Craig Cunningham, a so called celebrity litigant featured along with Steven Katz of Debtorboards.com in a Dallas paper for his great work in filing federal cases against debt collectors filed one too many of his sloppy, nonsensical filings against a debt collector in a Texas federal court and a federal judge dismissed his case and ordered him to pay the defendant's attorney fees. The judge probably should have hit Cunningham with being a vexatious litigant as well. (LOL) That would keep him from filing any more of his nonsensical lawsuits for a while at least. As it is, Patrick Lunsford of Insidearm fame is busy crowing about the debt collector's win and how great that decision will be for the collection industry. That's nonsense too, of course.
Even a second-year law student could see what happened to Cunningham. It wasn't so much that his claims were meritless as 1) he got way too greedy and cocky and 2) he did not have the first clue as to how to offer up competent (and consistent) summary judgment evidence. So his spectacular fail is neither a win for consumers nor debt collectors. It is really just a painful tale of what happens when you become more interested in celebrity than doing your job right. Anybody playing ball in federal court, particularly pro se, should know his legal stuff. Cunningham simply had more hubris than chops. P.S. Cunningham's opponent, Robbie Malone, is a psychotic bitch but she is a good lawyer. Cunningham should have had his game on with her, but again, I think he believed his own hype. If you want to beat debt collectors, have your shit together and never file a case you can't win. That's more important than being a famous credit terrorist or whatever stupid name he gave himself.
Credit terrorist? Not Cunningham. That's Steven Katz and his terrorist training camp AKA debtorboards who also got some publicity and his picture in the Dallas newspaper article along with Cunningham. It is really a case of a newspaper reporter getting things all wrong as they usually do when looking for a story. I've had lots and lots of experience with newspaper reporters over the years myself and none of them ever got the story really right.
But the reality of the game is that filing lawsuits against debt collectors isn't the best game plan to start off with and Cunningham, Katz and their ilk have never figured that out yet. Now then, I'm not saying that filing lawsuits against debt collectors is the wrong thing to do but debt collectors are not the only dangerous creatures in the credit river. The credit river of which I am speaking is might be likened to an actual river filled with alligators, crocodiles and huge snakehead fish. Such rivers do exist in the world. The question is which do we try to file lawsuits against? Should we be targeting the alligators, the crocodiles or the snakeheads? In short, debt collectors, lawyers or judges? All three are indeed dangerous creatures. All three can be targeted for federal lawsuits. Debt collectors are the most likely targets for people such as Cunningham and the terrible terrorist. Debt collectors are already high profile and take most of the heat from the public but they are not the real menace. Lawyers are and they are far more vulnerable than debt collectors are due to the great amount of respect they generate from the public. After all, they are known to be highly educated people, officers of the court and all that nonsense. Lawyers hold about as much public respect as reporters do. If it is in print or it is on the 10 P.M. news then it must be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth or so most of the public believes. If an attorney or a judge said it then it must be true. That is the public perception, right, wrong or indifferent. So the real targets of our wrath should be the attorneys and not the debt collectors. Attorneys are sitting ducks compared to debt collectors. They actually make far more mistakes and if we can change the focus of the Achmeds (terrible terrorists) and their stupid training camps and get them to look at the real problem we might be able to get somewhere. Without the lawyers the debt collectors would be left totally toothless. Today the Achmeds are the terrible terrorists such as Cunninghams and the Katz's who are out there tooting their horns at debt collectors. My focus has always been the attorneys more than debt collectors. If you can rip out the lawyers the way the terrible terrorists are trying to do to the collection agencies then you have accomplished something beneficial to all. Let's look at what would be accomplished by going after the lawyers instead of the collection agencies. (1.) You reduce the tax burden we all have to pay by trillions of dollars nationwide. Go after the lawyers who file the case and make them afraid to even file a case for fear of getting drug into federal court and they won't file nearly so many lawsuits and those they do file will be done the right way. They will do their homework on every case instead of running to the courthouse to file cases by the hundreds as they do now. They will make sure that they do things the right way and treat pro se litigants with much more respect than they do now. Less lawsuits mean a lesser burden on our court systems nationwide. (2.)Fairer treatment for all consumers in courts across the land. (3.)More consumer protection laws at the state levels rather than at the federal level. There are probably lots of other benefits to be had by going after the lawyers with a vengeance rather than the collection agencies that I haven't foreseen as of yet but if we can get people to thinking about the real problem then more such benefits might surface. Think about it. Going after the lawyers makes a lot more sense then going after the collection agencies as far as I am concerned.
Don't know whether I can or not. It came from insidearm.com and I may have deleted the email. You might find it by digging through insidearm.com It was written up by Patrick Lunsford from over there so you might be able to send him an email and get the link from him. He is one of the wheels at insidearm and easy to find.
