again, per my comment re: michigan attorney, he'd indicated it might be a 4-5 year wait, as things were backed up there. NYC seemed to be 10 years. but i don't know how common it is.

I've had people say "you should have gone to small claims court!" Except, the claim exceeded small claims limit ($5k). Perhaps I could have rounded it down and tried for small claims, which supposedly is somewhat faster, but how do you know ahead of time this will take 10 years to even appear in court?

That's so dysfunctional I bet it pushes a lot of people to ask the mob for help with collecting.

Not for me. I had a small claims case in San Francisco with a court date set about a month from when I first filed, and the entire thing was resolved in less than a year.

Small claims is often much faster than regular court (that's one of the reasons it exists.)