Justice has finally been found for one Washington County, PA client of ours.  LVNV sued our client, Mr. G, on an old WalMart account.  LVNV was asking for approximately $4500 in damages in the lawsuit.  At the arbitration hearing, LVNV presented approximately 1 years worth of old statements.  They did not produce a signed agreement, or any agreement for that matter, and they didnt provide any real evidence that they had purchased Mr. G’s alleged account.  Despite this lack of evidence, the Arbitrators ruled that Mr. G owed $2250 to LVNV.  Our educated guess is that the Arbitrators simply were not familiar with basic contract law…  To that end, we filed an Appeal for Mr. G because we knew that LVNV didnt have any other evidence.  At the bench trial, LVNV again came in with the same lack of evidence, but this time, they included a few “Affidavits”, wink, wink, that alleged to support the sale of the accounts.  These “Affidavits” didnt support anything, they were vague and incomplete, and they referenced other documents that were not presented at trial.  I felt bad for the attorney who was representing LVNV, he is a very nice man who is forced to handle cases where he only has about 30% of the evidence that he needs to prevail.  Anyways, long story made short, we won on appeal, complete judgment for Defendant.

We received some pretty fantastic news today.  We are representing an individual in a collection agency case in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. This individual was sued by LVNV, which is one of the larger junk debt buyers that we deal with. The lawsuit was typical, typical in that it was severely lacking in information and details. As a matter of course, we filed objections to the case to raise the issue of legal sufficiency.

While we always expect a judge to agree with our reasoning, this judge went one step further.  He took action that would have a permanent effect on credit card cases in Schuylkill County, he issued a written opinion on the case.  A written opinion doesnt happen on every case.  To the contrary, written opinions are rarely issued.  A common pleas judge typically only writes an opinion where the case at hand has important issues that are recurring and can affect a number of people.  With the rise of credit card lawsuits in Pennsylvania, and in Schuylkill County in particular, this judge felt that it was important to set the law for the county.

The opinion focused on the defective nature of the lawsuit, namely, that the junk debt buyer (LVNV) didnt comply with the pleading requirements on credit card cases in Pennsylvania. The judge issued a ruling and opinion that the lawsuit was defective, and that if it was not corrected in a timely manner, it was subject to dismissal. We are hopeful that LVNV will not meet its burden on this case.  We have not only helped our client on this particular case, we have helped the wonderful consumers of Schuylkill County who are facing similar legal issues.