We hear about unsavory collection agencies on a daily basis. They either make illegal threats, such as wage garnishment, pressing fraud charges or jail time, or, they harass you by calling you names like deadbeat, ignorant, loser and so forth.  Then, they contact your family and friends to try to get them to pay the debt for you, or, they contact your neighbors and employer with questions about the debt. 

All of the above actions are illegal under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDPCA for short) is a federal law that governs what a debt collector may do or say when it is attempting to collect a debt.

A debt collector may not threaten to take any action that is illegal, period. In the above examples, wage garnishment is a big one that we see quite often. To be clear, a debt collector may not garnish your wages in Pennsylvania for a credit card debt. There are no ifs, ands or buts to that statement. Therefore, if a debt collector makes such a threat, it is illegal and you may have a claim against them for their unfair practices.

Again, referring to the above examples, we hear of debt collectors who contact family, friends, employers and neighbors about outstanding debt. This type of activity is usually illegal, but not always.

To explain, generally, a debt collector may not speak with or contact anyone else about your debts. For the most part, an employer may never be contacted about a credit card debt. With regards to friends, family and neighbors, the same is true but with one general exception.

If a debt collector cannot find you, they may contact others to ascertain your location and contact information.  Again, they have this permission only if they cannot find you. They may not speak with others about the nature of their business, they may not tell anyone that you allegedly owe a debt.  Their sole purpose in contacting a friend, neighbor or family member can be only to locate you.  If the debt collector has a valid address and phone number for you, they have no reason or right to contact anyone else about your alleged debt.  Such an action would be illegal.

If one of the above examples should happen to you, please know that you have rights under the FDCPA. Our firm, specifically through my partner, Clay Morrow, can bring a claim against the debt collector for its illegal activities. Generally, you are entitled to a statutory damage amount $1000 AND you receive your reasonable attorney fees for prosecution of the claim. In that regard, we do not charge an up-front fee to pursue these claims on your behalf.

If a debt collector has threatened you, or discussed your alleged debt with someone else, please contact our office right away so that we can begin a claim for you.

I am amazed at the number of phone calls and emails that I have been receiving regarding this topic.  Many people, perhaps in an effort to save money, have decided that they can file their own response to a credit card or collection agency lawsuit. In almost every case, this is a mistake.

In Pennsylvania, you have 20 days to respond to a lawsuit after it has been served upon you. Your initial response is of the utmost importance, because it determines which defenses you intend to set forth.

There are two choices, either an Answer, which is generally a denial of the factual allegations, or, Objections,which in plain terms allege that the credit card lawsuit is legally defective.  In most instances, Objections are the proper response to a Pennsylvania Credit Card Lawsuit. 

For the most part, Objections are waived if you do not raise them at the proper time.  (Waive means that you lose them). When a person files their own response, it is almost always an Answer, meaning that they have waived various defenses that would be afforded to them if they had filed Objections. This mistake may or may not be fatal to your case, but is that really a chance worth taking? For the most part, legal fees on credit card cases are not as high as you might think.  Generally, depending upon your location, the amount of the lawsuit, who the plaintiff is and who is representing them, your legal fees should only amount to a few hundred dollars.  When you are faced with a $10,000 credit card lawsuit, the fee is always worth the price…

Today was a very good day for our firm.  We were representing an elderly fellow in court in Pittsburgh today.  FIA card services had filed a lawsuit against him on an alleged credit card account with an alleged $18,000 balance.  At the Arbitration hearing, FIA did not have any documentation, evidence, or witnesses, and thus, was unable to  prove its case against my client.  FIA quickly filed an appeal and a bench trial was scheduled before the judge. 

I made several calls to the opposing attorney in an attempt to obtain the documents that they had.  My phone calls were left unreturned.  At trial this morning, FIA had some apparent documentation, which it had never shared with me, but little else.  They failed to provide a witness to authenticate the documents, and because they were not provided to me beforehand, the documents were inadmissable.  Before the hearing even began, I presented a Motion to Dismiss, which was promptly entered by the judge.  The scoreboard today, my client 1, FIA Card Services 0.

