What is a civil judgement (in Canada) and how is it procured?

Question

i had asked a question previously about whether a canadian phone company could put a lien on my property in the US for an outstanding debt (which i contend i do not owe). one of the answers was no because it is unsecured debt but the other stated they could put a lien on my property only if they got a civil judgment against me. obviously, the responses contradict one another, but let's say the 2nd person is correct. how do they go about getting this judgment? what are the procedures? and what can i do about it?

Answer 1

Well....

1. Unless your debt is of a huge amount (over 10k) the phone company technically can't put a lien on your property in the US. They would try other avenues of collecting before this happened and you would have to receive paperwork from the collections agency stating what monies you owe the phone company.

2. The phone company can only file a civil judgment against you if they have the proof to do so. If you are getting calls from a collection agency that claims that you owe the phone company this money I would ask the agency if you can have paper copies/bills of the amounts that you owe and when the charges are from and your contract (or something that has your signature on it)

In order for the phone company or collections agency to get a civil judgment against you they would need to appear before the court and prove that you owe this money. If they cannot prove this they will not be issued a judgment against you.

I have included a link to the Fair Trading Act for Alberta which covers Alberta law in regards to credit, creditors and debts. I'm not sure which province this phone company is from but you can search online for a similar Act in different provinces. It is quite lengthy however the points of interest for you are:

Part 9 - Cost of Credit Disclosure (read all of this)

Part 11 - Collection Practices (read all of this)

Part 14 - Remedies and Enforcement  

                151 Property freeze orders

This document has all the rules and regulations for Alberta, if this happened in a different province, the rules may differ.

If you could provide the name of the province where this is originating from, I can give you links to their laws for you to view. Also, you may want to pull your credit reports (Equifax and Trans Union, both are free if not viewed online) to view them to see if this debt appears on them. If it doesn't, then we'll have to have a different discussion about what can be done as this situation is very different from the question you are asking.