The legal tactic of arresting a debtor who fails to appear for a court hearing -- known in some areas as "body attachment" -- is so extreme that some of the country's biggest commercial creditors say they never use it. For instance, Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Ford Motor Credit Co., the finance arm of Ford Motor Co., say they expressly prohibit their collections agents from asking judges to issue arrest warrants against no-show debtors.
In many areas of the country, collections lawyers say, the procedure has been all but abandoned. Judges grant a creditor's request for a body attachment when someone misses one or more hearings or otherwise flouts a court's authority -- technically, it's not punishment for the debt itself.
In Connecticut, the state's largest hospital, Yale-New Haven, has obtained at least 65 civil arrest warrants in the past three years for debtors who have missed court hearings, according to an examination of New Haven County court records by a researcher for the Service Employees International Union, which represents some hospital workers. After several inquiries from the Journal, the hospital, which doesn't dispute the union's research, said it would severely limit the tactic.