Cunningham vs. Experian

Craig Cunningham of El Paso, Texas and owner of a firm known as CCH Consulting has filed a lawsuit against a debt collector and Experian charging violations of FDCPA and FCRA. He is demanding $5,000,000 from each of the defendants.

Among other things that he is charging them with is mail fraud which will, of course get dismissed or stricken from the case by the judge because mail fraud is a criminal statute and can only be brought by a United States prosecutor.

He can't possibly hope to get $5 million out of the debt collector because they cannot be hit for more than 1% of their net worth and in order for Cunningham to get $5 million the debt collector would (unless my math is wrong) have to have a net worth of half a billion dollars. There aren't many debt collectors worth that kind of money.

And for that kind of money Experian will fight him to the death even if he should win the case and actually get awarded that much money.

Cunningham also filed a smaller suit against Alliaance One over a $284.00 debt owed to Verizon. I guess he wants others to make him rich so he can file more
lawsuits. As it is, he has filed 3 lawsuits trying to get the courts to let him proceed forma Pauperous and got denied every time.

He also seems to like to give fake addresses because attorneys inform me that the mail keeps getting returned no matter which address is used.

Judge Cardone dealt his case against Bauer a near death blow yesterday when she first of all dismissed the stalking complaints entirely. Then she demanded that they prove their allegations and the amount of damages resulting therefrom.

One of the complaints they raised was that Bauer had said that the Plaintiff Ana Callier is associated with their business and that such a statement was false and harmful to the business. Ana Callier is the wife of Brandon Callier, Co-Plaintiff in the suit. How is he going to effectively explain that to the court and still come home expecting love, kisses and supper???

 

FDCPA

Cunningham is also improperly claiming that the court has jurisdiction under 1331 and 1332 which is improper because that is Diversity Clause. Yes, it does apply and is correct to some extent but he has no need to use 1331 or 1332 because FDCPA and FCRA alone are all he needs to give the court jurisdiction.

The guy just can't get over making all kinds of ludicrous mistakes, not only of law itself but of rules of procedure and evidence as well.

Although I have not really sat down and studied his two other cases in depth, I predict he will win both of them but he isn't going to get any where near $10 million I'm thinking more likely he will come out with something less than maybe $10 grand per each of his 3 defendants. He names an insurance company in the Experian suit but that's only because they provide the O&E insurance for the debt collector. The judge will probably dismiss them as a defendant since it is basically up to the debt collector whether or not he wishes to make his insurer foot the bill or whether he will just want to foot it himself. For the maybe $10 grand he is likely to get in settlement offer. If he tries to go for the full jury trial (if the judge will let it happen) a jury would never let him become an instant multimillionaire either. He is likely going to have to do a lot of hard thinking about the time he hits the Rule 26 meeting and refuses a reasonable settlement offer.

There is a lot to learn from watching such cases as these instead of trying to study cases where the Plaintiff wins a big settlement using an attorney because the attorneys don't usually pull such glaring errors. The judges don't have a reason to slap them down as they usually do in Pro Se cases.

Pro Se cases are much more interesting than attorney represented cases but there aren't nearly as many of them. You just don't hear about them very often because there is usually a non-disclosure clause in all settlement agreements. Also more Pro Se cases get settled out of court than attorney represented cases do.

 

Here is the complaint in .pdf format. It will show up on line so you don't have to download it or anything like that. You will want to increase the size of the view to 100% instead of the 39% it shows up as. There is a tab in the middle of the tool bar to let you do that.

Another interesting aspect is that he is also naming about 10 "John Does" and "Jane Does" all of whom are employees of the defendant debt collector.

I'm just wondering how the judge will react to that idea?

 

I think he will pull it off too, especially considering the rather bland response the defendant's lawyer filed. Nothing more than general denials of each and every statement and some equally lame affirmative defenses.

Experian hasn't even put in a reply yet and that seems strange indeed. That would be something if Experian let it go by default.

If that happens and he gets a default we can really watch his world come unglued. They would have it vacated in a heartbeat. It was filed on July 6th 2007.

OH NO! I almost don't believe this but he forgot to state how many days they had to answer the complaint!!!!

He left the number of days absolutely blank on the summons!!! I wonder if that either negates the summons entirely or does it mean they have forever to answer him???

LOL

 

Jones-Day isn't likely to let him blaze anything. They will answer based on the number of days allowed under FRCP since he left that blank. I'd bet you a fig leaf they don't do a MTD either. Remember that most of the work you are talking about will not fall on Jones-Day but on the lawyer defending the debt collector.