Staffing Agencies: Sell Your Unpaid Judgment
You placed workers. Your client didn’t pay the invoices. You won in court. We buy California staffing agency judgments — $10,000 and up.
$10,000 minimum · Commercial judgments · California superior court
Staffing agency judgment collection
Staffing agencies operate on thin margins and extended payment terms. When a client goes delinquent and eventually defaults, the judgment that results is often significant — weeks or months of unpaid placements add up quickly.
Collecting on that judgment is a different problem entirely. The client company may have downsized, restructured, or closed by the time you get to enforcement. We specialize in exactly this kind of commercial judgment.
What qualifies
We evaluate California commercial judgments in this category including:
- Unpaid staffing invoices — Placed workers, issued invoices, client failed to pay; court entered judgment for the outstanding balance.
- Temp-to-hire arrangement defaults — Client hired workers permanently but defaulted on conversion fees.
- Minimum hours / contract minimum violations — Client contracted for minimums, didn’t fulfill, court awarded damages.
- Personally guaranteed accounts — Business owner personally guaranteed the staffing agreement; judgment includes the guarantor.
Minimum face value: $10,000. California superior court commercial judgments only.
Why staffing judgment enforcement typically fails
Staffing agencies operate on margins that rarely exceed 10–20% on placed labor. Payment terms run long — often NET-45 or NET-60 — and by the time a delinquent client becomes a court judgment, the original obligor may have restructured, sold the underlying business, or dispersed its workforce. The placed workers themselves have no liability to the agency. Enforcement has to target the client entity and whatever principals signed personal guaranties on the account.
The patterns that come up repeatedly in our intake:
- The PE-backed client. The company that owed you was sold mid-engagement to a private equity buyer. The buyer kept the operating subsidiary running but moved the receivables (and the liability for them) into a dissolved holding entity. The judgment debtor is technically still a legal entity — it just holds nothing.
- The funded startup. The client burned through its Series B and went into wind-down. Principals moved on to new ventures. The judgment is against a shell that owns laptops and a back-office services contract.
- The factored receivables complication. If the agency factored some receivables to a finance company, the judgment may still belong to the agency even where the invoice itself was collected separately. This is not always obvious. Submit for evaluation rather than assume the judgment is no longer yours.
Selling the judgment converts a permanent distraction into immediate working capital. The agency stops paying its own labor to chase a debtor that has moved on. Review the full options for collecting a judgment in California or read about the real cost of waiting to collect.
FAQ
Does it matter if the client company has laid off most of its staff?
Company size at the time of enforcement matters less than whether there are identifiable assets — real property, active banking, a successor entity. Tell us what you know about the debtor’s current situation.
We have judgments against multiple related entities from the same client group. Can we sell all of them?
Yes. If they’re related judgments against the same beneficial owners, we can evaluate them together. Combined face value must reach $10,000.
What if the debtor is a PE-backed company that has since been sold?
Corporate transactions can complicate enforcement significantly. Tell us the timeline — when judgment was entered versus when the company was sold — and we’ll assess whether there’s a viable enforcement path.
We factored our receivables — do we still own the judgment?
Generally yes. The judgment is a distinct legal asset from the underlying invoice that was factored. The factoring agreement controls the receivable, but the judgment entered later — based on the same debt — is typically an asset that the original creditor still owns unless the factoring contract specifically assigned post-default rights. Confirm with counsel and submit for evaluation; see how we buy judgments.
The debtor is a PEO (Professional Employer Organization) — does that change the evaluation?
Sometimes. PEO structures can create co-employment ambiguity that complicates which entity actually carries the contractual debt. We evaluate PEO-related judgments case by case. The presence of a PEO does not automatically reduce the judgment’s value, but it does require closer review of which entity is actually on the hook.
Get your staffing judgment evaluated
Staffing or workforce solutions judgment, $10,000 or more? Free evaluation, one business day response.