Judgments, liens, and bankruptcies — the public record problem

Public record entries behave differently from tradelines, and understanding why explains both common failure modes.

The reporting periods

15 U.S.C. § 1681c(a) sets the outer limits:

Bankruptcy — excluded when it, “from the date of entry of the order for relief or the date of adjudication, as the case may be, antedate[s] the report by more than 10 years.”

Civil suits, civil judgments, and records of arrest — excluded when they, “from date of entry, antedate the report by more than seven years or until the governing statute of limitations has expired, whichever is the longer period.”

Paid tax liens — excluded more than seven years “from date of payment.” Note that the clock runs from payment. An unpaid lien is not measured the same way.

The judgment rule is the one to read twice. Seven years or the governing limitations period, whichever is longer — not a flat seven.

Why there is no furnisher to ask

A tradeline has a furnisher: a bank, a lender, a collection agency, with records and a duty to investigate under § 1681s-2(b).

A public record does not work that way. It originates in a court file and is collected — historically by vendors visiting courthouses and databases. Nobody is monitoring your particular case for changes.

Which produces the two characteristic errors.

Wrong person. Court records are indexed by name, and matching a judgment against John Smith to the right John Smith is the same probabilistic problem that produces mixed files. See when someone else’s information lands in your file.

Stale status. The record was collected at one moment. If the judgment was later vacated, satisfied, or reversed, or the case dismissed, nothing automatically updates the file. The entry reflects a snapshot.

The disposition is the thing to check

For each public record entry, look at:

• Is it yours? Compare the case number, the court, the county, and the date against your own knowledge. A middle initial or suffix that is not yours is a signal.
• What is the current status in the court’s own file? Court records are usually publicly searchable. This is the check almost nobody performs, and it is where vacated and satisfied judgments hide.
• Does the reported status match? Satisfied, vacated, dismissed, released, discharged — each is different, and a report showing an open judgment that was satisfied years ago is reporting something that is not currently true.
• Are the dates right? Date of entry drives the reporting period.
• Is it duplicated? One matter can appear more than once as it moves through the system.

Disputing one

The framing that works is documentary, because the court file is the authority and you can obtain it.

1. Get the court record. A certified or file-stamped copy of the order — the satisfaction, the vacatur, the dismissal, the discharge.
2. State the specific discrepancy: this entry reports X; the court file shows Y; a copy is enclosed.
3. Send it to all three agencies, since public record data is collected independently.
4. Ask for the description of the procedure if it comes back verified. Under § 1681i(a)(6)(B)(iii) and (a)(7) the agency must, on request and within 15 days, describe how it determined accuracy — which for a public record tells you what source it consulted. See what the bureau owes you when the reinvestigation ends.

The standards are the ordinary ones. Section 1681e(b) requires reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of information concerning the individual the report relates to. Section 1681i(a)(5)(A) requires prompt deletion or modification of information found inaccurate, incomplete, or that cannot be verified.

Two things worth separating

Obsolescence and accuracy are independent objections. An entry outside its § 1681c(a) period is objectionable on that ground whether or not it is accurate. An entry that is wrong is objectionable today, whatever its age. You do not have to choose.

A vacated judgment is not the same as a paid one, and a satisfied judgment is not the same as one that never existed. Precision in how you describe what happened is what makes the dispute checkable.

Whether any particular entry belongs to you, what its current status is, and what the governing limitations period is are questions about your records and your jurisdiction. We do not answer them. What is general is where the entry came from, why nobody is updating it, and that the court file is the document that settles it.