I wanted to sue in Alabama.  It would have been a 3 hour drive which I would have been happy to make.  But, the Alabama courts told me I could NOT file in Alabama for a bad check for work done in TN.  That does not make sense to me.  I was holding a bad check written by a company in Alabama on an Alabama bank.  Honestly, I would have happily driven to Washington  to the Supreme Court....I was so mad! 

Then after I obtained the judgement in TN, I asked a TN lawyer if I could file the judgement in Al.  He told me that it would require a substantial payment to an attorney to get that done, if it could be done.  I'm pretty used to doing things myself without a lawyer.  But, Al. would not allow me to file it without an attorney.   And Al was not sure I could file it there at all.

Let me also mention that the courts in AL asked me who the bad check was on and when I told them, they said they were very familiar with them.  That they wrote bad checks all the time, people got judgements and got paid.  But, I couldn't get a judgement since I did the work in TN.

This is what concerns me.  Most of my work is done for out of town title companies, lenders, etc.  If they can order work from me, not pay me and/or send me a bad check and I can't get a judgement against them that means anything....what am I to do?  Or what is any abstractor to do?  I'm not good at being screwed and just sitting back and letting it happen. 

Any advise, Kevin or anybody with an answer?