Collection without Judgement in CA

[Jan H.]

I wanted to ask for insight on collection-related matters in CA. I had to evict my tenants and obtained a judgement from the court for unpaid rent.  I am assigning this judgement to a collection agency.

Now the property has been fixed up and I was going to file a separate claim against the ex-tenants via Small Claims for the damages they caused.

The collection agency is telling me that I do not necessarily have to file a separate Small Claims case for the damages, they could do the collection for that without the Small Claims judgement. This is something I have not heard of and always thought judgement would be needed for collections.

Does anyone have any experience with this in CA? Thanks!