Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in Virginia

Re: Warrant in debt

Also remember that a corporation CANNOT go into court without an attorney. You can show up and say "No, we dispute the debt," but that is all. So you need to be prepared to have an attorney to defend the corporation.

More than likely, the reason that the Warrant in Debt only names the company is because they know that they do not have a claim against the individual. However, law firms that do a lot of debt collection sometmies do not get into the details very precisely and they may overlook things.

In order for the owner of the company to be personally liable, the owner would have signed something volunteering to be personally liable on the debt. This is very common for small businesses, however, and you might not remember a small additional paragraph on the credit application or contract by which the owner agreed to be personally liable.

If not, then by definition the owner is NOT personally liable. That is what a corporation means. There are exceptions (which rarely apply in reality) such as if the corporation is no longer valid or if it was not treated as a real corporation (the annual minutes were not kept up properly, the bank account was treated as the owner's pesonal piggy bank, etc.) While these are possible, they almost never apply in reality, although it is not impossible.

Re: Warrant in debt

I'm assuming that you used an imaginary name here.

If only the company was sued, any judgment will only be against the company, not the individual. However, that does not necessarily preclude a subsequent suit against the individual.