Interest on a court judgment that a creditor, usually the plaintiff in the case, can collect from the debtor, usually the defendant, from time the judgment is entered in the court clerk's record until the judgment is paid. In federal court, under 28 U.S.C. § 1961, the federal statute governing civil and bankruptcy interest, creditors can collect interest on the judgments owed to them for judgments rendered in a federal district court. The federal government also provides a a scheme of applicable rates to determine the postjudgment interest on decisions rendered in federal court. For example, in Van Asdale v. Int’l Game Tech., the 9th Circuit granted postjudgment interest on an award of back wages in a Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower case, and applied the postjudgment interest rate which applies to all civil cases in federal district courts pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1961, and not the interest rate for underpayment of federal taxes.
[Last updated in August of 2020 by the Wex Definitions Team]