Legal Validation Time Frame ?!

They don't have to send you validation even if your request was timely. They only have to provided validation if they wish to take any continued collection activity.

 

Does a lawsuit constitute "continued collection"?

 

Legally, the FDCPA says you have 30 days from "receipt" of the 1st written notice from the collection agency. So, your case relies on somehow "proving" you did not receive the "1st Notice" from the debt collector.

The difficulty is that the legal system interprets "mailed" as a given for "received". If you can show that the 1st Notice was sent to an incorrect address, and that you have made the collector aware of this, then you have grounds that the 30 day window did not apply in this case.

If you have sent two requests for validation, and they were ignored, I am sure a judge would not look favorably on this.

FYI, per the FDCPA, failure to request validation within the intial 30 day window does not automatically translate that you accept the debt as "valid"

 

1. Validation is about continued collection under the FDCPA.
2. Nothing much is required for "validation", see:

3. The question now is what is required for them to win their arbitration case.
4. And what must you do to make this as difficult as possible for them.

You seem very focused on "validation", which really seems to miss the boat given you are currently in a lawsuit. If you stick to 1 and 2 above, and ignore 3 and 4, the arbitrator will have affidavits and documents from the plaintiff but nothing from you. This is probably what he sees 95 times out of 100 so it won't be new to him.

 

Where is this "lawsuit" and "arbitration" reference coming from. I didn't see anything in the OP's posts that said he was getting sued in a judicial or abitral forum.

Are these assumptions being drawn from another thread or something?

 

Yes but, I didn't see any mention of such in this thread.

 

I see. I was confused for a minute.

 

Hmmmm . . . they sue you in an arbitral forum wherein your rights are already severely diminished and you have to pay just to participate.

That's fair . . .

 

1. It seems unfair to me that you have to pay for the costs directly for a lawsuit you didn't start. I can see if you lose, they will add those things on to the judgment; but that's up to the plaintiff to wrench out of you, not the courts. This sounds oddly different.

2. Please read your credit card contract. Many of them say that the plaintiff will pay for arbitration up front. They might not intend this sort of arbitration but that might not be clear. Since they wrote it, and it's a standard form contract, amibiguity should be read in your favor.

3. The rules do seem to suggest that you can file for a status where if you qualify you don't have to pay the fees up front:
http://www.leg.state.nv.us/CourtRules/RGADR.html

And:
http://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-012.html#NRS012Sec015

4. I've been suggesting that you consider looking into maybe seeing if you might try discovery:
http://www.leg.state.nv.us/CourtRules/RGADR.html

You might show up to the conference with a list of things you want to know. Things such as what proof do they have that you owe anyone any debt, what proof do they have that yow owe them any debt, what proof they have you entered into any sort of contract, what proof they have of the amount, etc.

 

Paying to respond to an action in any forum is simply inequitable. I can't fathom how these processes exist yet, they do.

 

http://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-021.html#NRS021Sec090

So it does seem to Dumb Bob that they might have something they can get you for.

I don't know, I'm just reading the rules and whatnot trying to figure out what is going on. One of the texts I quoted to you said:

http://www.leg.state.nv.us/CourtRules/RGADR.html

Is a "discovery plan" necessary? Is there something that you want them to give you that they have yet to give you, i.e. "validation"? If they won't give you "validation" at the first hearing, you might want to make that part of the "discovery plan", something like that. The following is a small part of Rule 16.1:
http://www.leg.state.nv.us/CourtRules/NRCP.html#NRCPRule16_1

Maybe Rule 11 is a "pre-arbitration" hearing:
http://www.leg.state.nv.us/CourtRules/RGADR.html

If you are doing a FDCPA lawsuit against them, these things could potentially be useful. But if you just want the information, you might consider using the tools of the lawsuit, to whatever extent they are available to you I don't know. One reason you might not have thought about about why they might not want to give you "validation" is maybe because they don't have anything or much of anything to give you. Think about that. It could be wrong, but if it isn't, you maybe want to be there making that point to the arbitrator.

If they had something physical to back up their claims, would they get the account wrong? Perhaps. What proof do they have that they really own whatever account it is that you think they are talking about? That's the sort of thing you might really like to know, I mean because otherwise how would you know you were paying the right person? How do you even know this is the right account? They might have some other account for someone else and you just seemed like a convenient person to sue.

That's a pretty fair assessment of the situation. A couple of things to consider:

1. Are arbitration hearings public? That is, could you attend some before the one you are going to in order to get an idea what they are like, what you should do to maximize your chances for success?

2. Are they going to do all this via the telephone, and can your choices make it more or less likely that you can appear in person? Could you remove some of the non-local arbitrators (if there are some) from the list and potentially make things easier for you?

I don't know the answers, perhaps someone else does; the most likely source of answers is local to you, ask like you've been asking.