The bad news is you can’t collect the judgment, but . . .

The processes of the law can be strange.  That’s a lesson that California wine distributor Ken Jacques is learning, after he bought 125,000 bottles of good quality Australian wine for $100.

Jacques’s purchase is just the latest round in a legal brangle that started in 2002 when an Australian winery, James Estate, hired Jacques’s company, Evaki, Inc., to sell its wine in the U.S. A few months later James Estate stopped paying and sued.  It also wrote nasty letters to Evaki’s clients claiming that Evaki was being prosecuted for theft.  Evaki countersued, and eventually won some $400,000 in damages.  James Estate refused to pay, saying it didn’t have the money.

Jacques discovered that the winery had 10,000 cases of wine in a warehouse in Sonoma, and had the court put a levy on it.  At the sheriff’s sale, Jacques bid $100—and there were no other offers.

Jacques still hasn’t recovered his damages, but believes he will recoup about $250,000 from sales of the wine, which goes for $9 to $15 a bottle at retail.