First of all, thanks so much for your help with this! I really do appreciate it. I'm guessing that the judge's hearing would be the same day if I failed to show up at the arbitration... and I am thinking that if I do that I may piss off the judge. I think I would rather lose in arbitration, and then appeal the case to a judge. LOL, yes so true. I guess the local judges aren't as concerned about a federal statue as a federal judge would be. Are you talking about filing a case in federal court? Should I do that now, or wait until after the aribitration hearing?
If you have at least one or two or more good cause(s) of action I'd do it now. If I were doing it I would probably get my case and a valid notice of intent to sue prepared, and if there were time before the arbitration hearing I would mail that to the plaintiff's lawyer to see if s/he would hopefully back off before spending the money for the court fees thereby evading the problem of having to prepare the cover sheet, memorandum of law, table of authorities, certificate of mailing and notice of hearing. If they didn't back off within about 10 days before the hearing I would go ahead and file it. If there isn't enough time for that then I'd simply wait until after the hearing and be sure to talk to the attorney outside of court so I could get at least one more violation before filing. In either case I would be sure to talk to the attorney in person as much as possible so I could get as many more violations to lay on them via amended complaint in case they still didn't want to sit down and come to my terms. Sometimes they can be thick headed and have to be further coerced with some additional complaints.
Looks like it was notarized by a Taneka A Beckwith in Virginia. It was signed by an "agent", I can't make out a name.
That's not a good affidavit at all but if you can't figure out how it might be totally illegal, a fraud, a scam. then there isn't much use of complaining about it. i googled both people and nothing bad showed up so I guess you don't have much grounds to complain about that the judge is likely to listen to.
So, the fact that you can't identify the "agent" (i.e. the witness) or cross-examine them, isn't a problem for the court?
Not at all. Judges routinely just accept the false affidavits as gospel truth no matter how poorly constructed they are or how fraudulent they may be. Some justice system, eh? It is up to you to challenge their phony affidavits by filing an objection and pointing out its fallacies. Just claiming that it is false isn't enough. You have to use rules of evidence and rules of procedure to show why the affidavit is defective and should not be allowed in court. Takes a bit of research to do that but Wikipedia is probably a very good place to start. The first thing is that an affidavit is hear say evidence until it is corroborated by the actual presence of the maker in the court room. It is prima facial evidence until an actual live person shows up in court to give testimony. That almost never happens. Even if it does happen there is the chance that the person is a ringer brought in by the attorney. Maybe an employee of the attorney or another attorney and possibly just some hobo off the street who gets paid to give his false testimony. If you think that hasn't happened think again. You can't put that affidavit in the witness chair and ask it questions. That's the point you have to make to the judge. If an actual witness shows up make that person show his drivers license or other photo identification. Make him show an actual payroll stub to prove who he works for. The witness will not come prepared for that one even if the witness does come to court. If the witness can't properly be identified then demand that the testimony be stricken from the record. Neil Garfield who writes the living lies blog has posted a very interesting article today dealing with exactly the things you are interested in. You can access his blog and read the article by clicking on the first link in my signature line below.
If I were to decide to sue them in federal court, what sections of the FDCPA do you think I may be able to prove that they have violated here (if any)?
I would need much more information about the case and what they have done to be able to even start to know what they might have done.
Just to update everyone, I did hire a lawyer and won the case. But now I need help getting this off of my credit report as soon as possible.
You may have two separate problems before it is over and done with. You may end up with one report for the judgment even though they didn't get one and then of course the one from Capital One. I have seen cases where the credit bureaus picked up the fact that the judgment had been filed and reported that as an accomplished fact. Rare but it does happen. If so you have a case against who ever reported it, most likely the credit bureau itself or it may have been some other reporting agency which did it. You might end up with the necessity to file a federal case or two to get it off. Getting rid of the original Cap1 listing isn't going to be that easy. Things are looking a bit better in my case with Cap1 but I'm a long ways from winning it yet. A call to the judge's office opened some doors for me that I didn't realize were open until I called the judge's office and asked a couple of questions. Of course the answers to those questions also raised more questions which I still have to research. I'm sorry I feel I have to be so cryptic but I happen to know that there are quite a few Oklahomans that watch this forum closely because I get calls from them and they say they saw me posting here and also in other places. So if there are quite a few of us here then just maybe one of them might be from the law firm I am dealing with and talking too much could cost the case for me or at least give me lots of extra problems I don't need. Maybe when the case is over I will be more open about what happened and how. But I was talking to an attorney on another forum and that attorney made a statement about Oklahoma's court system that I first thought was nuts and couldn't possibly be true. I found out today that attorney was absolutely right even though s/he admitted to guessing about how the court system works in Oklahoma. But the way things are working out in the case it appears that the plaintiff's attorney might not understand how it works any better than I did. (LOL). Time will tell and it likely won't take long. A few days at most. I do wish you luck in getting rid of the cap1 listing but to the best of my knowledge and belief you are going to have a very tough time trying to get rid of their listing if you even can get the job done.