If we are declining a loan application because of a judgment that we have evidence of but is not reported on the applicant's credit report can we still use "collection action or judgment" as the ECOA reason and report the reason for denial for HMDA as 3 - Credit History since under the current rules it says to use code 3 for judgments? OR

Use "other" with a description of the judgment on the adverse action notice and report code 9 - Other for HMDA?

Thanks in advance

A credit report being involved does not impact denial reasons. You can get credit history from a whole variety of sources.