judgment debt

noun

1. Law.,  a debt established or confirmed by decree of a court of law.

Word History and Origins

Origin of judgment debt¹

First recorded in 1830–40

Example Sentences

A group of Sept. 11 families that years earlier had sued the Taliban for their losses, winning a default judgment when the militants failed to show up in court, then moved to seize the funds to pay off the judgment debt.

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The Havlish plaintiffs — about 150 people, linked to 47 estates of the nearly 3,000 people killed — moved to seize some of that money to pay off the Taliban’s judgment debt to them.

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In September, lawyers for a plaintiffs’ group in the Havlish case — about 150 people, linked to 47 estates of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks — persuaded a judge to send a U.S. marshal to serve the Federal Reserve of New York with a writ of execution to begin seizing the Afghan funds to pay off its judgment debt.

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Lawyers in the Havlish case had earlier proposed a similar arrangement, dividing the assets between humanitarian relief and paying off the Taliban’s judgment debt to their clients.

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Their judgment debt is roughly equal to all the assets in the account.

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