"Abstract of judgment" is a written summary of a judgment which states how much money the losing defendant owes to the person who won the lawsuit, the rate of interest to be paid on the judgment amount, court costs, and any specific orders that the losing defendant to find the county where the loser owns real estateproperty; 2) the probability that there are secured loans, tax liens and/or other judgments that come ahead of the judgment lien; 3) the possibility that the loser/debtor may go bankrupt and avoid paying the debt.
An abstract is a brief summary of a judicial judgment, usually written by a Barrister or academic for publication in law reports. Abstracts are of particular use in legal research because they condense the essential points of long, complex judgments into a few paragraphs. A researcher can use abstracts to investigate how relevant a particular case is to the issue at hand, and hence to decide whether he or she should go on to read the entire judgment.
The term "abstract of judgment" may be used in a generic sense to describe a condensed summary of a court case, but it is chiefly used in a technical sense to describe a document produced by a court which describes the judgment rendered in a case.
Criminal law
An abstract of judgment is a clerical document containing a summary of court proceedings which may be useful though not conclusive in proving a prior conviction for the purposes of enhancement. United States v. Gutierrez-Ramirez, 405 F.3d 352, 357 - 58 ; United States v. Navidad-Marcos, 367 F.3d 903, 908 - 09 ; see also United States. v. Price, 366 U.S. App. D.C. 166, 409 F.3d 436, 445.
Property law
In some states, such as Texas, an abstract of judgment is a specific type of document provided either by the court clerk or by an attorney which is used to prove that a judgment has been rendered. The abstract may then be filed in another jurisdiction, where it constitutes notice of a "judgment lien" on the debtor's real property, thereby preventing the transfer of that property until the judgment has been paid. This process was described by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1987: Pennzoil Co. v. Texaco, Inc., 481 U.S. 1, 5