As the second largest city in Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh receives hundreds of Credit Card and Collection Agency lawsuits each week.  Because of the high volume of cases, there have been several court rulings regarding these cases, to keep an even flow and to prevent them from clogging the Pittsburgh court system.

The most important rule is the 120 rule issued by Judge Wettick.  This rule applies to credit card or collection agency cases that are defective.  (As per my other posts, almost all of these lawsuits are defective initially).  Judge Wettick’s ruling is essentially that the credit card companies and collection agencies have 120 days to correct the defects inherent within their lawsuits.  If they are unable to correct the defects, the case is dismissed (which means thrown out of court). 

If they make a minor correction, that cures a few defects, but not all of them, then objections can be filed a second time.  If this occurs, then Judge Wettick gives the collection agency or credit card company an additional 30 days to make corrections.  Typically, Judge Wettick does not afford further opportunity to these companies. 

The ruling has obvious benefits to the court system.  The collection attorneys know what they need to have to proceed with a case, and the consumer attorneys such as myself who are defending against these lawsuits know exactly how the court will rule on a given case.

Have you been sued by Attorney Apothaker and Associates?  Join the club.  I deal with Attorney Apothaker’s lawsuits on a daily basis, whether its filing a response or simply reviewing the lawsuit to give a potential client some advice.  For the most part, the lawsuits filed by this office are defective.  They are simple, cookie cutter forms that lack the proper information that is required by a Pennsylvania court to move forward.  Our typical response to these lawsuits is to file what are called “Preliminary Objections” which are, in a nutshell, an objection to the numerous legal defects contained in the lawsuit. 

Without fail, the courts will agree with us as to our allegation of defects in these lawsuits.  The courts generally will give Attorney Apothaker the opportunity to “cure” the defects in the lawsuit, but in my experience, his office generally has difficulty in curing the problems.  To be fair, it is not necessarily his office that has the problem, its the clients that he often represents.  These collection agencies, or junk debt buyers, simply do not have enough information to prevail against you in a court of law in most cases.

If you have been sued by Apothaker and Associates, you need to have a knowledgeable consumer attorney review the lawsuit, whether its my office or another consumer attorney.  Again, these lawsuits are generally defective, and there is a very strong possibility that they can be thrown out of court without you having to pay anything other than a small attorney fee.

An individual sent me an email today asking whether they should still respond to a lawsuit filed by a collection agency.  The individual explained that they had reached an agreement with the collection agency on a payment plan.

My first response was to  tell the individual that they had made a huge mistake in agreeing to pay the collection agency anything.  Typically, as you will see from any of myother posts, a collection agency has a difficult time in proving a  case against you in a court of law in Pennsylvania. 

My second response was that if they are going to continue on with the proposed settlement, making their mistake even larger, then they should absolutely file a written response to the lawsuit.  An agreement with a collection agency is pretty meaningless unless you have it spelled out specifically inwriting.  I would never trust an oral agreement with a collection agency, ever.  If you fail to file your response to the lawsuit, the agency most likely will simply enter a default judgment against you for the full amount of the alleged debt, often with an inclusion of their attorney fees.  If you do “strike a deal” with a collection agency, (which again is a huge mistake) then at least get it in writing.

I get asked this question alot and the truth of the matter is Yes, a collection agency can buy a delinquent account from a credit card company.  An account, of any sort, is a “legal interest” in something.  Any legal interest can be sold at any time, for any price.

It’s actually a good thing when your account is sold to a junk debt buyer.  Generally, the only things that the debt buyer acquires are your name, phone number, account number and the amount that is alleged due and owing.  That’s it!  How can they prove a case against you in a Pennsylvania court of law when they don’t have the documentation to back it up?  Most times, they can’t (as long as you file the proper response to the lawsuit and have the right legal representation). 

