Pre-Trial Set with Cap 1..what should my next move be??

May as well move to dismiss if it is time barred . . .

 

If this is a lot of money, even if it isn't, Dumb Bob thinks you should discuss this with a lawyer. You haven't presented any argument other than SOL and you must make that argument effectively and probably quickly if you are going to win even if you are correct.

To understand what you are up against, you really should start going to the civil hearings in the court that you are being sued in. You need to see what sorts of arguments are made and whether or not judges listen to defendants.

You have the laws of three states to deal with, so you need to get access to them and to a law library so you can read case law and secondary sources. Dumb Bob would love to know, for example, what the rules are in Virginia if you've never been in Virginia. He thinks that the SOL tolls in Florida if you leave but he's not sure about that. What happens in VA?

In some states if you leave, the SOL just stops. If you have never been there, it is considered unfair since the SOL would never end. This might mean that the forum state SOL applies. Or something else, Dumb Bob won't even pretend to know.

Even though it seems online that everyone fights debt lawsuits, almost no one really does. Most people hide and get a default against them.

 

Quite so. In fact, it really doesn't matter whether they fight or not, the universal outcome is usually a judgment quite often followed by garnishment, freezing of bank accounts, occasional seizure of vehicles or other titled property and in very rare circumstances even end up with a sheriff coming to the door to grab what can be carted off and sold at auction to satisfy the debt.

Most people are even afraid to go to court and face the judge. Far too many who do go fight use nutcase theories picked up as a result of having seen them on some message board or egroup then scream about the corrupt legal system and how badly it treated them.

I think it would help a great deal if our local school systems started teaching kids at least some basic concepts about the law, the wise use of credit and credit cards and the troubles they can cause if misused. A little bit of education in public schools about credit bureaus, what they are and how to read credit reports wouldn't hurt either.

 

You got my vote on that!
You could set it up like a monopoly game.
I would think FICO would be all over that idea if they can use that to instill fear into the students so they all become lifetime subscribers to their credit watch programs. Not that the fox should be teaching the sheep how to keep from being eaten...

I see a new board game (or maybe on-line game, or a cell-phone game, or ...)

 

They do need a program for basics on having a cc where they understand that the term Charge It Please has flaws in it.And can cause you a lifetime of being "PO"

 

Which is why people need to be told up front what the chances are, especially with an original creditor that is within the SOL.

Them black robes is scary.

That's about the size of it. When checking to see if an idea is crazy or not, the best way is to simply look at the case law. If there is no case law, it's probably not a good argument to make pro se.

 

There isn't any reason to be afraid of a judge unless you have been out snatching purses off of little old ladies or robbing convenience stores. Most judges will listen if you have a plausible argument and know how to present it. An example is that of a friend of mine who sued a major corporation a while back. He went to court and lost miserably. That wasn't good enough for him. He knew he had a valid cause of action and a good case so he demanded recusal of the judge and got it. Went back to court in front of another judge who also agreed with the defendant's attorney. That judge even agreed with the defense argument that a major nation wide chain of retail outlets with stores nation wide is not doing business in our state yet it has multiple stores here. They were playing corporate shell games. My friend also had that judge recused and went back to court yesterday demanding that the defense attorney be sanctioned for false information to a court of law and of course wanting the judge to grant his motion for summary judgment. The judge ruled that she would take the motion for sanctions under advisement saying that my friend might have good reason to demand sanctions including prison time. She demanded some documents that my friend didn't have present even though he had 3 big notebooks filled with documents to support his arguments. He said he thought he had it with him but even if he did it would take up too much of the court's time waiting for him to find it. So the judge granted him an extension of time to come up with the needed documents. There were about a dozen of our mutual friends there to listen to the outcome of the trial and after the hearing we all went out to a restaurant and had lunch together.

A week ago I went to court with another friend and before the same judge on a mortgage foreclosure case. The attorney had 4 other foreclosure cases he wanted judgments on. My friend demanded to see the original note. The lawyer said he didn't have it. The judge dismissed all 5 cases for the same exact reason and the other 4 people weren't even in the courtroom to argue or hear the outcome. If you are following the right people on the net you will learn that times are changing and more and more judges are starting to pay attention to pro se litigants and their causes.

Quite so. But case law can be extremely difficult or even impossible to find for many pro se litigants even if it exists. That's why they need to have a subscription to Pacer and also learn how to use their local law libraries as well as how to shepardize their cases. But even knowing all of that isn't enough. They also need to be familiar with local, state and federal rules of procedure. At times, an even better way is use of simple common sense. Just stop and think about the argument before wasting time on it. A recent example is a thread on another popular forum. Somebody came up with the idea that if (for example) Wells Fargo bank filed a suit against somebody but it was later found out that it was a debt collector and not Wells Fargo who filed the suit. That's got to be trademark infringement the poster argued. After some comments about how great that idea was and how nobody ever thought of that one before somebody came in and said that won't work because the defendant isn't the injured party and therefore has no standing to sue. Then the OP came back and said that even so it ought to be an FDCPA violation because the debt collector was providing false and misleading information to the consumer. After that the thread sort of died out and I haven't seen any more comments either yay or nay. That's an example of how many nutcase theories are born. They might sound great but sometimes common sense ought to tell us whether they are valid or crazy or what.

 

A lot of pundits thought Miranda was a nutcase when he expounded his theory. The case was well argued, and it's acceptance has wide application in the law today.

A refusal to discuss and consider alternative views and an insistence on a singular opinion seems disrespectful, dictatorial, and dangerous.

 

In the official baseball rulebook one of the last rules is the common sense rule what makes sense is the right call.So you can apply that to everyday life.just a thought.

 

Agreed.

But the law operates differently.

That is one of the mistakes people make when thinking about legal matters.

 

What exactly do you mean? As never have been sued AFTER SOL but maybe someday I will... SOoooooo as I have posted before, you are out of SOL but the only way you know that is by your old and current cr's. Then all of a sudden a JDB puts a TL on your account, and like this person that has posted this thread, changes the date so it looks like you are not out of SOL, so how do you make the argument effectively that it is time barred and how quickly?

Woofer

 

But how does what the JDB put on the credit report change the SOL? Should what the JDB put on your credit report be admissible evidence for purposes of deciding whether or not the lawsuit was timely filed? How is it not barred as hearsay? Does it fit within some exception to the hearsay rules? For example, is it a "business record"?

By quickly, Dumb Bob means that you might not have much time at the hearing. Think about 20 people to deal with and you don't want to be the one who is slowing things down: "Maybe there's time to finish the back nine by lunch." Not all judges take getting in a game of golf more importantly than reviewing your case properly, but at the lower levels, time can be limited.