In Desparate Need of OH Consumer Attorney - Time Sensitive (Please Help)

Me too! I've been trying to find someone to help me out as well, but there just doesn't seem to be any money in it unless it looks like a particularly agregious case.

FDCPA only allows for up to $1000 per ACTION -- and the suit is THE ACTION.

There's not much meat on them bones for lawyers to chew on! The law has virtually guaranteed that wins are pyrrhic victories. You cannot change that. Every lawyer is working with the same constraints. The only "wild card" is punative damages, and they're a crap shoot unless the lawyer is really experienced and knows how to construct the case appropriately.

 

Get someone fresh out of law school. Their eagerness to get their first victory might prove to be more than enough to win your case. Plus they might charge less in exchange for experience.

 

What is the violations you speak of under the FDCPA. I know plenty of consumer attorney's in Ohio however, it must be worth pursuing. Is this an abuse and harassment violation or some technicality with reporting?

 

What is wrong with attempting to collect atty fees? The only way you could complain about that is if you are in court as a pro se and the attorney trying to collect fees against you. Even then you are going to have an awfully tough time trying to teach the judge about the fairness doctrine.

The only other argument you could make is that the contract called for reasonable attorney fees but the creditor and the attorney cannot determine what is reasonable attorney fees. That must be determined by the court and the only basis upon which the court can decide what is reasonable and what is not is for the attorney to submit a sworn statement to the court showing his actual time spent broken down into quarter hour segments and his usual hourly rate for such work.

If that amount goes to more than about 1/3 of the claimed indebtedness then you might make a case for unreasonable attorney fees.

The problem with that argument is that in most cases the attorneys don't charge anywhere near even 20 percent of the amount claimed by the plaintiff so if you made that demand the attorney just might be only too happy to provide the court with what you asked for.

And why do you think that getting charged CC interest rates is not allowable? It may or may not be allowable depending on who is filing the lawsuit against you (if any) and whether or not the CC agreement is valid.

Either of those arguments would be very hard to make indeed in lower courts.

The argument you might try to make if you are sued is that the agreement does not accrue to the purchaser of the charged off debt since the credit card agreement was canceled at the time of charge off. It would still be binding on both the original creditor and the consumer up to the point that the debt was sold to a 3rd party debt collector but did not pass to the 3rd party debt collector when he bought the debt.

I've never seen that argument argument tried in court and I doubt I ever will because I think it unlikely that any lower court judge would listen to it. The argument may make sense to us but I seriously doubt it would hold up in any lower court and maybe not even in appellate or federal courts. Nobody seems willing to take it that far.

A far more plausible and provable argument is that the plaintiff is not the party of first interest in the case and another is that they have not included all the indispensable parties to the case and the case should therefore be dismissed.

The first argument is sustainable but again it most likely will never work in lower courts. The same is true for the second argument which is even more easily provable in CC or mortgage foreclosure cases.

The reason is that most credit card companies do not actually risk nor loan any of their own money. John Gliha and many more have tried to make that argument unsuccessfully because they all tried to use Modern Money Mechanics, The Two Faces of Debt and G. Edward Griffin's book The Creature of Jekyl Island as the basis for their arguments. That will never work because they are not law so can't be introduced into evidence.

But the fact that they don't risk or loan any of their own money is easily provable by going to the Edgar data base and doing some poking around there. I would provide a link to Edgar but it is highly unlikely that anyone here wants to spend the next several days poking around and learning how to use Edgar to find what is needed to prove the point.

Even if you did spend the next week or so getting what would be needed to prove the point it is unlikely that any lower court judge would listen to the argument so again you would end up appealing the point and may not win even if you did.

So I really fail to see where you have anything to complain about that would stand up in an appellate court or even in federal courts.