IBM's debts just because you bought IBM stock.

The exception is where the director(s) knowlingly acted against the interests of the corporation, or to cheat or defraud, or used corporate assets for personal use, in which case you would have to be able to prove it in court.

Speak to your attorney.

Answer 2

If it's a true corporation, officers' assets are immune from the judgment.

You need to find out how the court distributed the assets.

You may be out of luck. If you weren't represented at the hearing, you will probably get nothing. Sorry.

Answer 3

You are out of luck unless you can prove fraud of some kind. If you can prove fraud, you can go after the officers of the corp. Fraud is very difficult and very expensive to prove.