In this segment of the YouTube video, host Latasha Transrina Kebe discusses a real‑world case where a defendant, funded by GoFundMe donations, struggles to meet litigation deadlines after changing lawyers. She asks bankruptcy attorney Chad how filing for bankruptcy mid‑case could stop the lawsuit. Chad emphasizes the importance of consulting a bankruptcy lawyer early—before a judgment is entered—so the case can be halted or reorganized, preserving leverage and allowing arguments that the debt may be non‑dischargeable. He warns that filing after a judgment locks the parties into a potentially adverse court order that a bankruptcy court cannot overturn. Latasha reflects that, had she known this strategy earlier, she would have filed before trial to avoid paying exorbitant attorney fees and the stress of endless documentation. The conversation underscores bankruptcy as a tactical tool to protect financially strained defendants from crippling civil judgments.
Moving on. But she doesn't have any money, the blogger, and she's fighting this case using like public funds and things like that from GoFundMes and stuff. And she's unable to kind of meet certain deadlines because, you know, she's had to change lawyers. Could she bankrupt the case in the middle and stop the whole case before it even—
I always recommend that, Tasha K. People always come to me so late, like all the appeals have been done, everything's been done and everybody's upset. And then they say, Chad, can you clean this up for me?
Putting on my— go ahead.
If you come to me early, that case can stop and we can start the reorganization process early, or we can make it go away early. And then if they want to come in and try to make it non-dischargeable, we have arguments that we can make in the bankruptcy court. So you don't lose all your leverage, because if you wait till the case goes all the way through and you get a bad judgment against you, then I, I am stuck with that judgment because I can't overturn it. An appellate court can. The bankruptcy court can't go behind it. So we are stuck with potentially a bad judgment. So if you're in litigation and it's not going your way and you can't afford the fight, you need to talk to a bankruptcy attorney before the judgment's entered and give us a little more ammunition that we can work with. Because after it's already entered, whatever's in that black and white order, we're stuck with, even if we completely disagree with the facts.
Because in my case, right, had I would have had this knowledge, Okay, do you know, Chad, I would have been all up and through your office before it even would have gotten to trial? Do you think I wanted to pay an attorney $20,000, $30,000 a month? It's a money funnel, an endless wormhole, and so are the documents. So is the stress. I would have been all up and through there, and I'm telling you, I'm having— I'm letting these bloggers know, you guys, if they sue you, let them sue. You walk your ass right into your office. And let you bankrupt that shit right before they ask. What are they going to do?
It's, it's 100% correct. And sometimes, and I've had this happen where we didn't even have to file the bankruptcy because I made a phone call to plaintiff's counsel. I said, hey, we're filing bankruptcy here. Here's our final and best offer to be done with this. And they know that we're not joking around. We're going to file and they'll talk to bankruptcy counsel on their side and say, yeah, you're really not going to get anything. You should take this offer. So sometimes it really sobers up both sides where, you know, you don't necessarily want to go into bankruptcy, you just want to finish the litigation. And the other side, generally speaking, they want some sort of result, money or whatever it might be. So if we can come to that without filing bankruptcy, great. But if we can stop the litigation with the bankruptcy, that works as well. So
