Dan Harris, a partner at Harris Sliwoski in its Seattle, Washington office and an expert on collecting international judgments who is not involved in the matter, said that initially appearing in a litigation case and then becoming unresponsive is a common tactic by Chinese-based entities.
Harris said a strategy to collect a judgment in personal injury litigation is to convey to the corporation that if it fails to pay, it will encounter interruptions in its international supply chain.
Harris provided an example of a North Pacific company that intended to deliver $10 million worth of crab to a foreign port of a Chinese corporation that owed the attorney’s client $5 million. Ahead of the delivery, Harris would connect with a contact from the North Pacific company.
“I’d say to Jim, ‘How about you tell us right before you are about to send over that $10 million, and we can seize $5 million of it,’” Harris said. “For your help, we’ll pay you $100,000, and he’s like, ‘Sure.’ So, you can get into their faces all around the world. You can do a lot to recover the judgment, but you need to know how to do it.”