In further discussing the purchase of an account, there is a burden on the collection agency to prove that they actually purchased your specific account.  This purchase is often called an assignment.  Without this proof, the collecton agency does not have standing to move forward with a lawsuit.  Standing is generally defined as the legal right to sue someone. 

These agencies often have difficulty in establishing standing in these matters because they purchase so many accounts at one time.  I have never seen a collection agency purchase an individual creditor’s account one at a time.  Instead, they purchase these account in bulk, by blocks of money.  For example, maybe they purchase $2,000,000 of delinquent accounts for $40,000.  There could be 10,000 accounts in that sale, and its not feasible for the collection agency to include that list in every lawsuit that it files.  Our argument, which has been successful, is that they cannot prove standing without providing that list. 

If you would like a free, no obligation consultation on a credit card or collection agency matter, please call my office at 412-823-8003 or 1-888-536-6644.

I am very surprised by the number of people who don’t consult with a consumer attorney on a credit card case.  As soon as you receive a collection letter or phone call, you should speak to a consumer attorney right away.  Most of us, my office specifically, will give a free telephone consultation about the collection process and to discuss your defenses and rights. 

I have found that many of you instead call the collection agency to try to work out a payment plan.  What a huge mistake!  That is exactly what they want you to do, its part of what they base their business model on! The truth of the matter is that most collection agencies have difficulty in proving a case against you in a court of law.  That’s why they call you and use high pressure tactics to get you to pay.  Once you make a payment, or even agree to one, you may have severely damaged your case.

A frequent question that I face is whether the individual can handle the matter themselves.  I almost never think that this is a good idea.  They ask, what can I do that they can’t?  Think about it, I do this every day, with tremendous success.  I usually know exactly what language is in your lawsuit without even seeing it just by learning the name of the collection agency.  I know which attorneys they hire, how those attorneys operate, which documents they have, their usual success rate and so on.  Are you willing to risk a $9000 judgment against you just to save a few dollars in attorney fees?  It doesn’t make sense to me.  Look, I try to be as blunt as I can with clients, they really do appreciate it.  I’ll tell you if I can help you and I’ll also tell you if it’s in your interests to go another direction.  (I often do this with the smaller cases, where it doesn’t make sense to hire me to defend a $750 lawsuit).

The key is to not make a mistake by calling the agency or by filing your own response to the credit card lawsuit.  That’s my job, to handle that aspect of it and to give you a good result at the end.

If you have any questions about a collection agency or credit card lawsuit in Pennsylvania, call my office at 412-823-8003 for a free, no obligation consultation.

Atlantic Credit and Finance is one of the largest Junk Debt Buyers that operate in Pennsylvania.  A junk debt buyer is a company, often a collection agency, that purchases allegedly delinquent accounts from banks, credit card companies, and other institutions that extend credit.  They purchase these accounts in bulk, often for mere pennies on the dollar.  Our estimation is that they average around 3 cents per dollar on a purchase. 

Atlantic Credit, in my estimation, files about 50 or so lawsuits per week across PA.  Although they use other law firms, for the most part they use David Apothaker and Associates, a New Jersey law firm, to handle their PA collection matters.  In my experience, Attorney Apothaker’s office has been very cordial to deal with. 

Atlantic Credit typically makes oral or written attempts to collect on these cases before filing a lawsuit.  If you receive a phone call or letter from Atlantic Credit or their attorney, please contact my office right away for a free consultation.  I can explain the process to you and guide you along the way.  I would almost never recommend a negotiation on the claim at this point as it is definitely NOT in your best interests.

Eventually, a lawsuit will come.  Believe it or not, you actually want Atlantic to sue you.  The lawsuits generally are easily defended (though we don’t win every case, we do have an extremely high success rate) and will allow you to move forward with the restoration of your credit. 

Call our office at 412-823-8003 or 1-888-536-6644 for a free, no obligation consultation on your Atlantic Credit matter.