LegalActionIssue
Member
The good news is that you have already proved you are owed the $50,000+/- so you don’t have to do that again.
Now you just need to track down your judgment-debtor’s assets so you get paid.
If the original LLC has been dissolved, that is no longer an asset to attach. Your task seems to be to prove that the new LLC is actually the old LLC in disguise. This probably means returning to court.
I believe the best way for you to unmask the new LLC is to find a collection attorney in Florida who has a working familiarity with fraudulent transfers.
That successor liability might be option #3 but is that the path of lease resistance to collect the money especially when I have a personal guarantee from the owner herself?
Many years ago I had a successor liability case that was even stronger than this one but it was almost impossible to prove. I think there was almost zero cases ever proven in the state for successor liability no matter how strong the case.
I think in one case, the successor company was literally the same name as the first company but had like a "2" after it and still the judge would not allow sucessor liability. This was outside of Florida so maybe it was different in that state.
Successor liability may be technically a option but I would prefer to go after the path of least resistance.
Its like you have some Pizza restaurant shut down and open a new one. Then they argue that the original Pizza restaurant was New Jersey style but the new one is more traditional Italian style with a more premium crush and 60% vs 70% hydration and a bunch of technical jargon gibberish.
For gosh sake, Chuck-E-Cheese open up Pizza Business on DoorDash called Pasqually (the name of the Italian guy animatronic). Some Youtuber had to go undercover investigation to find this. Then they claimed it was not the same pizza because Pasqually had "thicker crust, extra sauce and new blends of cheeses and seasonings, giving consumers a more flavorful, more premium pizza experience"
In my experience trying for successor liability is going down the rabbit hole even if its very obvious what the person is doing. Its sort of like winning a lawsuit against a government employee with the qualified immunity. Even if you have the cop caught on camera breaking the law its still almost impossible to win. The courts will be like " is there another case on point with these same set of circumstances" If there is not, then they allowed the qualify immunity. This is a catch 22, because the case law can never get established because there is never a existing case on point.
I have literally seen companies doing that same company under a new name and get away it. There was a furniture store locally that would sell people a " lifetime warranty" on the furniture and they would periodically change the name in order to void those lifetime warranty. So even know its the same store in the same location and even the same salesman, they would be like " That warranty was with another company"
The successor liability( option 3) I think is best as a last resort if all else fails.
The fact that the company # 1 and Company # 2 are both dissolved is an undisputed fact. I don't know if the company paying a fine to be reinstated is retroactive or not. In Park City UT, there was a ski resort in the hands of one company for like 50 years but they had to like renew something with the city and they missed the filing by like 1 day and lost control of the entire mountain. There was no reinstating it after the fact. I don't know if a dissolved company is able to retroactively reestablished that protection after the fact if they pay a fine.
