Mitigating the effect of Paid Judgment

[jdunfee2002]

I had a dispute with a service provider and I refused to pay. This individual didn’t have enough work so he decided to do more work on my property and charge me for it. I never agreed to pay him for the extra services and I refused to pay. Nonetheless, the court ruled that I owed him for the work that he performed, despite the fact that he had not one shred of evidence that I requested the additional services. I was ASTONISHED that the court ruled in his favor. Anyway, I paid the bill. I would like to refinance my house, but my credit score has dropped 90 points! My previous credit score was 790 and my new credit score is 700. My loan officer says that I should find a way to get my credit score up at least 20 points to 720 in order to get a decent rate.

From reading this forum, I see that I should have arranged with the so-called creditor, er, charlatan, to dismiss the judgment and pay him off immediately and I would not have suffered negative consequences from exercising my right to an opinion. However, I immediately paid instead. I believed that if I did what the court asked, my credit reputation would remain intact, despite the disagreement. The judgment was rendered approximately 14 months ago. I see that this judgment will stay on my records for at least 10 years in the state of California.

The credit agencies are reporting that the judgment has been satisfied, ie. paid. Is there anything more that I can do to mitigate the effect of this judgment? I checked with my state superior court and found that I can no longer file an appeal or vacate the judgment. I am absolutely appalled that I am put in the category of "average" credit risk when I have multiple loans outstanding, thirty years of history of paying on time, multiple types of credit outstanding, etc. I believe that this judgment is worth at least the twenty points that the loan officer says I need to get a good mortgage rate. It is probably worth a lot more points than that.

Please help!